The Birthplace of Basketball

Basketball was invented in Springfield, Massachusetts in December 1891 by a Canadian physical education instructor named James Naismith, who needed an indoor winter activity to keep his students active between the football and baseball seasons. Naismith nailed two peach baskets to the elevated running track inside the Springfield YMCA gymnasium, wrote 13 basic rules on two pages of paper, and divided his class of 18 students into two teams. The first official game used a soccer ball. A janitor had to climb a ladder to retrieve the ball from the basket after each successful shot.

Source: Wikipedia