While playing a particularly intense game of throwing ping pong balls into beer cups, have you ever found yourself wondering what the history of beer pong is? Your answer may be no, as your thoughts were most likely drowning in alcohol at that point, so we’re going to save you the trouble and educate you now. You can thank us later! This slightly confusing history of beer pong will provide you with some annoyingly good trivia to share with your friends, and become the group know-it-all.
The Feud
If you refer to Wikipedia for your research, you will find that Dartmouth College apparently invented beer pong somewhere between the 1950s-1960s. Controversially, Bucknell University also claims that they were the creators of the game back in the 1970s. To add more controversy, they also apparently named it ‘throw pong’. (Is it still the same game if it has a different name? Out of beer pong and throw pong I know which one I’d prefer to play).
The Method
To tell the full history of beer pong, apparently, the game was originally played at Dartmouth with a net and paddles too, explaining the ‘pong’ part of the name. Bucknell claims that they invented the paddle-free version of the game, and thus should gain the reigning crown of beer pong originators.
The Slightly Confusing Addition
Some of you may also know ‘Beer Pong’ as ‘Beirut’. It is the same as beer pong, just weirdly named after the Lebanese capital. Why, you ask? Quite frankly, no one knows. Some say it may be to do with the Lebanese civil war in the 1980’s, but we cannot fathom for the life of us why it would be named after that. Beer pong is fun; a civil war is a distinctly not fun. But we thought you should be aware of the name change nonetheless.
To Summarise
The history of beer pong is somewhat confusing and downright strange at times, but there you have it. Our theory is that no one can remember where or why Beer Pong originated because they were all too good at playing the game and wiped their minds of any memory with intoxication. What’s your theory? We’d love to hear about it!
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