Did you know?
Lord's Cricket Ground in London, which opened in 1814, is not flat! Its field drops about 2.5 metres from one side to the other, so bowlers at one end run slightly downhill and at the other, uphill.
The Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, Greece, is the only stadium in the world built entirely of marble. It hosted the opening ceremony of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.
The Chail Cricket Ground in Himachal Pradesh is about 2,444 metres above sea level, making it one of the highest cricket grounds in the world. It was built more than 130 years ago by the Maharaja of Patiala.
Try this: Stadium Maths
Design your dream stadium on paper. Choose a sport, a shape (round, oval or rectangular) and a name. Then do some stadium maths: if one stand has 20 rows with 50 seats in each row, how many people can sit there? How many fit in four such stands?
Show answer
1,000 in one stand and 4,000 in four stands.
Go further: The Biggest Football Crowd Ever
In 1950, nearly 2,00,000 people packed into the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to watch the deciding match of the football World Cup. It is the largest crowd ever to watch a football game! Today, most big stadiums give every fan a seat, so such a huge crowd may never gather again. The Maracanã later hosted the 2014 World Cup final and the opening of the 2016 Olympics.