Born in Almonte, Ontario, Canada, Naismith was a graduate of McGill University and the Presbyterian Theological College. He taught physical education from 1887 to 1890 at McGill University and in 1891, while working as a physical education teacher at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts he began to look for a way to relieve his students' boredom during indoor winter gym classes.
Inspired in part by a game he played as a child in Ontario called Duck-on-a-Rock, Naismith's basketball started with 13 rules, a peach basket nailed to either end of the school's gymnasium, and two teams of nine players. On January 15, 1892 Naismith published the rules for basketball.
James Naismith is buried alongside his first wife, Maude Sherman, in Lawrence, Kansas.
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