It’s National Volleyball Day.
The standard court is 18 meters long by 9 meters wide, and it has a net that’s not quite 8 feet high.
Today’s story is about a volleyball match that was un-standard in one key way: the net was actually a border fence, and the game featured teams in two different countries.
Whichever side of the border you’re on, the town is called Naco.
There’s one in Arizona, and there’s one in Sonora, Mexico.
If you go way back, locals say, there was actually just one Naco that eventually got a border fence.
In 1979, people in Naco and Naco organized a “Fiesta Binacional,” which was just a big party for those on either side of the border.
And part of the fiesta was a volleyball match played over the border fence.
As a mayor of Naco, Sonora once noted, it was a game where both teams were the home team.
But that wasn’t the only unusual part of these matches.
For one thing, the top of the border fence was covered in barbed wire, which meant games could be derailed if the ball struck the poky parts and deflated.
Players would sometimes put a temporary tarp over the top to keep that from happening.
Also, unlike in regular volleyball, hitting the ball off the fence, or wall, was within the rules.
And the losing team had to throw a party for the winners.
There was apparently a special – and not exactly legal – hole cut in the wall for that exact purpose.
The games continued until 2007, when the authorities built a much higher wall along the border.
But some Naco residents say they still get together with their counterparts in the other Naco to talk about their tradition – or maybe to gauge interest for another volleyball game?
Today in 1940, the York, Pennsylvania Gazette and Daily reported on Gertrude Smith, who claimed she had practiced mental telepathy on her hens.
She would think very hard about an image and that image would show up on the eggs.
Good to have a hobby.
When neighbors played volleyball over the U.S.-Mexico border fence (Univision)
Egg Telepathy (Weird Universe)
