Fives is a British sport believed to derive from the same origins as many racquet sports. In fives, a ball is propelled against the walls of a special court using gloved or bare hands as though they were a racquet.
The name may be derived from the slang expression "a bunch of fives" (meaning a fist). The game has also been known as hand-tennis and historically was often played between the buttresses of church buildings in England. There are links between Fives and the Irish and North American handball games and indeed, in recent years, British clubs have begun to establish ties with clubs in those countries.
Fives is not the same as Long Fives, which is played in a real tennis court.
There are two main types of fives, Rugby Fives and Eton Fives. A precursor to Rugby Fives is Warminster (or Wessex) Fives; another variant of Wessex fives is Winchester Fives, although there are only 9 places in the UK where this is still played.
Most schools where fives is played have only one type of court but three schools have historically had both Eton and Rugby courts - Cheltenham, Dover and Marlborough. Cheltenham now only have Rugby courts and Dover two unrestored Eton courts; Marlborough have four rugby and two eton courts, all in good condition.
Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana.
Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the music's focus from collective improvisation to solo performance. With his instantly recognizable deep and distinctive gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also greatly skilled at scat singing (vocalizing using sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics).
Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to "cross over," whose skin-color was secondary to his music in an America that was severely racially divided. It allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society that were highly restricted for a black man. While he rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African-Americans, he was privately a strong supporter of the Civil Rights movement in America.[citation needed]