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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A letter from biologist Charles Darwin to his son may have proven that hockey was played in England long before the first officially recognized game was played in Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first recorded indoor game occurred in Montreal in 1875, but in a letter to his son who was away at Shrewsbury School, the father of evolution remembered playing the game in the early 1800's, according to the London Daily Mail.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CMy Dear Old Willy\u2026 have you got a pretty good pond to skate on? I used to be very fond of playing at Hocky [sic] on the ice in skates,\u201D he wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The evolutionary theorist had himself attended the school as a boarder between 1818 and 1825 himself, and it is thought his reference to enjoying \u201Chockey on the ice\u201D relates to this time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The new info comes from a book by Canadian hockey historian Jean-Patrice Martel titled\u00A0&lt;em&gt;On The Origins of Hockey&lt;/em&gt;(get it?) which also found other evidence the game in England in a 1838 newspaper report of a game of ice hockey played at a party.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Also on Extra Mustard: Inside the NBA Crew Provides Backup Vocals for 10-Year-Old Girl&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are Canadian and starting to feel sick at the idea of your national sport being not so national, don't worry -- in America, everyone knows you can denounce\u00A0anything involving Darwin no matter how much evidence there is to support his hypotheses.\n[SportsGrid]&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2014/05/28/historians-now-believe-hockey-originated-in-england-thanks-to-charles-darwin>