Long before LeBron James was shooting hoops on the world’s stage, another James was the biggest name in basketball — though folks today may not know it. In 1891, James Naismith was a graduate student and instructor at Massachusetts’ Springfield College when he was tasked with developing a new indoor activity that could be played during the cold New England winters. Needless to say, he nailed the assignment.

An athlete himself — the year prior, he’d played center against Yale in one of the first indoor football games — the Canadian 30-year-old was interested in the burgeoning arena of physical education. He’d already earned a bachelor’s degree in the field from McGill University in Montreal, but enrolled at Springfield (then called the International YMCA Training School) to study under superintendent Luther Halsey Gulick, a pioneer in the discipline.