Students dressed in black and white squeezed together to form the world’s largest human soccer ball.

Up to then, soccer balls were leather and came in one color, often dark in hue, which made them difficult to see on television. The Telstar, with its black-and-white pattern, was so easy to follow ...

But the ball most commonly seen today—the one with black and white pentagons and hexagons—gained popularity in the 1960s.* Previously, leather soccer balls consisted of 18 sections stitched ...