" …[O]ne of the earliest genuine references to billiards in America reveals that the Colonial statesman William Byrd of Westover—who was educated in England and called to the bar at the Middle Temple—had a billiard table: in his diary entry for 30 July 1710, Byrd writes, apropos of having laid his wife, "It is to be observed that the flourish was performed on the billiard table. "

― Ned Polsky