The game of billiards (pool) was begun probably in northern France about six hundred years ago, adapted from the lawn game croquet, and the eight ball was made black apparently because the words in the various indo european (japhetic) languages for (black as) night and eight are so similar, in Spanish noche and ocho, in Portuguese noite and oito, in German nacht and acht, in Norwegian natt and atta, and in French nuit and huit, nuit curiously like the goddess of the night sky in Old Kingdom Egypt, her name Nut, or Neith, or as Sanchuniathon the Canaanite called her Athene, the Greek’s Athena, known from the days of the Tower of Babel when she apparently was a wife or daughter of Ham (otherwise known as Geb, Saturn, and Kronos).
