1930
Romania and Peru had the misfortune of playing their opening match of the tournament on Bastille Day, a public holiday in Uruguay. Most Montivideans were to busy partying to watch football, and those who wanted to watch football were watching Brazil vs Yugoslavia on the other side of town. This meant that only 300 people watched Romania defeat Peru 3-1 - the smallest attendance at a world cup finals tournament.
Before the final, referee Jean Langenus of Belgium had to settle an argument. Both finalists insisted on using their own ball! Langenus decided that each ball would be used for one half. Argentina started the match with their ball and took a 2-1 lead into the break. In the second half Uruguay, using their ball, scored three times to secure a 4-2 victory.
1934
The 1934 World Cup final is unique in that the captains of the two finalists were both goalkeepers. Frantisek Planicka of Czechoslovakia and Giampiero Combi of Italy faced each other as opposing goalkeepers and captains.
1950
The Scottish FA, however, announced that they would only travel to Brazil as British champions. Following a defeat by England in the final game, Scotland finished second in the tournament and, despite protests by the Scottish players, the Scottish FA refused to send a team to Brazil.
India withdrew from the tournament following FIFA's refusal to allow them to play in bare feet.
1958
The 1958 World Cup was the first to receive international television coverage.
1958 was the only World Cup at which all four UK countries - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - reached the finals. Welsh and Northern Irish fans must have been delighted by the fact that their teams made it through to the quarter-finals, while England and Scotland went out in the group stage.
The Northern Ireland team were put under pressure by Ulster religious groups not to play any of their matches which were scheduled for Sundays.
1962
The early stages of the World Cup in Chile sadly made all the wrong kind of headlines. There were several brutal, ill-tempered games in the group stage. By far the worst was an encounter between Chile and Italy that became known as 'The Battle of Santiago'. Two Italians were sent off. Remarkably, no Chileans were, despite the fact that Chilean left back Leonel Sanchez broke Italian captain Huberto Maschio's nose with a punch. In the absence of any official sanction against Sanchez, an Italian player punished him with a martial-arts kick. Armed police came on to the pitch on three occasions to try to restore order. Chile won 2-0, but the thuggery easily overshadowed such football as was played in the match. Referee Ken Aston later commented: 'I wasn't reffing a football match, I was acting as an umpire in military manoeuvres.'
1966
The 1966 World Cup caused some bitter disagreements before a ball had been kicked in anger. Sixteen African nations boycotted the tournament in protest against a 1964 FIFA ruling that required the champion team from the African zone to play off against the winners of either the Asian or the Oceania zone in order to win a place at the finals. The Africans felt that winning their zone should have been enough in itself to merit qualification for the finals.
1978
There had often been petty squabbles over the politics of football in the run-up to previous World Cups. This time, serious real-world politics was the issue. Many people called for a boycott of the tournament in Argentina in protest at the totalitarian government led by General Videla, which stood accused of major human rights abuses. No nations withdrew because of the political situation in Argentina, but the great Dutch player Johan Cruyff refused to take part in the tournament.
The other group was essentially a battle between the hosts and Brazil, and it was resolved in controversial circumstances. In the first round of group games, Brazil beat Peru 3-0 while Argentina saw off Poland 2-0. Brazil and Argentina then played out a tense goalless draw, so both teams went into the last round of matches with three points. In a game that kicked off at 4.45pm on 21 June, Brazil beat Poland 3-1. Argentina's game with Peru kicked off at 7.15pm on the same day, so they went into it knowing exactly what they had to do to reach the final: beat Peru by four clear goals.
It looked like a tall order, but they managed it with what some saw as a suspicious degree of ease. Trailing 2-0 at half-time, Peru simply collapsed in the second half, and Argentina eventually won 6-0. Dark rumours suggested that Peru might have been somehow illicitly induced not to try too hard; but nothing could be proved, and Argentina met the Netherlands in the final.
1982
That left a complicated situation in advance of the final game in the group, between West Germany and Austria on 25 June. A draw or a win for Austria would eliminate West Germany and send Austria and Algeria through to the second round. A win for the West Germans by a margin of three goals or more would knock out Austria, and send West Germany and Algeria through. Significantly, however, a West German win by one or two goals would suit both the teams taking part in the last group game, allowing both of them to progress and eliminating the giant-killers from Algeria.
The game in Gijon began conventionally enough, with West Germany attacking strongly. They soon made a breakthrough when Horst Hrubesch gave them the lead in the tenth minute. And then both teams seemed to stop trying. For the remaining 80 minutes, they simply passed the ball around listlessly, often slowing to walking pace, with neither side making any serious attempt to score. The crowd, which included many Algerians, whistled and jeered furiously, but the farcical match was played out to achieve the result that suited both sides - a narrow West German win. Despite their two wins, Algeria were eliminated on goal difference.
Naturally, there were furious protests from the Algerians at what looked like an obvious case of collusion. But, in the absence of any proof of wrong-doing, there was little that FIFA could do to remedy the situation. What they did do, however, was to change the arrangements for future World Cups so that the final round of games in a group would be played simultaneously, thus making it impossible for opposing teams to contrive mutually-convenient results.
The 1982 World Cup featured one of the most bizarre incidents in any World Cup: the strange case of the royal pitch invasion. It happened after the Kuwait team walked off the pitch during their game against France, following an argument over a refereeing decision.
France were leading 3-1 when Alain Giresse put the ball in the net with the Kuwaiti defenders standing and watching. They insisted that they'd stopped playing because they'd heard the referee blow his whistle. The Kuwaiti FA president, Prince Fahid, then came on to the field from his seat in the stands and protested furiously.
Amazingly, the referee finally accepted the royal command and disallowed the goal. The Kuwaitis then agreed to complete the match, and France won 4-1. The Prince was subsequently fined £8,000 by FIFA, but losing that amount probably didn't greatly trouble one of the richest men in the world.
1990
The 1990 World Cup finals got off to a sensational start. In the first match, Cameroon soaked up pressure from Argentina for most of the first half. After a quarter of an hour's play in the second half, Cameroon's Andre Kana was sent off, and it seemed certain that the world champions would now take control. But six minutes later, the ten men took the lead. François Omam Bayik scored when he placed a perfect downward header past Argentine goalkeeper Nery Pumpido. Argentina pressed hard for an equaliser, and Cameroon were reduced to nine men when Benjamin Massing got the red card in the 89th minute - but the African team still held out for a shock 1-0 win.
1994
The drama around the 1998 World Cup Final began in the Brazilian team's hotel on the night before the match. Precisely what happened to Ronaldo that night, and on the day of the game, remains one of the World Cup's great mysteries: but what is clear is that he was very ill.
Ronaldo's room-mate Roberto Carlos later remembered the drama this way: 'Ronaldo was scared about what lay ahead. The pressure had got to him and he couldn't stop crying. If anything, it got worse because, at about four o'clock, he started being sick. That's when I called the team doctor and told him to get over to our room as fast as he could.'
According to that doctor, Lidio Toledo, Ronaldo was rushed to hospital after suffering a convulsion in his sleep, but then cleared to play after neurological and cardiac tests. Ronaldo himself has been able to shed little extra light on the matter. He said later: 'I don't remember what happened but I went to sleep and, like the doctor said, it seems I had a fit for about 30 or 40 seconds.'
The next morning, it certainly didn't look as though Ronaldo would be playing in the final. Brazil manager Mario Zagallo gave a team talk in the hotel in which he broke the bad news to his players, and reminded them of what had happened in the 1962 World Cup, when Brazil had won the Cup despite losing Pelé to injury early in the tournament.
Seventy-two minutes before the kick-off, Zagallo issued a team sheet to media representatives at the final. Ronaldo's name wasn't on it. But then, before the game began, a second Brazil team sheet was issued. Suddenly, despite the drama of the night before, Ronaldo was back in the starting line-up.
There were all kinds of rumours about how and why the change of heart happened. One strong rumour suggested that pressure had been put on Zagallo and Ronaldo by Brazil's commercial sponsors. Ronaldo has strongly denied this, insisting that the decision to play was his own.
If so, then Ronaldo obviously isn't the best judge of his own match fitness. He seemed dazed throughout the final, and barely made any impression on the game. The rest of the Brazilian team appeared to be disturbed by the poor performance from their star player, and never reproduced the form they'd shown earlier in the tournament.
At the end of the season after the 1998 World Cup, the Argentinian goalkeeper Carlos Roa announced that he was retiring from football on religious grounds. Roa, a devout Seventh Day Adventist, reportedly believed that Armageddon would arrive along with the year 2000. Rather than spend what he thought would be his last months on earth doing something so trivial as playing football, he entered a religious retreat. However, his club Real Mallorca persuaded him to return to the game in the summer of 2000, after the world failed to end on schedule
All the above was cut and pasted from the BBC website!