Feb. 17
1923 — Cy Denneny of the Ottawa Senators becomes the NHL’s career scoring leader. He scores his 143rd goal to surpass Joe Malone in a 2-0 win over the Montreal Canadiens.
1924 — Johnny Weissmuller sets a world record in the 100-yard freestyle swim with a time of 52.4 seconds.
1926 — Suzanne Lenglen beats Helen Wills 6-3, 8-6 in Cannes, France, in their only tennis match against each other.
1928 — Sweden’s Gillis Grafstrom successfully defends his 1920 and 1924 Olympic figure skating title, with Austrian Willy Bockl finishing in second place as he did four years earlier.
1941 — Joe Louis knocks out Gus Dorazio in the second round in Philadelphia to defend his world heavyweight title.
1955 — Mike Souchak establishes the PGA 72-hole scoring record with a 257 at the Texas Open. Souchak starts with a record-tying 60 at San Antonio’s Brackenridge Park course and ends with a 27-under-par, beating the previous low for a 72-hole event by two shots.
1968 — The Basketball Hall of Fame opens in Springfield, Mass.
1974 — Richard Petty wins his second straight Daytona 500. It’s the fifth Daytona 500 title for Petty, who also won in 1964, 1966, 1971 and 1973.
1992 — Raisa Smetanina wins a gold medal with the Unified Team in the 20-kilometer cross-country relay to set the career Winter Olympics medal record with 10. Smetanina, 39, also becomes the oldest champion and the first to win a medal in five straight Winter Games.
1994 — San Antonio’s David Robinson records the fourth quadruple-double in NBA history with 34 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists and 10 blocks in the Spurs’ 115-96 win over Detroit.
1998 — The U.S. women’s hockey team wins the sport’s first Olympic gold medal. Sandra Whyte scores on an empty-netter with 8 seconds left to give the United States a 3-1 victory over Canada.
2010 — Americans Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso finish 1-2 in the downhill at the Vancouver Olympics. It’s the first time since 1984 that the U.S won gold and silver in a women’s Alpine event.
2013 — Danica Patrick wins the Daytona 500 pole, becoming the first woman to secure the top spot for any Sprint Cup race.
2014 — Meryl Davis and Charlie White win the gold medal in ice dance, the first Olympic title in the event for the U.S..
2018 — Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu becomes the first man to successfully defend his Olympic figure skating title since Dick Button in 1952.
2020 – 62nd Daytona 500: Denny Hamlin wins second straight title by 0.014 seconds over Ryan Blaney on the second restart in overtime; his third Daytona victory
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Feb. 18
1924 — Theresa Weld Blanchard wins her sixth and final U.S. figure skating championship. Sherwin Badger captures his fifth straight and final men’s title.
1928 — Sonja Henie, 15, becomes the youngest Olympic figure skating champion. She easily beats Fritzi Burger of Austria and Beatrix Loughran of the U.S.
1932 — Sonja Henie wins her sixth straight world title.
1951 — Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan orders the arrest of three City College basketball players on bribery charges and two professional gamblers and two intermediaries in a game-fixing scandal involving college teams across the country.
1961 — Bob Pettit of St. Louis scores a career-high 57 points in a 141-138 victory over the Detroit Pistons.
1964 — Wilt Chamberlain scores 52 points against Detroit, his second consecutive 50-point game.
1972 — Randy Smith of Buffalo plays the first of what would become 906 consecutive games, an NBA record which took more than 11 full seasons to accomplish.
1981 — Edmonton’s Wayne Gretzky scores five goals and adds two assists to lead the Oilers over the St. Louis Blues 9-2.
1986 — San Antonio’s Alvin Robertson records the second quadruple-double in NBA history, with 20 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists and 10 steals in the Spurs’ 120-114 win over Phoenix.
1990 — Dale Earnhardt blows a tire with one mile remaining in the Daytona 500, giving Derrike Cope the biggest upset in stock car racing history.
1992 — Italy’s Alberto Tomba wins the giant slalom in Albertville, France, to become the first Alpine skier to win the same event at two Winter Olympics.
1995 — Utah guard John Stockton becomes the first NBA player with 10,000 assists in a 108-98 victory over the Boston Celtics.
2001 — Dale Earnhardt, the greatest stock car star of his era, is killed in a crash on the last turn of the last lap of the Daytona 500 as he tries to protect Michael Waltrip’s victory.
2006 — Shani Davis becomes the first black athlete to win an individual gold medal in the Winter Olympics, capturing the 1,000-meter speedskating race. Joey Cheek makes it a 1-2 American finish, adding a silver to his victory in the 500 at the Turin Games.
2010 — Evan Lysacek becomes the first U.S. man to win the Olympic gold medal since Brian Boitano in 1988, shocking everyone with an upset of defending champion Evgeni Plushenko.
2012 — Shenneika Smith’s 3-pointer from the wing with 8 seconds left lifts St. John’s to a 57-56 win over No. 2 Connecticut, ending the Huskies’ 99-game home court winning streak. It’s the Huskies’ first home loss to an unranked opponent in nearly 19 years.
2013 — Brittney Griner scores 25 points, including the 3,000th of her career, to help No. 1 Baylor rally past third-ranked Connecticut 76-70.
2017 — Mikaela Shiffrin wins a third straight slalom title at the world championships to retain her unbeaten record at major events.
2022 – Johannes Thingnes Bø of Norway wins his 4th biathlon gold medal of the Beijing Winter Olympics when he takes out the men’s mass start
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Feb. 19
1928 — Canada wins the gold medal in ice hockey at the Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Canada, represented by the 1926 Toronto University team, receives a bye to the final round. The Canadians beat Sweden 11-0, Britain 14-0 and Switzerland 13-0.
1955 — Bernie Geoffrion of the Montreal Canadiens scores five goals in a 10-2 victory over the New York Rangers.
1977 — Rod Gilbert of the New York Rangers gets his 1,000th career point with a goal in a 5-2 loss to the New York Islanders.
1982 — Atlanta’s 127-122 four-overtime win over Seattle equals the fourth-longest game in NBA history and the second-longest since the institution of the 24-second clock.
1984 — Phil and Steve Mahre of the United States become the first brothers to finish 1-2 in an Olympic event, the men’s slalom, at the Winter Games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union beats Czechoslovakia 2-0 to win the gold medal in hockey.
1984 — Cale Yarborough sweeps into the lead two turns before the finish to win the Daytona 500. He becomes the second driver to win consecutive Daytona 500s; Richard Petty was the other.
1993 — Wendel Suckow edges two-time world champion Georg Hackl of Germany by 0.106 seconds to capture the first world luge championship medal of any kind for the United States.
1994 — Speedskater Bonnie Blair wins the fourth gold of her Olympic career with her third consecutive 500-meter victory.
2002 — In Salt Lake City, bobsledders Jill Bakken and Vonetta Flowers give the United States 21 medals in the Winter Games. Flowers becomes the first black athlete in history to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics.
2005 — Lindsay Kennedy becomes the first woman to play in a Major Indoor Soccer League game. Kennedy, a St. Louis forward, participates in the final 76 seconds of Milwaukee’s 7-3 win over the Steamers at Savvis Center.
2005 — Schreiner ends its NCAA-record losing streak at 83 games, beating Sul Ross State 75-69 in a women’s basketball game. It’s the Division III Mountaineers first win since Jan. 17, 2002, when they also beat Sul Ross.
2012 — American star Hannah Kearney’s all-discipline record for consecutive FIS World Cup victories ends at 16 with a semifinal loss in a dual moguls event at Naeba, Japan. Kearney’s streak began in Lake Placid, N.Y., on Jan. 22, 2011.
2012 — Steven Holcomb and brakeman Steve Langton win the two-man bobsled in Lake Placid, N.Y., the first time the U.S. captures this event at the world championships.
2014 — Norway wins the first Olympic mixed relay in biathlon at the Sochi Games and Ole Einar Bjoerndalen becomes the most decorated Winter Olympian ever with 13 medals. Ted Ligety wins the giant slalom with a dominating performance, becoming the first American man to win two Olympic gold medals in Alpine skiing.
2017 — Laura Dahlmeier wins the world title in the women’s 12.5-kilometer mass start, becoming the first to win five gold medals at a single biathlon world championship.
2017 — Anthony Davis scores 52 points, 10 more than Wilt Chamberlain’s All-Star record that had stood for 55 years. The Western Conference beats the Eastern Conference 192-182 in the highest-scoring game in league history.
2021 – In a softening of 4-year WADA ban on Russia from all international sport, Russia to compete under acronym “ROC” after name of the Russian Olympic Committee
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Feb. 20
1887 — The International Association, the first minor league baseball association, is organized in Pittsburgh.
1951 — The college point-shaving scandal prompts Long Island University to drop basketball and all other intercollegiate sports. LIU revives basketball in 1957.
1971 — En route to a record 76-goal season, Boston’s Phil Esposito becomes the first player to score his 50th goal in February, but the Bruins lose to the Los Angeles Kings 5-4.
1972 — Larry Brown of the Denver Rockets sets ABA records for assists in a game (23), half (18) and quarter (10) during a 146-123 home win over the Pittsburgh Condors.
1974 — Gordie Howe, the NHL’s career scoring leader, comes out of retirement and signs a $1 million, four-year contract to play with the Houston Aeros of the WHA and sons Mark and Marty.
1976 — Muhammad Ali beats Jean-Pierre Coopman with a fifth-round knockout at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum in Puerto Rico to defend his world heavyweight title.
1988 — In Calgary, Alberta, Brian Boitano of the U.S. wins the Olympic figure skating gold medal on a technical merit tiebreaker and nearly flawless free skate.
1993 — Julio Cesar Chavez records a fifth-round TKO over Greg Haugen in a WBC super lightweight title bout before a record crowd of 130,000 at Mexico City’s Aztec Stadium.
1998 — Tara Lipinski, 15, becomes the youngest Olympic figure skating champion, beating fellow teen and U.S. teammate Michelle Kwan to take the gold. Lipinski is two months younger than Sonja Henie was in her 1928 victory.
2006 — Tanith Belbin and partner Ben Agosto end the U.S. medals drought in Olympic ice dance competition with a silver. The last to do so were Colleen O’Connor and James Millns, who won bronze in 1976.
2009 — Lindsey Van of the U.S. becomes the first female ski jumping world champion. Women’s ski jumping makes its debut at this year’s Nordic world championships in the Czech Republic. Todd Lodwick wins the opening Nordic combined event to give the U.S. two golds in one day. Before Van’s victory, the U.S. had not won a gold at a Nordic worlds since 2003 when Johnny Spillane took a Nordic combined sprint.
2010 — Switzerland’s Simon Ammann wins the large hill at the Vancouver Games to become the first ski jumper with four individual Olympic titles.
2011 — Trevor Bayne, 20, wins the Daytona 500, NASCAR’s biggest race, in only his second Sprint Cup start.
2011 — Kobe Bryant wins his record-tying fourth All-Star game MVP award, scoring 37 points before his hometown fans and leading the West past the East 148-143.
2016 — Lindsey Vonn clinches a record 20th World Cup crystal globe title and surpasses Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark. It’s Vonn’s record eighth downhill title. Stenmark won 19 globes between 1975 and 1984.
2021 – Australian Open Women’s Tennis: Naomi Osaka of Japan wins her 4th major and second Australian title; beats American Jennifer Brady 6-4, 6-3
2022 – Hannah Green of Australia becomes first woman to win a mix-gender golf tournament over 72 holes; closes with 5-under 66 for a 4-stroke win in TPS Murray River on the PGA Tour of Australasia
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