Aug. 19

1909 — The first race is held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Twelve-thousand spectators watch Austrian engineer Louis Schwitzer win a five-mile race with an average speed of 57.4 miles per hour. The tracks surface of crushed rock and tar breaks up in a number of places and causes the deaths of two drivers, two mechanics and two spectators.

1921 — Detroit’s Ty Cobb gets his 3,000th career hit at age 34, the youngest player to reach that plateau.

1934 — Helen Hull Jacobs wins the women’s title in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championships.

1951 — Eddie Gaedel, a 65-pound, 3-foot-7 midget, makes his first and only plate appearance as a pinch-hitter for Frank Saucier of the St. Louis Browns. Gaedel, wearing No. 1/8, walks on four pitches by Detroit Tigers pitcher Bob Cain and is taken out for pinch-runner Jim Delsing. The gimmick by Browns owner Bill Veeck was completely legal, but later outlawed.

1981 — Renaldo Nehemiah sets the world record in the 110 hurdles with a time of 12.93 seconds in a meet at Zurich, Switzerland.

1984 — Lee Trevino beats Gary Player and Lanny Wadkins by four strokes to take the PGA championship.

1993 — Sergei Bubka wins his fourth consecutive pole vault title at the World Track and Field championships at Stuttgart, Germany.

1995 — Mike Tyson starts his comeback, knocking out Peter McNeeley in 89 seconds at Las Vegas. McNeeley’s manager Vinnie Vecchione jumps into the ring to stop the fight after his boxer is knocked down twice in the first round.

2001 — Michael Schumacher gets his fourth Formula One championship and matches Alain Prost’s series record of 51 victories by winning the Hungarian Grand Prix.

2007 — Top-ranked Roger Federer reaches another measure of tennis greatness, winning his 50th tournament title by beating James Blake 6-1, 6-4 in the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters. The 26-year-old Swiss star is the fifth-youngest player in history to reach 50, and only the ninth overall in the Open Era — since 1968 — to win so many tournaments.

2014 — NBA referee Dick Bavetta announces his retirement after a 39-year career in which he never missed an assignment. Bavetta officiated a record 2,635 consecutive regular-season games after starting his NBA career on Dec. 2, 1975. He also worked 270 playoff games, including 27 in the NBA Finals.

2016 — Usain Bolt scores another sweep, winning three gold medals in his third consecutive Olympics. At the Rio de Janeiro Games, Bolt turns a close 4x100 relay race against Japan and the United States into a typical, Bolt-like runaway, helping Jamaica cross the line in 37.27 seconds. Allyson Felix wins an unprecedented fifth gold medal in women’s track and field, running the second leg of the 4x100-meter relay team.

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