Feb. 22
1919 — The first dog race track to use an imitation rabbit opens in Emeryville, Calif.
1936 — Figure skater Sonja Henie wins her 10th straight world championship.
1959 — Lee Petty, driving an Oldsmobile, wins the first Daytona 500.
1969 — Barbara Jo Rubin becomes the first female jockey to win a race at an American thoroughbred track. She rides Cohesian to a neck victory over Reely Beeg in the ninth race at Charles Town in West Virginia.
1975 — Madison Square Garden hosts its first women’s college basketball game. In a rematch of the 1973 national championship game, defending national champion Immaculata beats Queens College 65-31 before a crowd of 11,969.
1980 — The U.S. Olympic hockey team stuns the Soviet Union with a 4-3 victory in the medal round of the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y. Captain Mike Eruzione scores the winning goal midway through the final period.
1981 — Rookies Peter and Anton Stastny total eight points apiece, sending the Quebec Nordiques past the Washington Capitals 11-7. Peter has four goals and four assists; Aaron has three goals and five assists.
1988 — Hersey Hawkins scores 63 points to lead Bradley over Detroit 122-107. Archie Tullos scores 49 points for the Titans.
1988 — Bonnie Blair wins America’s second gold medal at the Winter Olympics in world-record time, beating Christa Rothenburger of East Germany by .02 seconds in the 500-meter speed skating.
1990 — Lionel Simmons scores 27 points to move into fourth place of the NCAA Division I scoring list at 3,024 and becomes the fifth player to score 3,000 points as the Explorers beat Manhattan 100-60.
1993 — Glenn Anderson becomes the 36th NHL player with 1,000 points, picking up a goal and two assists to help the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Vancouver Canucks 8-1.
1998 — Bjorn Dahlie, the Norwegian cross-country skiing great, extends his Winter Olympics record by picking up his 12th medal, and record eighth gold, in the last race of Nagano — the 50-kilometer.
2006 — Gene Bess becomes the first college basketball coach to win 1,000 games when Three Rivers Community College beat Forest Park 77-60.
2008 — Lindsey Vonn clinches the World Cup downhill title, becoming the first American woman to claim the crown since Picabo Street in 1996. Nadia Styger of Switzerland wins the race at Whistler, British Columbia with Vonn finishing 0.01 behind Styger.
2008 — The Indy Racing League and the Champ Car World Series sign a deal to unify the two American open-wheel circuits, bringing them under the umbrella of the IRL.
2010 — Caltech ends its 310-game conference losing streak in men’s basketball beating Occidental College 46-45 in its season finale.
2013 — The Chicago Blackhawks sets an NHL record for the best start to a season, beating the San Jose Sharks 2-1 to give them at least one point in their first 17 games.
2016 — Tennessee’s 31-year run in the AP’s women’s college basketball rankings ends. The Lady Vols had been ranked for 565 consecutive weeks. The streak started Feb. 17, 1985.
Feb. 23
1935 — George “The Iceman” Woolf makes history, riding Azucar to victory in the inaugural Santa Anita Handicap. Azucar beatS such greats as Equipoise and Twenty Grand in the first $100,000 horse race.
1938 — Joe Louis knocks out Nathan Mann in the third round to defend his world heavyweight title at Madison Square Garden in New York.
1960 — Carol Heiss captures the first gold medal for the United States in the Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley, Calif., winning the figure skating event.
1968 — Wilt Chamberlain becomes first player to score 25,000 points in the NBA.
1980 — Eric Heiden wins his fifth gold medal and shatters the world record by six seconds in 10,000-meter speed skating at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y. His time is 14:28.13.
1985 — Indiana coach Bob Knight is ejected five minutes into the Hoosiers’ 72-63 loss to Purdue when he throws a chair across the court. Knight, after two fouls called on his team, is hit with his first technical. While Purdue was shooting the technical, Knight picks up a chair from the bench area and throws it across the court, earning his second technical.
1987 — Seattle’s Nate McMillan sets an NBA rookie record with 25 assists to lead the SuperSonics over the Los Angeles Clippers 124-112.
1991 — North Carolina becomes the first team in NCAA basketball history to win 1,500 games with a 73-57 victory over Clemson.
2002 — The Americans end nearly a half-century of Olympic frustration for the U.S. men’s bobsled team, driving to the silver and bronze medals in the four-man race at the Salt Lake Olympic Games.
2007 — Tiger Woods’ winning streak on the PGA Tour, which began in July, comes to a shocking end. Woods fails to notice a ball mark in the line of his 4-foot birdie putt that would have won his third-round match against Nick O’Hern. Woods misses, then loses in 20 holes when O’Hern saves par with a 12-foot putt at the Accenture Match Play Championship.
2013 — Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche makes history just by stepping into the UFC cage. Rousey wins the UFC’s first women’s bout, beating Carmouche on an armbar, her signature move, with 11 seconds left in the first round of their bantamweight title fight at UFC 157.
2014 — Canada defends its Olympic men’s hockey title with a 3-0 victory over Sweden. Canada becomes the only repeat Olympic champ in the NHL era and the first team to go unbeaten through the Olympic tournament since the Soviet Union in Sarajevo in 1984.
2014 — Russia, the host country of the Winter Olympics, finishes with 33 medals overall and 13 gold. It’s the first time Russia topped both medals tables since the breakup of the Soviet Union. The U.S. wins 28 total, including nine gold.
2014 — Jason Collins becomes the first openly gay athlete in the United States four major pro leagues, playing 10 scoreless minutes with two rebounds and five fouls in the New Jersey’s 108-102 victory of the Los Angeles Lakers.
2014 — Dale Earnhardt Jr. wins a rain-delayed Daytona 500, a decade after his first victory in the “Great American Race.” Earnhardt snaps a 55-race winless stretch that dated to 2012. It also ends a frustrating sequence at Daytona International Speedway that had seen him finish second in three of the previous four 500s.
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Feb. 24
1960 — Bill Cleary’s four goals lead the United States to a 9-1 victory over West Germany in the hockey championship round of the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, Calif.
1967 — Wilt Chamberlain of Philadelphia shoots 18-for-18 from the field against the Baltimore Bullets, an NBA record for field goals in a game without a miss.
1978 — Kevin Porter of the New Jersey Nets sets an NBA record with 29 assists in a 126-112 victory over the Houston Rockets.
1980 — The United States hockey team wins the gold medal with a 4-2 victory over Finland at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y.
1985 — Jim Kelly of the Houston Gamblers passes for a USFL-record 574 yards and five touchdowns in a 34-33 comeback-win over the Los Angeles Express. Kelly completes 35 of 54 passes, including three for touchdowns in the final 10 minutes.
1988 — An unprecedented winner of the 90-and 70-meter individual events, Matti Nykanen becomes the Winter Olympics’ first triple gold medalist in Nordic skiing when Finland wins the new 90-meter team ski jumping event.
1993 — Steve Yzerman of the Detroit Red Wings scores his 1,000th career point with two goals and two assists in a 10-7 loss to Buffalo Sabres.
1994 — Lipscomb’s John Pierce becomes college basketball’s career scoring leader with 33 points in his regular-season finale, a 119-102 win over Cumberland. Pierce’s 4,110 points break former roommate Phil Hutcheson’s record of 4,106.
2002 — Svetlana Feofanova breaks the pole vault indoor world record for the fourth time this month, clearing 15 feet, 6 1/2 inches at the Gaz de France meet.
2002 — Canada beats the United States 5-2 for the gold medal in men’s hockey at the Winter Olympics. It’s the seventh time Canada has won the gold in its national sport, but the first since 1952.
2006 — Julia Mancuso earns a stunning victory in the giant slalom to salvage a disappointing Olympics for the U.S. women in their final Alpine event of the Turin Games. Mancuso gives the American women their first Olympic Alpine medal since Picabo Street’s gold in the super-G at the 1998 Nagano Games.
2012 — Missy Parkin becomes the first woman to reach the match play finals in the 69th U.S Open at Brunswick Zone-Carolier. Shafer, a 25-year Professional Bowlers Association Tour veteran, completes the 26-game qualifying portion of the U.S. Open with a total of 5,825 pins - averaging at a 224.04 pace.
2018 — Ester Ledecka wins the second leg of an unheard-of Olympic double, taking the gold medal in snowboarding’s parallel giant slalom to go with her surprise skiing victory in the Alpine super-G earlier in the games. The Czech star is the first to win gold medals in both sports.
2018 — The United States wins the Olympic gold medal in men’s curling in a decisive upset of Sweden. John Shuster skips the United States to a 10-7 victory for only the second curling medal in U.S. history.
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