Los Angeles Dodger Al Downing was the pitcher who watched as the ball flew over the left-field fence of Atlanta Stadium on April 8, 1974.
Atlanta Brave Henry Louis Aaron had broken the long-standing record for career home runs set by Babe Ruth in the 1930s.
The frontier sport of gouging, imported from England, flourished in the Ohio River Valley around 1800. The object was to gouge out the opponent’s eye with a thumbnail. To compete effectively, you would have needed to let your thumbnail grow extra-long.
The first known gladiatorial contest took place in Rome in 264 B.C. It featured three pairs of armed fighters. Later contests featured hundreds or even thousands of pairs of duelists.
Jack Dempsey was punched through the ropes by a first-round right from Luis Firpo on September 4, 1923, at the Polo Grounds in New York City. The punch did not end the fight: Dempsey came back to win by a knockout in the second round.
There are six ways a batter can reach first base without hitting the ball. A walk; being hit by a pitch; a dropped third strike; catcher’s interference; a pitched or thrown ball intended to catch a runner that “goes into a stand or a bench, or over or through a field fence or backstop” (rule…
The football conference that became the Big Ten, or the Western Conference, was formed in 1896 by the Universities of Chicago, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, along with Northwestern and Purdue universities. Iowa and Indiana joined in 1899 and Ohio State in 1912. The University of Chicago dropped out in 1946 after terminating its football…
More lethal than any soccer riot was the collapse of the grandstands of the Hong Kong Jockey Club on February 26, 1916. In all, 606 racetrack spectators died; hundreds more were injured, making it the worst sports disaster in history.