Aug. 16

1920 — Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman is hit in the head with a pitch by New York’s Carl Mays. Chapman suffers a fractured skull and dies the next day. It’s the only field fatality in major league history.

1924 — Helen Wills Moody beats Molla Bjurstedt Mallory again, 6-1, 6-3, to win her second straight singles title at the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championships.

1954 — The first Sports Illustrated magazine is issued with a 25-cent price tag. The scene on the cover was a game at Milwaukee’s County Stadium. Eddie Mathews of Braves was swinging with Wes Westrum catching and Augie Donatelli umpiring.

1970 — Dave Stockton wins the PGA Championship by two strokes over Arnold Palmer and Bob Murphy at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla.

1976 — Dave Stockton edges Raymond Floyd and Don January by one stroke to win his second PGA Championship. Stockton hits a par-saving 15-foot putt on the 72nd hole to finish with a 1-over 281 at Congressional Country Club (Blue Course) in Bethesda, Md.

1989 — Tom Drees pitches his third no-hitter of the season for Class AAA Vancouver, leading the Canadians over Las Vegas 5-0 in a seven-inning, first game of a doubleheader in the Pacific Coast League. Drees became the first pitcher in the PCL or the major leagues with three no-hitters in a year.

1992 — Nick Price holds off a comeback bid by Nick Faldo with a 1-under 70 in the final round and captures his first major title with a three-stroke victory in the PGA national championship.

1995 — Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie shatters Kenya’s Moses Kiptanui’s record in the 5,000 by nearly 11 seconds with a time of 12 minutes, 44.39 seconds at the Weltklasse meet in Zurich, Switzerland.

1998 — Jeff Gordon drives into the record book, becoming the seventh driver in modern NASCAR history to win four straight races as he comes from far back to take the Pepsi 400.

2008 — In Beijing, Michael Phelps touches the wall a hundredth of a second ahead of Serbia’s Milorad Cavic to win the 100-meter butterfly. The win gives Phelps his seventh gold medal of the Beijing Games, tying Mark Spitz’s performance in the 1972 Munich Games. Usain Bolt of Jamaica runs the 100-meter dash in a stunning world-record time of 9.69 seconds for a blowout win that he starts celebrating a good 10 strides before the finish line.

2009 — Usain Bolt shatters the 100-meter world record at the World Championships in Berlin. Bolt finishes with a stunning time of 9.58 seconds, bettering his own record of 9.69 seconds set in last year’s Beijing Olympics.

2009 — Y.E. Yang of South Korea becomes the first Asian player to win one of golf’s majors with a three-stroke win over Tiger Woods at the PGA Championship.

2015 — Jason Day leads wire-to-wire in the final round at Whistling Straits to close out a record-setting PGA Championship and capture his first major title. The 27-year-old Australian finishes at 20-under 268 to beat Jordan Spieth by three shots. Day becomes the first player to finish at 20 under in a major.

2015 — Brooke Henderson wins the Cambia Portland Classic by eight strokes to become the third-youngest champion in LPGA Tour history at 17 years, 11 months, 6 days.

2018 — The Davis Cup gets a radical makeover beginning in 2019. The top team event in men’s tennis will be decided with a season-ending, 18-team tournament at a neutral site.

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Aug. 17

1933 — Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees plays his 1,308th straight game to break Everett Scott’s record of 1,307.

1938 — Henry Armstrong wins the lightweight title with a 15-round decision over Lou Ambers and becomes the only boxer to hold world championship titles in three weight divisions simultaneously. Armstrong won the featherweight (126-pound) title by knocking out Petey Sarron in six rounds on Oct. 29, 1937. On May 31, 1938, he won the welterweight (147-pound) championship from Barney Ross by a decision.

1960 — Flash Elorde knocks out Harold Gomes at 1:20 in the first round to win the world junior lightweight title.

1969 — Ray Floyd beats Gary Player by one stroke to win the PGA championship.

1995 — John Roethlisberger wins the U.S. National Gymnastics Championships’ all-around title in New Orleans, becoming the first gymnast in 28 years to win four titles.

1997 — Davis Love III shoots a 66 at Winged Foot to win the PGA Championship in Mamaroneck, N.Y., his first major title, by five strokes over Justin Leonard with a 72-hole total of 11-under 269.

2001 — Shingo Katayama shoots a 6-under 64, and David Toms shoots a 65 to share the second-round lead in the PGA Championship. Katayama and Toms at 9-under 131, tie the PGA record for 36 holes last set by Ernie Els at Riviera in 1995.

2005 — The NCAA purchases the rights to the preseason and postseason National Invitation Tournaments as part of a settlement ending a four-year legal fight between the two parties. The 40-team postseason NIT, which is a year older and was once the bigger event, will be run by the NCAA.

2008 — At the Summer Olympics in Beijing, Michael Phelps and three teammates win the 400-meter medley relay for Phelps’ eighth gold medal, eclipsing Mark Spitz’s seven-gold performance at the 1972 Munich Games. Of his five individual races and three relays, Phelps sets world records in seven and an Olympic record in the eighth.

2008 — Jesus Sauceda of Matamoros, Mexico, pitches the fifth perfect game in Little League World Series history and the first in 29 years for a 12-0 win over Emilia, Italy. Sauceda also stars at the plate, going 3-for-3 with six RBIs, including a grand slam in the third.

2013 — Nick Davilla throws six touchdown passes and the Arizona Rattlers defeat the Philadelphia Soul 48-39 in the Arena Bowl. The Rattlers win the championship for the second straight year, beating the Soul in both championship games.

2014 — Inbee Park successfully defends her title in the LPGA Championship, beating Brittany Lincicome with a par on the first hole of a playoff to end the United States’ major streak at three.

2014 — The Phoenix Mercury sets a WNBA record with their 29th win, beating the Seattle Storm 78-65 in the season finale. Phoenix (29-5) tops the previous mark set by Los Angeles (28-4 in both 2000 and 2001) and Seattle (28-6 in 2010).

2015 — The National Labor Relations Board dismisses a historic ruling that Northwestern University football players are school employees who are entitled to form what would be the nation’s first union of college athletes.

2016 — Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson completes the first 100-200 women’s Olympic double since 1988. Thompson wins the 200 in 21.78 seconds to become the first woman since Marion Jones in 2000 to win both Olympic sprints. Jones’ records have since been stripped, so Thompson goes in the record book along with Florence Griffith-Joyner, who starred in the 1988 Seoul Games.

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Aug. 18

1923 — Helen Mills, 17, ends Molla Bjurstedt Mallory’s domination of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championships and starts her own with a 6-2, 6-1 victory.

1958 — Floyd Patterson knocks out Roy Harris in the 13th round at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles to retain his world heavyweight title.

1964 — The International Olympic Committee bans South Africa from competing in the Summer Olympics because of its apartheid policies.

1994 — South Africa is introduced for the first time in 36 years during the opening ceremonies of the 15th Commonwealth Games held in Victoria, British Columbia. South Africa had been banned from the Games since 1958 because of its apartheid policies.

1995 — Thirteen-year-old Dominique Moceanu becomes the youngest to win the National Gymnastics Championships senior women’s all-around title in New Orleans.

2000 — Tiger Woods ties the 36-hole scoring record in the PGA Championship with a 5-under 67 to take a one-stroke lead over unheralded Scott Dunlap. Woods, at 11-under 133, ties the mark for relation to par last set by Mark O’Meara and Ernie Els in 1995.

2004 — Paul Hamm wins the men’s gymnastics all-around Olympic gold medal by the closest margin ever in the event. Controversy follows after it was discovered a scoring error that may have cost Yang Tae-young of South Korea the men’s all-around title. Yang, who finished with a bronze, is wrongly docked a tenth of a point on his second-to-last routine, the parallel bars. He finishes third, 0.049 points behind Hamm, who becomes the first American man to win gymnastics’ biggest prize.

2008 — A day after winning an Olympic gold medal in Beijing, Rafael Nadal officially unseats Roger Federer to become the world’s No. 1 tennis player when the ATP rankings are released. Federer had been atop the rankings for 235 weeks.

2013 — For the first time in Solheim Cup history, the Europeans leaves America with the trophy. Caroline Hedwall becomes the first player in the 23-year history of the event to win all five matches. She finishes with a 1-up victory over Michelle Wie and gives Europe the 14 points it needed to retain the cup.

2013 — Usain Bolt is perfect again with three gold medals. The Jamaican great becomes the most successful athlete in the 30-year history of the world championships. The 4x100-meter relay gold erases the memories of the 100 title he missed out on in South Korea two years ago because of a false start. Bolt, who already won the 100 and 200 meters, gets his second such sprint triple at the world championships, matching the two he achieved at the Olympics. With his victory, Bolt moves to the top of the all-time world championships medals table with eight gold and two silver, edging Carl Lewis, who had eight gold, one silver and one bronze.

2016 — Jamaica’s Usain Bolt completes an unprecedented third consecutive sweep of the 100- and 200-meter sprints, elevating his status as the most decorated male sprinter in Olympic history. He wins the 200-meter race with a time of 19.78 seconds to defeat Andre de Grasse of Canada. He already claimed gold in the 100 in Rio. American Ashton Eaton defends his Olympic decathlon title, equaling the games record with a surge on the last lap of the 1,500 meters — the last event in the two-day competition.

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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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