1908 — Tommy Burns knocks out Jewey Smith in the fifth round in Paris to retain the world heavyweight title.
1959 — The Montreal Canadiens win their fourth consecutive Stanley Cup with a 5-3 victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs in the fifth game.
1962 — Boston’s Bill Russell scores 30 points and grabs 40 rebounds to lead the Celtics to a 110-107 overtime win over the Los Angeles Lakers and their fourth consecutive NBA title.
1966 — Bill Russell is named the coach of the Boston Celtics to become the first African American head coach of an NBA team.
1967 — Rick Barry scores 55 points as the San Francisco Warriors beat Philadelphia, 130-124, in Game 3 of the NBA Finals.
1987 — Philadelphia’s Mike Schmidt hits his 500th home run with two outs in the ninth to rally the Phillies to an 8-6 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates at Three Rivers Stadium.
1988 — Ibrahim Hussein of Kenya battles past Juma Ikangaa of Tanzania in the final 100 yards to win the Boston Marathon by 1 second, the closest ever.
1991 — John Stockton breaks his own NBA single-season assist record as the Utah Jazz rout the Seattle SuperSonics 130-103. Stockton’s 11 assists give him 1,136 for the season, two more than the record he set last season.
1994 — West Indian batsman Brian Lara completes a world record single-innings cricket score of 375, beating the 365 hit by countryman Sir Gary Sobers 36 years ago.
1996 — Dennis Scott makes an NBA-record 11 3-pointers to lead the Orlando Magic to a 119-104 victory over the Atlanta Hawks. Scott, who hit 11 of 17 3s, finishes with 35 points.
1999 — Wayne Gretzky ends his NHL career at Madison Square Garden with an assist, setting up a second-period goal as his New York Rangers fall to Pittsburgh 2-1 in overtime. Before the game, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announces the league is retiring No. 99 in honor of “The Great One.”
2001 — A.C. Green plays in his 1,192 consecutive game, which remains the NBA record. His streak began on November 19, 1986.
2005 — Defending champion Catherine Ndereba of Kenya becomes the first woman to win a fourth Boston Marathon and Ethiopia’s Hailu Negussie wins the men’s race to break the Kenyan stranglehold on the world’s oldest annual marathon.
2006 — New Jersey closes out the season with its 11th straight victory, defeating Montreal 4-3 to win the Atlantic Division title. The Devils, who trailed division-leading Philadelphia by 19 points on Jan. 6, registers the biggest comeback to claim a division title since the league divided into two conferences with the 1974-75 expansion.
2007 — Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox faces the minimum 27 batters in a 6-0 no-hit victory over the Texas Rangers. Buehrle walks Sammy Sosa with one out in the fifth, then promptly picks him off first base.
2010 — Brian Davis calls a two-stroke penalty on himself on the first playoff hole to give Jim Furyk a victory at the Verizon Heritage.
2010 — Rafael Nadal defeats Fernando Verdasco 6-0, 6-1 in an all-Spanish final to win the Monte Carlo Masters for the sixth straight year. Nadal becomes the only player to win six consecutive titles in the same tournament since tennis turned professional in 1968.
2011 — Kenya’s Geoffrey Mutai winsthe Boston Marathon in 2:03:02, the fastest anyone had ever run the 26.2 mile distance. Fellow Kenyan Caroline Kilel wins the women’s race, outsprinting American Desiree Davila to win by two seconds, in 2:22:36.
2012 — With Pittsburgh on the brink of being swept, Jordan Staal scores a hat trick to lead the Penguins to a 10-3 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers in the first-round Eastern Conference series. The Penguins become the first team to score at least 10 goals in a playoff game since Los Angeles had 12 against Calgary in April 1990.
2014 — Memphis Grizzlies point guard Nick Calathes is suspended for 20 games for violating the NBA’s anti-drug policy. Calathes tested positive for tamoxifen.
