Aug. 6
1926 - Nineteen-year-old Gertrude Ederle of New York City becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel as she crosses the waterway in 14 hours and 31 minutes.
1958 - Glen Davis of Columbus, Ohio, sets a world record in the 400 hurdles with a time of 49.2 in a meet at Budapest, Hungary.
1966 - Muhammad Ali knocks out Brian London in the third round to retain his world heavyweight title.
1972 - South African Gary Player wins his second PGA golf championship with a two-stroke victory over Jim Jamieson and Tommy Aaron.
1978 - John Mahaffey beats Tom Watson and Jerry Pate on the second hole of the sudden death playoff to win the PGA Championship.
1979 - Australian David Graham rebounds from a double-bogey on the final hole in regulation to beat Ben Crenshaw on the third hole of a playoff.
1991 - Debbie Doom of the United States pitches her second consecutive perfect game in women’s softball at the Pan American Games. Doom threw a perfect game at the Netherlands Antilles in the opener of the competition and matches that performance against Nicaragua, winning 8-0.
1992 - Carl Lewis leads a U.S. sweep in the long jump in the Olympics with a mark of 28 feet, 5 1-2 inches on his first attempt. Mike Powell takes the silver and Joe Greene the bronze. Bruce Baumgartner becomes the first American wrestler to win medals in three straight Olympics, taking the gold in the 286-pound freestyle division.
1994 - Jeff Gordon wins the Brickyard 400, the first stock car race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
1995 - Canada’s Donovan Bailey wins the 100 meters at world track and field championships in Goteborg, Sweden, marking the first time since 1976 an American fails to win a medal in the event at a major meet.
1999 - Tony Gwynn goes 4-for-5, singling in his first at-bat to become the 22nd major leaguer to reach 3,000 hits, as the San Diego Padres beat the Montreal Expos 12-10.
2006 - Sherri Steinhauer wins the Women’s British Open for the third time, and the first since it became a major. Steinhauer finishes at 7-under 281 at Royal Lytham for her second major title.
2008 - Kim Terrell-Kearney wins the first professional championship match featuring two black bowlers, beating Trisha Reid 216-189 in the U.S. Bowling Congress’ U.S. Women’s Open. Terrell-Kearney collects her second U.S. Women’s Open title and third career major title.
2010 - Tyson Gay upsets the defending world and Olympic champion Usain Bolt in a race between the two fastest runners in history. Gay beats the Jamaican at the DN Galan meet in 9.84 seconds at the same stadium where Bolt last lost a race two years ago. Bolt finishes second in 9.97.
2015 - Ryan Lochte becomes the first man to win the 200-meter individual medley four consecutive times at the world swimming championships.
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Aug. 7
1907 - Walter Johnson wins the first of his 417 victories leading the Washington Senators to a 7-2 victory over the Cleveland Indians.
1952 - 74-year-old Bion Shively drives Sharp Note to victory in the third heat of the Hambletonian Stakes.
1982 - Speed Bowl wins the Hambletonian Stakes in straight heats with 25-year-old Tom Haughton in the sulky, the youngest to win the Hambletonian.
1983 - Hal Sutton overcomes three straight bogeys and edges Jack Nicklaus by one stroke to win the PGA championship.
1983 - Norway’s Grete Waitz takes the women’s marathon in the first world track and field championships at Helsinki, Finland.
1992 - Sergei Bubka, the world record-holder and defending Olympic champion, fails to clear a height in the pole vault.
1994 - Carolyn Hill captures her first title in 14 years on the LPGA Tour. Hills shoots a final-round 69 for 275 that gave her a three-stroke victory over Nancy Ramsbottom in the McCall’s LPGA Classic. Hill, who tied the tournament record of 13-under-par, had made a tour-record 359 starts before tasting victory.
1999 - Wade Boggs becomes the first player to homer for his 3,000th hit, connecting in rare style with a two-run shot in Tampa Bay’s 15-10 loss to Cleveland.
2004 - Greg Maddux becomes the 22nd pitcher in major league history to reach 300 victories, leading the Chicago Cubs to an 8-4 victory over San Francisco.
2007 - San Francisco’s Barry Bonds hits home run No. 756 to break Hank Aaron’s storied record. Noticeably absent are commissioner Bud Selig and Aaron.
2012 - Aly Raisman becomes the first U.S. woman to win Olympic gold on floor, and she picks up a bronze on balance beam on the final day of the gymnastics competition at the London Olympics. She just misses a medal in the all-around, finishing with the same score as Russia’s Aliya Mustafina but drops to fourth on a tiebreak.
2016 - Jim Furyk becomes the first golfer to shoot a 58 in PGA Tour history. Three years after Furyk became the sixth player on tour with a 59, he takes it even lower in the Travelers Championship with a 12-under 58 in the final round. Furyk finishes tied for fifth at 11 under, three strokes behind winner Russell Knox.
2016 - Ichiro Suzuki triples off the wall for his 3,000th hit in the major leagues, becoming the 30th player to reach the milestone as the Miami Marlins beat the Colorado Rockies 10-7.
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Aug. 8
1902 - The United States, led by William Larned, beats Britain three matches to two to capture the Davis Cup.
1903 - Britain wins the Davis Cup by beating the United States 4-1.
1936 - At the Berlin Olympics, the United States finishes 1-2-3 in the men’s decathlon. Glenn Morris sets a world record with 7,900 points, followed by Robert Clark and Jack Parker.
1945 - Harry Pownall drives Titan Hanover to a two-heat sweep to win the 20th Hambletonian Stakes.
1981 - Shiaway St. Pat, driven by Ray Remmen, wins the first Hambletonian Stakes run at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N.J. in four heats.
1982 - Ray Floyd, who shot a record 63 in the opening round, wins the PGA championship by three shots over Lanny Wadkins.
1984 - Carl Lewis sets the Olympic record in the 200 meters with a 19.80 clocking.
1987 - Mack Lobell, driven by John Campbell, wins the Hambletonian in straight heats with a record-smashing performance. Mack Lobell wins the second heat, and the race, by 6¼ lengths over Napoletano in 1:53 3-5, a fifth of a second off the world all-age trotting record set by Prakas in 1985.
1992 - The Dream Team picks up its gold medal and Carl Lewis anchors a world-record 400-meter relay, winning his eighth gold medal in three Olympics. The U.S. basketball team beats Croatia 117-85, with the 32-point margin of victory the smallest of the Games. In the 400, Mike Marsh, Leroy Burrell, Dennis Mitchell and Lewis set a world record of 37.40 seconds. Steve Lewis anchors another world-record as the Americans won the 1,600 relay by nearly half the length of a football field. The team of Andrew Valmon, Quincy Watts, Michael Johnson and Lewis ran the 1,600 in 2:55.74.
2001 - Damion Easley goes 6-for-6 with a home run and three RBIs as Detroit routs Texas 19-6. The Tigers tie a modern major league record by scoring 13 runs in the ninth inning.
2006 - Roger Goodell is chosen as the NFL’s next commissioner. Favored for months to get the job, he is unanimously elected by the league’s 32 owners on the fifth ballot.
2010 - Los Angeles Sparks forward Tina Thompson scores 23 points to become the WNBA’s all-time scoring leader in a 92-83 loss to the San Antonio Silver Stars. She surpasses Lisa Leslie’s career total of 6,263 points. Thompson is the last of the original WNBA players.
2012 - Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings of the United States become the first three-time gold medalists in Olympic beach volleyball history. The duo beat Jennifer Kessy and April Ross 21-16, 21-16 in the all-American final, extending their Olympic winning streak to 21 matches.
2012 - Brittney Reese wins the long jump, becoming the first U.S. woman to win the Olympic long jump since Jackie Joyner-Kersee in 1988. Caster Semenya makes her Olympic debut three years after being forced to undergo gender tests, finishing second in her 800 heat.
2015 - Katie Ledecky ends her world swimming championships in spectacular style, lowering her own world record by 3.61 seconds in the 800-meter freestyle for her fifth gold medal. The 18-year-old American completes a sweep of the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 freestyles in Kazan, Russia. She was the anchor leg on the victorious 4x200 free relay, too.
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