Feb. 17
1923 - Cy Denneny of the Ottawa Senators becomes the NHL’s career scoring leader. He scores his 143rd goal to surpass Joe Malone in a 2-0 win over the Montreal Canadiens.
1924 - Johnny Weissmuller sets a world record in the 100-yard freestyle swim with a time of 52.4 seconds.
1926 - Suzanne Lenglen beats Helen Wills 6-3, 8-6 in Cannes, France, in their only tennis match against each other.
1928 - Sweden’s Gillis Grafstrom successfully defends his 1920 and 1924 Olympic figure skating title, with Austrian Willy Bockl finishing in second place as he did four years earlier.
1941 - Joe Louis knocks out Gus Dorazio in the second round in Philadelphia to defend his world heavyweight title.
1955 - Mike Souchak establishes the PGA 72-hole scoring record with a 257 at the Texas Open. Souchak starts with a record-tying 60 at San Antonio’s Brackenridge Park course and ends with a 27-under-par, beating the previous low for a 72-hole event by two shots.
1968 - The Basketball Hall of Fame opens in Springfield, Mass.
1974 - Richard Petty wins his second straight Daytona 500. It’s the fifth Daytona 500 title for Petty, who also won in 1964, 1966, 1971 and 1973.
1992 - Raisa Smetanina wins a gold medal with the Unified Team in the 20-kilometer cross-country relay to set the career Winter Olympics medal record with 10. Smetanina, 39, also becomes the oldest champion and the first to win a medal in five straight Winter Games.
1994 - San Antonio’s David Robinson records the fourth quadruple-double in NBA history with 34 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists and 10 blocks in the Spurs’ 115-96 win over Detroit.
1998 - The U.S. women’s hockey team wins the sport’s first Olympic gold medal. Sandra Whyte scores on an empty-netter with 8 seconds left to give the United States a 3-1 victory over Canada.
2010 - Americans Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso finish 1-2 in the downhill at the Vancouver Olympics. It’s the first time since 1984 that the U.S won gold and silver in a women’s Alpine event.
2013 - Danica Patrick wins the Daytona 500 pole, becoming the first woman to secure the top spot for any Sprint Cup race.
2014 - Meryl Davis and Charlie White win the gold medal in ice dance, the first Olympic title in the event for the U.S..
2018 - Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu becomes the first man to successfully defend his Olympic figure skating title since Dick Button in 1952.
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Feb. 18
1928 - At Moritz, Switzerland, Sonja Henie becomes the youngest Olympic figure skating champion. At 15 years and 315 days, easily beats Austria’s Fritzi Burger and American Beatrix Loughran.
1932 - Sonja Henie wins her sixth straight World Figure Skating title.
1944 - One day after playing in a high school basketball game, 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall signs with the Cincinnati Reds.
1951 - Manhattan District Attorney Frank S. Hogan orders the arrest of three CCNY basketball players on bribery charges, and two professional gamblers and two intermediaries in a game-fixing scandal that involves college teams across the country.
1973 - Richard Petty wins his fourth Daytona 500. Petty gets two breaks when Cale Yarborough blows his engine on the 153rd lap and Baker blows his engine with 15 miles to go.
1978 - Fifteen competitors, including founder U.S. Naval Commander John Collins, travel to Waikiki to take on the first Hawaiian Iron Man Triathlon. The triathlon of a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike race and a 26.2-miles marathon is won by Gordon Haller in 11 hours and 46 minutes.
1986 - San Antonio’s Alvin Robertson records the second quadruple-double in NBA history, with 20 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists and 10 steals in the Spurs’ 120-114 win over Phoenix.
1990 - Dale Earnhardt blows a tire with one mile remaining in the Daytona 500, giving unheralded Derrike Cope the biggest upset in stock car racing history.
1994 - After numerous Olympic set backs, American speedskater Dan Jansen breaks his jinx by winning the gold in the 1000-meter race at the Lillehammer Winter Games.
1995 - Utah guard John Stockton becomes the first NBA player with 10,000 assists in a 108-98 victory over the Boston Celtics.
2001 - Dale Earnhardt, the greatest stock car star of his era, is killed in a crash on the last turn of the last lap of the Daytona 500 as he tries to protect Michael Waltrip’s victory.
2006 - Shani Davis becomes the first black athlete to win an individual gold medal in Winter Olympic history, capturing the men’s 1,000-meter speedskating race. Joey Cheek makes it a 1-2 American finish at the Turin Games.
2010 - Figure skater Evan Lysacek becomes the first U.S. man to win the Olympic gold medal since Brian Boitano in 1988, shocking everyone with an upset of defending champion Evgeni Plushenko.
2012 - Shenneika Smith’s 3-pointer from the wing with 8 seconds left lifts St. John’s to a 57-56 win over No. 2 Connecticut, snapping the Huskies’ 99-game home court winning streak. It’s the Huskies’ first home loss to an unranked opponent in nearly 19 years.
2013 - Brittney Griner scores 25 points, including the 3,000th of her career, to help No. 1 Baylor rally past third-ranked Connecticut 76-70. Griner is the eighth player in Division I history to reach the milestone.
2017 - Mikaela Shiffrin wins a third straight slalom title at the ski world championships to retain her unbeaten record at major events. The 21-year-old American beats home crowd favorite, Wendy Holdener of Switzerland. Shiffrin’s gold medal streak in slalom includes each world championships she entered, starting in 2013, and the 2014 Olympics. Her victory gives the United States its first world title at St. Moritz in the 10th of 11 medal events.
2018 - LeBron James scores 29 points and hits the go-ahead layup with 34.5 seconds to play, winning his third All-Star Game MVP award while his hand-picked team rallies to win an uncommonly entertaining showcase, beating Team Stephen 148-145. For the first time in All-Star Game history, the league abandons the traditional East-West format used since 1951 and allows team captains James and Stephen Curry to choose their own rosters.
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Feb. 19
1928 - Canada wins the gold medal in hockey at the Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Canada, represented by the 1926 Toronto University team, receives a bye to the final round. The Canadians then beat Sweden 11-0, Britain 14-0 and Switzerland 13-0.
1955 - Bernie Geoffrion of the Montreal Canadiens scores five goals in a 10-2 victory over the New York Rangers.
1977 - Rod Gilbert of the New York Rangers gets his 1,000th career point with a goal in a 5-2 loss to the New York Islanders.
1982 - Atlanta’s 127-122 four-overtime win over Seattle equals the fourth-longest game in NBA history and the second longest since the 24-second clock.
1984 - Phil and Steve Mahre of the United States become the first brothers to finish 1-2 in an Olympic event, the men’s slalom, at the Winter Games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union beats Czechoslovakia 2-0 to win the gold medal in hockey.
1993 - Wendel Suckow edges two-time world champion Georg Hackl of Germany by 0.106 seconds to capture the first world luge championship medal of any kind for the United States.
1994 - Speedskater Bonnie Blair wins the fourth gold of her Olympic career with her third consecutive 500-meter victory.
2000 - Vancouver’s Mark Messier has two assists and earns the 2,000th point of his career in the Canucks’ 3-1 victory over Ottawa. The 2,000 points includes the NHL playoffs and a brief stint in the defunct World Hockey Association, in which he had one goal and 10 assists.
2002 - Bobsledders Jill Bakken and Vonetta Flowers give the U.S. 21 medals in the Salt Lake City Games. Flowers becomes the first black athlete to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics.
2012 - American star Hannah Kearney’s all-discipline record for consecutive World Cup victories ends at 16 with a semifinal loss in a dual moguls event at Naeba, Japan. Kearney’s streak began in Lake Placid, N.Y., on Jan. 22, 2011.
2012 - Steven Holcomb and brakeman Steve Langton win the two-man bobsled in Lake Placid, the first time the U.S. captures this event at the world championships.
2014 - Norway wins the first Olympic mixed relay in biathlon at the Sochi Games and Ole Einar Bjoerndalen becomes the most decorated Winter Olympian with 13 medals. Ted Ligety wins the giant slalom, becoming the first American man to win two Olympic gold medals in Alpine skiing.
2017 - Anthony Davis scores 52 points in the NBA All-Star Game, 10 more than Wilt Chamberlain’s record that had stood for 55 years. The Western Conference beats the Eastern Conference 192-182 - the highest-scoring game in league history.
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