Aug. 26
Today in sports history
Today is Aug. 26. On this date in:
1896: Robert Wrenn won the U.S. National Men’s Championship, defeating defending champion Fred Hovey in five sets to capture his third singles title at the tournament that later became the U.S. Open.
1903: England’s Laurence Doherty defeated William Larned to become the first non-American to win the U.S. National Championship men’s singles title.
1904: World heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries knocked out Jack Munroe in the second round in San Francisco to retain his title.
1916: Philadelphia Athletics pitcher Bullet Joe Bush threw a no-hitter and retired the final 27 Cleveland batters in a 5-0 victory.
1930: Chicago Cubs slugger Hack Wilson hit his 44th home run of the season, setting a new National League single-season record on his way to a then-NL-record 56 homers.
1939: The Cincinnati Reds defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers 5-2 at Ebbets Field in the first televised Major League Baseball game.
1947: Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Dan Bankhead became the first Black pitcher in the National League in the modern integration era and homered in his first major league at-bat.
1962: Jack Kralick pitched the first no-hitter in Minnesota Twins history, allowing only a ninth-inning walk in a 1-0 victory over the Kansas City Athletics.
1971: Boston Bruins star Bobby Orr signed a five-year, $1 million contract, the first million-dollar contract in NHL history.
1980: Peter and Anton Stastny signed with the Quebec Nordiques after defecting from Czechoslovakia during a tournament in Austria, a move that helped open the NHL more broadly to elite European talent.
1987: Milwaukee Brewers star Paul Molitor saw his club-record 39-game hitting streak end when he went hitless against Cleveland.
1991: Kansas City’s Bret Saberhagen pitched the only no-hitter of his career, defeating the Chicago White Sox 7-0.
1995: Greg Norman won the World Series of Golf and became the PGA Tour’s all-time leading money winner.
1997: Carl Lewis closed his track and field career by running the anchor leg on a victorious 4x100-meter relay team at the ISTAF Grand Prix in Berlin.
1999: American Michael Johnson won the 400 meters at the World Championships in Seville, Spain, and shattered the 11-year-old world record with a time of 43.18 seconds.
2004: Shawn Crawford led a United States sweep of the Olympic men’s 200-meter medals in Athens, finishing ahead of Bernard Williams and Justin Gatlin.
2004: Abby Wambach and Lindsay Tarpley scored as the United States defeated Brazil 2-1 to win Olympic women’s soccer gold in Athens.
2005: Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele ran 26 minutes, 17.53 seconds in Brussels to lower his own world record in the 10,000 meters.
2010: St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols hit his 400th career home run, becoming the third-youngest player in major league history to reach the milestone.
2011: Kyle Busch won the Nationwide Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway for his 50th victory in NASCAR’s second-tier national series.
2012: Fifteen-year-old amateur Lydia Ko won the Canadian Women’s Open, becoming the youngest champion in LPGA Tour history.
2016: San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s protest became public after he remained seated during the national anthem before a 49ers preseason game against Green Bay, a protest against racial injustice that became one of the most significant athlete activism movements in sports history.
2017: Floyd Mayweather Jr. stopped mixed-martial-arts star Conor McGregor in the 10th round in Las Vegas and completed his professional boxing career with a 50-0 record.
2020: The Milwaukee Bucks declined to play their playoff game against Orlando following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, prompting the NBA to postpone all three games on its schedule and inspiring similar actions across professional sports.
2022: Audi announced that it would enter Formula One as a power-unit supplier beginning with the 2026 season.
2023: Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon won the 5,000 meters at the World Championships in Budapest, becoming the first woman to capture the 1,500-5,000 double at a single World Championships.
2023: Noah Lyles anchored the United States to the men’s 4×100-meter relay title at the World Championships, completing a sweep of the 100, 200 and relay gold medals.
2023: Seattle’s Julio Rodríguez became the fastest player in Mariners history to reach 50 home runs and joined Ronald Acuña Jr. as the only players in major league history with 50 homers and 50 stolen bases during their first two seasons.
2024: Boston catcher Danny Jansen became the first major league player to appear for both teams in the same game when the Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays completed a contest suspended two months earlier.
2025: San Francisco’s Justin Verlander recorded his 3,516th career strikeout to pass Walter Johnson for ninth place on Major League Baseball’s career list.
— USA TODAY Network
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY Sports: Today in sports history, August 26