On April 11, 1921, KDKA in Pittsburgh aired the first live
sporting event on the radio, a boxing match between
Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee.
Pittsburgh Daily Post sports editor Florent Gibson calls
the event, about four months before KDKA’s Harold Arlin
announces the first Major League Baseball game broadcast
on radio.
On March 25, 1958, Sugar Ray Robinson defeated Carmen Basilio
to regain the middleweight championship. It was the fifth and final
title of his career.
Robinson is considered by many to be the greatest prizefighter
in history.
No less an authority than heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali
said, “My idol will always be Sugar Ray Robinson, who was, and
remains, one of the best pound-for-pound fighters to have ever
lived in this century.”
George Edward Foreman
Former Heavyweight champion George Foreman’s family
announced his passing Friday. They stated he departed
peacefully surrounded by loved ones. No cause of death
was given.
CARLATA BRADLEY
On February 10, 1962, American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers
was released by the Soviets in exchange for Soviet Colonel
Rudolf Abel, a senior KGB spy who was caught in the United
States five years earlier.
The German bridge where Rudolf Abel, top left, and Gary Powers.
A bird’s-eye view of Germany’s Glienicke Bridge, a crossing
the Soviet Union and the United States used to exchange captured spies during the Cold War.
Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.)
(January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016)
Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Ali began training as
an amateur boxer at age 12. At 18, he won a gold medal in the
light heavyweight division at the 1960 Summer Olympics and
turned professional later that year. He is frequently cited as
the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time.
1965
