At the time, Walter Brown was the head coach of the Boston Celtics, and he was in the same boat as Cohen, with the idea to have a mid-season All-Star game which will hold 20 of the NBA’s most talented players. Yet the Commissioner, Maurice Podoloff, wanted the game to be called off just days before the game would be played.

However, 1951 was not the best of years for the NBA, or basketball in general. There were many scandals in which college players were caught point-shaving which had an extremely negative effect on the entirety of the game of basketball. Haskell Cohen and Walter Brown, even in the midst of the overwhelming controversy at the time, decided that the game must still be played.  Yet the Commissioner, Maurice Podoloff, wanted the game to be called off just days before the game would be played, saying that it would be “a flop” and that “the league would look bad”.  The men did not back down, insisting the show goes on. The first ever All-Star Game was on March 2nd, 1951 and was  held at The Boston Garden in Boston Ma., with an outstanding turn out, having 10,094 fans show up to watch the stars of the NBA compete against each other. Like today, the teams competing were the best players from the East Division, and the best players from the West Division, with both sides playing against each other. The East easily defeated the West, with a final score of 111-94. The MVP was the Celtics’ very own Ed Macauley, racking in a game-high 20 points, while also holding Minneapolis Lakers star to just 4 field goals. The tradition of the NBA All-Star Game still carries on to this day, happening annually during the middle of the NBA season.

In 1964, when Ali was still going by his birth name of Cassius Clay, he fought Sonny Liston in Miami. It was one of the most watched fights in history.

Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Clay, named after his father, who was named after a famous abolitionist, in Louisville, KY on January 17, 1942.

He began his boxing training at age 12 and fought his first professional fight in 1960. Over the next three years he had a perfect win record, 19 – 0. This put him in position to challenge Sonny Liston for his heavyweight title. They met in February 1964 and the fight lasted seven rounds, ending when Liston refused to answer the bell for that round. The match was declared a TKO in Clay’s (Ali’s) favor.

Here are the highlights from the fight.

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Rumble, young man, rumble.” (Said by Clay/Ali before his fight with Liston.)

The first woman to run and complete the Boston Marathon was Bobbi Gibb in 1966. She finished in 3:21:40. In 2016, 50 years after being refused an official entry because women weren’t thought to be capable of running that distance, Gibb was the Boston Marathon’s grand marshal.

In 1967 Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to run as a numbered entry even though women were still not officially allowed to compete. (She had registered under K.V. Switzer.) She finished in four hours and twenty minutes, about an hour behind Bobbi Gibb who ran unregistered again.

The man shown trying to stop Switzer in the photo above is Jock Semple. He wasn’t against women running so much as he didn’t want anyone not officially entered to run. He also tried to physically stop runners who were “unserious” – mostly college boys who would come out in costume or do something for attention rather than be there to compete. He just wanted the race and its rules respected. Once women were permitted to enter, he was a strong supporter of them.