• March 2 down the years

Sugar Boy not sweet for Benn

Nigel Benn found Sugar Boy Malinga a tougher proposition than he anticipated © Getty Images

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1996
After the tragic ending of his fight with Gerald McClellan on February 25, 1995, Nigel Benn got straight back in the ring. Tonight's bout with Thulani Malinga was his third in a year. He'd kept his WBC super-middleweight title in the other two, and a 40-year-old South African with the moniker of Sugar Boy didn't seem an insurmountable obstacle. Benn certainly thought so: 'I was complacent. I thought it was going to be an easy night.' Sorry, no. His right eye closed in the fourth round and he lost a decision that should have been unanimous rather than split. In the ring immediately after the fight, Benn announced his retirement and proposed to his girlfriend on bended knee. Malinga lost the title in his next fight, won it from Britain's Robin Reid, then lost it for good to another British boxer on March 27, 1998. Benn made two attempts to win the WBO title, then retired after Steve Collins stopped him twice.

1962
Basketball legend Wilt 'the Stilt' Chamberlain became the first and so far only to hit a ton in an NBA match. He scored exactly 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors against the New York Knicks. He set another record by scoring 59 in the second half. The Warriors won 169-147.

1949
JPR Williams was born in Cardiff. He was plain John Williams until another one joined the same Wales team and had to be known as JJ. Rugby Union full-backs play a different game nowadays, but it's hard to believe John PR wouldn't have been a star today. His priorities were tackling and catching high balls, but he was one of the first to run the ball out of defence - and anyway he was on a different level from everyone else, simply incomparable. Physical enough to play an international match as a flank forward, and a legendary tackler. If he missed one, it was a national talking point. When he connected - well, witness the famous shoulder charge that won a Grand Slam on March 6, 1976. On the 1974 Lions tour of South Africa, he dropped a high kick. Just one. And fretted about it for weeks. The Lions won that series, and the one in New Zealand three years earlier. In the last match of that 1971 tour, they drew 14-14 after JPR dropped a long-range goal. His 55 caps for Wales were a national record at the time, and he was particularly severe on the poor English, scoring five tries and finishing on the winning side in all his 11 matches against them. And there was a socks-down swagger about him, long hair flying. A player who looked every inch a rugby star. And knew it.

2002
On the second day of the European Indoor Championships, 35-year-old Colin Jackson won the 60 metres hurdles for the third and last time, 13 years after the first.

Colin Jackson dashed to European glory © Getty Images

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2000
The only country apart from the USA to retain the America's Cup. New Zealand's NZL-60 beat Italy's Prada in five races out of five.

1929
Frankie Genaro was a top little boxer. Olympic flyweight champion in 1920 and NBA world champion in 1928. He defended that championship tonight in a fight which was also for the IBU world title (the situation was confused even then) - but not for long. Against a Frenchman in Paris, he was knocked out after only 58 seconds, one of the shortest world title fights in history - by a boxer with one of the shortest reigns as world champion: Émile Pladner met Genaro in the same ring on April 18.

1908
The closest anyone has ever come to scoring five tries in a match for Wales. Their first meeting with France was always going to be an easy one. The French had been playing internationals for only two years and were accustomed to heavy beatings before the First World War. This was one of them. At Cardiff Arms Park, winger Reggie Gibbs scored four tries and missed a fifth by not grounding the ball immediately. He'd crossed the French line and was running round to put the ball down nearer the posts when he was tripped by a defender and dropped it. Wales scored nine tries in all, including two by their other winger Teddy Morgan, who was captain in his last international. But they converted only three of them, so France escaped relatively lightly with a 36-4 defeat (worth 54-3 now).

1958
Ian Woosnam was born in Shropshire. He was never the best putter in the world, but he drove a golf ball great distances for a man of five foot four, and his play around the greens was good enough to win the Masters (April 14, 1991) and three World Matchplay titles. When he won the Matchplay in 2001, he was 43, the oldest ever champion. He might have won the Open that year, instead of finishing joint third as in 1986, if he hadn't been penalised two shots because his caddie was carrying an extra club in his bag. In Woosnam's first two years as Matchplay champion, 1987 and 1990, he also finished first in the European Order of Merit. His round of 60 and total of 258 at the 1990 Monte Carlo Open equalled records for the European Tour that still stand. He was on European teams that won or retained five Ryder Cups, and he won two World Cup individual titles as well as the team event in 1987.

1991
In the Five Nations, Wales shared the wooden spoon with Ireland after France outclassed them in Paris. Five brilliant backs scored a try apiece. Serge Blanco, playing his last game in the competition, got the first in the second minute from a kick ahead, and completed the scoring with a touchline conversion. Franck Mesnel and the great Philippe Sella were superb handlers and runners in the centre, Jean-Baptiste Lafond and Philippe Saint-André were called wings for a reason. France scored six tries in all and won 36-3. For the first time ever, Wales conceded 100 points in one Five Nations campaign. Not the way to mark your country's 400th international match.

1934
In the 100 metres freestyle, Johnny Weissmuller's world record was broken after ten years. In New Haven in Connecticut, a swimming Mecca at the time, fellow American Peter Fick recorded 56.8 seconds to beat Tarzan's 57.4. Fick broke the record again in each of the next two years, always in the same town. In 2009, wearing one of those helpful bodysuits, Brazil's César Cielo set a world best that was almost ten seconds faster.

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