Today in History: February 25, Muhammad Ali defeats Sonny Liston for first world title
Cassius Clay’s handlers hold him back as he reacts after he is announced the new heavyweight champion of the world on a seventh round technical knockout against Sonny Liston at Convention Hall in Miami Beach, Fla., on Feb. 25, 1964. (AP Photo)
Today in History:
On Feb. 25, 1964, Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) became world heavyweight boxing champion as he defeated Sonny Liston in Miami Beach.
On this date:
In 1901, United States Steel Corp. was incorporated by J.P. Morgan.
In 1913, the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving Congress the power to levy and collect income taxes, was declared in effect by Secretary of State Philander Chase Knox.
In 1919, Oregon became the first state to tax gasoline, at one cent per gallon.
In 1954, Gamal Abdel Nasser became Egypt’s prime minister after the country’s president, Mohammed Naguib, was effectively ousted in a coup.
In 1957, the Supreme Court, in Butler v. Michigan, overturned a Michigan statute making it a misdemeanor to sell books containing obscene language that would tend to corrupt “the morals of youth.”
In 1973, the Stephen Sondheim musical “A Little Night Music” opened at Broadway’s Shubert Theater.
In 1986, President Ferdinand Marcos fled the Philippines after 20 years of rule in the wake of a tainted election; Corazon Aquino assumed the presidency.
In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, 28 Americans were killed when an Iraqi Scud missile hit a U.S. barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
In 1994, American-born Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein opened fire with an automatic rifle inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank, killing 29 Muslims before he was beaten to death by worshippers.
In 1997, a jury in Media, Pennsylvania, convicted chemical fortune heir John E. du Pont of third-degree murder, deciding he was mentally ill when he shot and killed world-class wrestler David Schultz. (Du Pont died in prison in December 2010 while serving a 13- to 30-year sentence; he was 72.)
In 2010, in Vancouver, the Canadian women beat the United States 2-0 for their third straight Olympic hockey title.
In 2013, former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, 96, died in Hanover, New Hampshire.
In 2017, actor Bill Paxton died at age 61 from a stroke, a complication of heart surgery he’d had 11 days earlier.
In 2018, the Winter Olympics in South Korea came to an end as officials from North and South Korea shared a VIP box at the closing ceremonies with U.S. presidential adviser and first daughter Ivanka Trump.
In 2020, U.S. health officials warned that the coronavirus was certain to spread more widely in the United States; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged Americans to be prepared. President Donald Trump, speaking in India, said the virus was “very well under control” in the U.S.
In 2022, President Joe Biden nominated federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, making her the first Black woman selected to serve on it.