POSTED: December 30th 2009

InDepth

Remembering Sonny Liston - and his historic fights with Patterson and Ali

THIS DAY (DECEMBER 30) IN THE WORLD OF SPORT MARKS . . . the 39th anniversary, from 1970, of the death of former world heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston. He had won the world title in 1962 by defeating Floyd Patterson but was even more famously dispossessed of the title subsequently by Muhammad Ali. In other sports, in 1989 Soviet swimmer Dmitri Volkov sets a 50m freestyle world record in 27.15sec. In 1992, Shane Warne took seven wickets for 52 runs to lead Australia to victory over the West Indies  in Melbourne. WORLD EVENTS – 1865: Birth of Jungle Book author Rudyard Kiping in what is now Mumbai, India. 1879: First performance, in Paignton, Devon, of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance. 1903: Death of more than 600 in a Chicago theatre fire. 1916: Death of Russian religious mystic and political schemer Rasputin. 1953: First US sale of colour television sets. 1979: Death of composer Richard Rogers. 2006: Saddam Hussein hanged in Baghdad.

Keywords · December 30 · Liston · Patterson · Muhammad Ali · Volkov · Warne · Kipling · Gilbert and Sullivan · Saddam Hussein · Richard Rogers

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