Ace This Quiz on Famous Firsts in Sports

A highly touted prospect at an early age, American soccer player Freddy Adu was hailed as the next global star, appearing in Pepsi commercials and signing a deal with Nike. In 2004, Adu became the youngest player to sign a Major League Soccer contract, kicking off his career with D.C. United.

China has long been a huge market for basketball, with an estimated 500 million fans in the country. Wang Zhizhi made history in April 2001 by signing with the Dallas Mavericks, becoming the first player from China to sign with the league. A year later, the NBA received its biggest Chinese star when the Houston Rockets drafted the 7’5” Yao Ming first overall in the 2002 draft.

Known as the “Elmira Express” (after the New York town he moved to at age 12), Ernie Davis was a three-time All American at Syracuse. During his Heisman-winning season in 1961, he rushed for 823 rushing yards, scored 15 touchdowns, and caught 16 passes for 157 yards. During his career Davis also set school records for rushing yards, points scored, touchdowns, and all-purpose yards.

Wilt “the Stilt” Chamberlain is one of the most decorated basketball players in history, thanks in large part to his dominating stature: 7’1” tall and nearly 300 lbs. While the 100-point game in 1962 may be his best-known achievement, Chamberlain holds many other spots in the history books, including the records for most rebounds (55) and most consecutive field goals (18) in one game.

Not only was Liz Heaston – a backup kicker who also played on the women’s soccer team at Willamette University – the first woman to play in a college football game, she was also the first to score in one after kicking two extra points. These achievements helped a Division III college athlete from a small school in Oregon gain national prominence, including an interview on the “Today Show.”

FIFA had been planning a World Cup as far back as 1904, when the organization declared its authority to host an international soccer championship. The first World Cup was a far cry from today’s competitions: Only 13 countries participated, and all matches were held in Montevideo, the host nation’s capital. With the exception of the war-torn 1940s, FIFA has held a global tournament every four years since.

Nine-figure MLB contracts are common today, but baseball was in a different era when the first $100 million contract was signed in 1998. The move by the Los Angeles Dodgers – long known as a free-spending major market club – was widely criticized, especially considering the contract’s recipient was 34 years old. Kevin Brown played out five years of the seven-year deal before getting traded.

Boxer Jack Johnson won the heavyweight championship belt in 1908 and reigned as champ for nearly seven full years, a feat that ignited racial tensions in many parts of the world. In 1913, Johnson was sentenced to prison for traveling across state lines with his fiancé, a white woman. He fled to Europe and lived as a fugitive for years, continuing to fight there until his retirement in 1928.

Although the Olympics were held every four years for centuries during the height of ancient Greece, they had been banned by the Roman empire for over a thousand years by the time of the first modern games, held in Athens in 1896. Those games were a far cry from the global spectacle of today’s Olympics – only 13 nations participated in 43 different events.

On November 16,1969, President Richard Nixon went to Robert F. Kennedy stadium to watch the Washington Redskins take on the Dallas Cowboys. Nixon had a relatively short and unremarkable career as a player, spending two years as a backup at the small Whittier College near Los Angeles. But he remained a fan the rest of his life, often visiting with college athletes and coaches while in office.