Today in History: March 2, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published 12:00 AM GMT-5, March 2, 2025
Today in history:
On March 2, 1962, Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors in a game against the New York Knicks, a single-game NBA record that still stands. Philadelphia won the game, 169-147.
Also on this date:
In 1807, the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves was signed by President Thomas Jefferson. (The domestic trade of enslaved people was not affected.)
In 1861, the state of Texas, having seceded from the Union, was admitted to the Confederacy.
In 1877, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the 1876 presidential election over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, despite Tilden winning the popular vote. Tilden remains the only presidential candidate to win over 50% of the popular vote (50.9%) and not win the presidency.
In 1943, the three-day Battle of the Bismarck Sea began in the southwest Pacific during World War II; U.S. and Australian warplanes were able to inflict heavy damage on an Imperial Japanese convoy.
In 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks’ more famous act of defiance, Claudette Colvin, a Black high school student in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white passenger.
In 1985, the government approved a screening test for AIDS that detected antibodies to the virus, allowing possibly contaminated blood to be excluded from the blood supply.
In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled, 8-1, that a grieving father’s pain over mocking protests near his Marine son’s funeral had to yield to First Amendment protections for free speech in a decision favoring the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas