Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 4/3/2012

4/3/1933:
Before 14,500 at maple Leaf Garden in Toronto, the Maple Leafs defeat the Boston Bruins, 1-0, in the sixth overtime of the fifth and deciding game of the Stanley Cup semifinals. After battling through 60 minutes of regulation and five overtimes without either side denting the goal, the Maple Leaf and Bruin players agree to end the contest with a coin flip to decide the winner. The Toronto crowd jeers lustily, however, and the Maple Leafs back out of the agreement. Ken Doraty, the smallest player on the ice at five-foot-seven and 133 pounds, scores at 4:46 of the sixth overtime for the victory. The game ends at 1:50 A.M. After the exhausting win, the Maple Leafs rush for the train station for a game the following night in New York against the Rangers in the Stanley Cup final. The Rangers win the series three games to one.

Birthdays:
Bernie Parent b. 1945
Pervis Ellison b. 1967
Rodney Hampton b. 1969
Picabo Street b. 1971
Michael Olowokandi b. 1975

LIVING HISTORY

In January 1910, unusual weather conditions drove the Seine 20 feet above its usual level, a disaster whose effects lingered for weeks, drowning the City of Lights in a chaos of disease-ridden canals and lagoons, looting and street violence. In Jeffrey Jackson’s evenhanded telling, the police prefect, Louis Lépine, strides through the city with rubber boots and a soothing air of command, emerging as a hero in this “tight, concentrated tale of adversity and survival” (The New York Times).

PARIS UNDER WATER: HOW THE CITY OF LIGHT SURVIVED THE GREAT FLOOD OF 1910, by Jeffrey H. Jackson (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)