Golf Central

On this day in 1931, the great Sir Henry Cotton, Britain's best golfer, was booted off the GB Ryder Cup team in a row over the fact that Cotton wanted to make his own travel arrangements and chose not to travel with the rest of the team. Proving the "team ethic" which has been a hallmark of European Ryder Cup squads since, there was no room for egos, and the devilishly handsome Cotton - despite his obvious skills and inspiration - was not allowed by the PGA of Great Britain to be part of the team ...

A lot of good it did: Cotton stayed in the US and met his arranged obligations to compete in several professional competitions; the weakend Great Britain team went down in flames 9-3 to the US in the matches at Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio. It was all smoothed over years later, however, as Cotton went on to captain the GB&I team in 1947 and 1953 ...

And on this day in 1997, our buddy Paul Stankowski won the Hawaiian Open for his second PGA Tour win, knocking off Jim Furyk and Mike Reid in a playoff. Nice one, Paul ...

And in the rest of the world: On this day in 1959, the world got another bearded leader when former left-handed baseball pitcher and revolutionary Fidel Castro was named premier of Cuba, taking over from the overthrown Fulgencio Batista ... and in 1923, the bold English archaeologist Howard Carter entered the creepy tomb of King Tut ...

And strangely enough: The first 911 emergency telephone system in the US went into service in little Haleyville, Alabama (pop. 4,182), which, despite its insignificance, must have a lot of emergencies ...

And in sport: On this day in '72 the hoopster Wilt Chamberlain scored his 30,000th point in the NBA, which is not nearly as cool as Wilt's claim to have nailed 20,000 women in his lifetime (Camilo Villegas and Adam Scott can't even come close to touching that) ...

And on this day in 1899, the first football club in Iceland, Knattspyrnufélag Reykjavíkur was founded. For its early years, KR wore the same colours as the current English FA Cup champions; eventually they settled on the black-and-white strip of Newcastle United in 1911. (Just for the record, all but one of the 32 players on KR's 2008 roster have a surname ending in either -son or -sson; the sole weirdo, Björgólfur Hideaki Takefusa of mixed Icelandic-Japanese heritage, is the team's ace hitman with 14 goals in 31 games).

That said, it's til hamingju med afmaelisdaginn!, as they say in Reykjavík, to loveable hefty PGA Tour veteran Tim "Lumpy" Herron (38); to the gangsta rapper and actor Tracy Lauren Marrow (Ice-T, 50); to tennis legend John "You Cannot Be Serious!" McEnroe (49); to English guitarist Andy Taylor (47), who married Duran Duran's hairstylist for her obvious haircutting skills; to the NFL star Jerome "The Bus" Bettis (36); and to Arsenal midfield puppy Denilson (20).

It also would have been a birthday for the great Italian printer Giambattista Bodoni (b. 1740), who invented the lovely typeface named in his honour (try it, you'll like it), had he not gone to font heaven in 1813 ... 'Til tomorrow ...