Golf Central

The golf world was rocked to its very foundations on this day in 1992 with a brutal sideswipe from HRH The Princess Royal, 10th in line to the British throne. Princess Anne made the comment: "I prefer to take the dog out," when asked if she played golf.

She joined a long queue of people whose criticism of the game was marginally more eloquent. Never mind Mark Twain and William Wordsworth, we prefer: "Golf is a lot of walking, broken up by disappointment and bad arithmetic." Shame we don't know who said it...

Meanwhile, on this day in 1951, Hall Of Famer and LPGA tour legend Pat Bradley was born, presumably with a visor attached to her forehead.

Anyway, Princess Anne was the first Royal to face criminal court charges in 2001 for speeding. In 2002 she was convicted of a second offence after her dog, Dotty, attacked two children in Windsor Park. And you want us to take your opinions about golf seriously Ma'am...?

In the real world, on this day in 1958 Elvis Presley joined the US Army, while in 1989 the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground off the Alaskan coast, creating the world's worst oil spill, leaking 11 million gallons of crude oil into the sea.

It's Shuvo Jonmodin! as they say in Bangladesh to Pat Bradley, US Solheim Cup captain in 2000, as well as Buffy/American Pie star Alyson Hannigan and much-respected (ie fairly obscure) British songwriter, performer and producer Nick Lowe.

It would also have been the 134th birthday of Hungarian-born escapologist Harry Houdini had he not failed to escape the grim reaper's scythe as the result of a burst appendix in 1926.