"Just loosen your girdle and let the ball have it". So spoke Mildred Didrikson-Zaharias, who was quite probably the greatest sportswoman the world has ever seen and on this day in history she picked up one of her many golf titles, to go along with three Olympic gold medals in different sports. John Gummer wasn’t much of a sportsman so we’ll move quickly on to the sainted Laura Davies (well, she should be), the fabulous Jonathan Richman (we've been playing Roadrunner in the office all day) and proto-Paris Hilton Hollywood wastrel, Tori Spelling.

On this day in 1954 Babe won the LPGA National Capital Golf Open, but she was so much more than a golfer – arguably the greatest woman athlete of all time. In addition to golf, she was a famed woman athlete, 1932 Olympic Games track and field star (she won three Olympic gold medals), expert basketball player, javelin thrower, hurdler, high jumper, swimmer, baseball pitcher, football halfback, billiards player, tumbler, boxer, wrestler, fencer, weight lifter and dancer. She once won 17 tournaments in a row, including the British Amateur and US Amateur. When asked the secret of her long drives she replied: ‘I just loosen my girdle and let the ball have it.’ Our favourite quote, however, was the one she uttered to a group of women pros, hard at work on the range, of whom she asked: ‘Why are you practising so hard just to come second?’ She died far too early, of colon cancer at the age of 45. There will never be her like again.

On this day in 1990, John Gummer proved that there are no depths to which a politician won’t sink, when he enlisted his four-year-old daughter in the fight against bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. Trying to convince the public that it was safe to eat British beef, Gummer invited newspapers and camera crews to photograph him trying to feed a beefburger to the child but she, very wisely, refused to eat it. She is well but her father has subsequently gone completely mad. Allegedly.

It was 32 years ago to this day that Earl Woods visited a genetic scientist and had his sperm modified in order that he could produce progeny that would become the world’s greatest sportsman. Well, how else can you explain Tiger?

Laura Jane Davies – long may she be preserved for us all, won the LPGA McDonald’s Championship on this day in 1993, one of her 69 professional wins worldwide, 20 on the LPGA Tour, four of which are Majors. She has also topped the European women’s money list seven times, and its American equivalent once.

The Czechs say ‘Vsechno nejlepsi k Tvym narozeninam!’ but we can’t, so we sing instead ‘Happy Birthday’ to:
Jonathan Richman (57), godlike US post-punk troubador
Pierce Brosnan (55), not as good a Bond as Daniel Craig
Tori Spelling (38), star of Beverly Hills 90210 and the slightly-less succesful Mother, May I Sleep With Danger

It would also have been the 89th birthday of Liberace (real name Wladziu Valentino) who once successfully sued a British tabloid for suggesting he was gay. We're allowed to say anything we like about him now he'd dead, but we won't 'cos we're not like that.

Anything else?
In 1929 the first Academy Awards ceremony took place and we’ve all been tearfully thanking anyone we could think of ever since.