Golf Central

On this day in 1909, Henry Longhurst was born in Bromham, England. And why is he famous you might ask? Never fear, for if you weren't born of a certain age you might not know. But Longhurst was the first great golf journalist - the Bobby Jones of golf writers - and for that we salute the late Henry.

Longhurst's descriptive, flowing prose - appearing in the Sunday Times and Golf Illustrated - brought alive his accounts of golf's great matches and personalities from the '30s to the '60s and helped turn golfers into stars. Longhurst also served as the BBC's senior television commentator from the late '50s. Hours before his death in 1978, Longhurst joked to colleagues that he was off to scout "the great hospitality tents in the sky" ... Bless 'im ...

And it's a birthday today for peripatetic American-Canadian Brian Watts, who was born in Montreal today in 1966. Watts, 42, won 12 times on the Japanese tour but is best known for losing the 1998 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale in a playoff to Mark O'Meara ...

In the real world: It was on this day in 1893 that one of the sporting world's most famous prizes was created, when former Governor General of Canada, Lord Stanley, donated a silver challenge cup for the best ice hockey team in the Great White North. Known today as the Stanley Cup and for its massive size, it has gone to the pro champions each year since 1910.

And strangely enough: It was on this day in 1952 that two fine female golfers from Florida - Jacksonville city champion Bertha Johnson and her friend Mary Dempsey - lost their lives when a US Navy Corsair fighter plane of World War II vintage crashed on the seventh fairway of the Timuquana Country Club in Jacksonville...

In sport: It was on this day in 1956 that Jan Ingemar Stenmark was born in Joesjö, Storumans municipality, Sweden. Stenmark, of course, became one of the world's most famed daredevil skiers, winning two Olympic gold medals and gaining renown as the greatest slalom and giant slalom artist of all time ...

So it's grattis pŒ fšdelsedagen, as Stenmark might say, to the smokin'-hot American singer/model/actress Vanessa L. Williams (45); to massive-thighed Olympic speed-skating champ Bonnie Blair (44); to rapper-actress Queen Latifah (38); and to the quite-talented frontman of Maroon 5, Adam Noah Levine (29).

It also would have been a birthday for the great British war poet Wilfred Owen (b. 1893), who sadly became a symbol of Europe's lost generation when he was killed in action in the Battle of the Sambre just a week before the end of World War I ... 'Til tomorrow ...