Golf Central

On this day in 1984, back when the Skins Game actually (sort of) meant something, Jack Nicklaus birdied the 18th hole at Desert Highlands in Arizona to win a $240,000 skin (two-thirds of the total purse). Now, that's something.

And back in those days, so was the Skins Game field. The '84 event, like the inaugural tournament the year before, featured the fearsome foursome of Nicklaus, Gary Player, Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson and promised high made-for-television drama for the Thanksgiving weekend audience.

And when Nicklaus holed his putt for a quarter of a million bucks, it really seemed like an astronomical figure. It still is, really: even adjusted for inflation, it would be worth $468,367.59 in today's money. It held the record for the most money won on a single skin until Fred 'Bust Out Da' Funk's birdie on the 18th in 2005 scooped him $550,000...

It was also on this day in 1783, just months after the signing of Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolutionary War, the last British troops left New York City, the redcoats' last military stronghold in the US. Today, 224 years later, the Brits are still flocking back to New York on cut-price flights to buy I-Phones and plasma TVs for half of what it would cost them in London. So tell us please, who really won that war?

In 1944, on this day, a German V2 rocket slammed into a Woolworths store in New Cross High Street, Deptford, killing 168 holiday shoppers in the most devastating of the Nazi WWII terror-rocket attacks on Britain. Remember that the next time you think that chav in the hoodie outside your local Woolies is such a menace. He is, but you can't just slap an ASBO on a V2...

And on November 25, 1963, the funeral of the murdered US president John F. Kennedy took place in Washington D.C.

The news wasn't much better two years ago on this day, when the legendary footballing god George Best finally lost his battles with demons and drink, passing away at the age of 59 from multiple organ failure. But legends live on, Bestie ...

That said, it's Zorionak!, as they say in the Pyrenees, to Basque midfield playmaker Xabi Alonso of Liverpool and Spain, who turns 26 today. So do the twin daughters of US president George W. Bush - Barbara and Jenna Bush. Barbara is the brunette and Jenna the blonde, they both like a drink or two like daddy, and were it not for the more-than-creepy resemblance to their father, it would be tempting to say ... erm, that the First Twins are kind of ... hot. But we won't.

It also would have been the 93rd birthday for baseball legend and former hubby of Marilyn Monroe, Joltin' Joe DiMaggio, had the Yankee Clipper not gone to the MLB eternal Hall of Fame in 1999, answering the question posed by Simon and Garfunkel in their 1968 hit Mrs Robinson: "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?"