Golf Central

Double Olympic gold medalist, All-American basketball player and 41-time LPGA Tour winner Babe Zaharias underwent surgery for colon cancer on this day in 1953. The operation went ahead amidst fears that it would cut short one of the most exciting sporting lives in history.

Babe (born Mildred Ella) returned to competitive golf in 1954 and won her 10th and final Major, the US Open, that year. The cancer re-emerged in 1955 and although she managed a further two tournament victories, she died in Galveston, Texas, on September 27, 1956.

In the real world, on this day in 1961, 1,400 counter-revolutionaries invaded Cuba supported by American forces in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. Fighting lasted three days, with 1,200 of the invasion force taken prisoner.

Meanwhile, on this day in 1986, journalist John McCarthy was kidnapped in Beirut by militant group Islamic Jihad. He spent more than five years in captivity before being released on August 8, 1991.

It's hyvaa syntymapaivaa! as they say in Finland to Mancunian punk Pete Shelley (53) of Buzzcocks fame, gravel-voiced actor/voiceover merchant Sean Bean (49), as well as proto-WAG and occasional Spice Girl Victoria Beckham (34). It would also have been former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev's 114th birthday had he not joined the great socialist revolutionary party in the sky in 1971.