Golf Central

On this day and two years apart, two of the most dominating golfers of the 1980s and 1990s were born, and between them they own four US Open championships and 28 PGA Tour titles combined: Curtis Strange and Payne Stewart.

Strange was born on this day in 1955 in Norfolk, Virginia. Ill-fated in Ryder Cups as a player in 1995 and as captain in 2001, Strange was much more successful when US Open time came around. In fact, he won twice in golf's toughest major, and in back-to-back years to boot, in 1988 and 1989. In '88, Strange also was the first player to transcend the $1 million mark in year on the PGA Tour. Not only that, but Strange's 17 tour victories secure his legacy.

Stewart, born this day in 1957 in Springfield, Missouri, won more majors than Strange: he nabbed the 1989 PGA Championship as well as the '91 and '99 US Opens. During his 11-victory PGA Tour career, Stewart was known for his kind demeanor and shoot-from-the-lip manner, as well as his habit of wearing outrageous combinations of colour-coordinated plus-fours. But what a player he was, and Stewart's 1999 US Open win is remembered bittersweetly as his last: He died on October 25 of that year in strange circumstances in an out-of-control charter jet ...

It was also on this day in 1969 that the Beatles, who knew a think or two about hits, played their last public performance in a 45-minute gig atop the Apple Records' London HQ while filming Let It Be ...

On a more grim note, it was on this day in 1933 that the one-and-only Adolf Hitler was sworn in as chancellor of Germany. We all know how that turned out ... And one of Hitler's main vanquishers, the late Sir Winston Churchill, was laid to rest at a full state funeral in London on this day in 1965 ...

And speaking of Hitler, it's Allet Jute ooch zum Jeburtstach! as they say in Berlin, to US vice president Dick Cheney (67, 'nuff said); to actor extraordinaire Gene Hackman (78), who carved a brilliant career out of playing bad guys (and bound to play Cheney some day); and to politically active actress Vanessa Redgrave (71).

And hit-maker Phil Collins (more than 100 million records sold) - probably the world's greatest drumming singer or greatest singing drummer, which ever way you want to look at it - was born in Chiswick, west London. Happy 57th, Phil, even though that's not you in the gorilla suit in the brilliant Cadbury advert.

And by a strange twist of fate, all three of these famous folks are 34 today: the Welsh actor Christian Bale, one of the many men to have played Batman; to Olivia Colman, the Peep Show star; and Jemima Khan, the English socialite whose ex-squeezes have included Hugh Grant and former husband, the cricketer Imran Khan.

And, on the same day, in 1981, two of the Premiership's most notable strikers were born: Spurs' scoring machine Dimitar Berbatov (you can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him ...), and Liverpool and England beanpole Peter "Crouchy" Crouch.

It also would have been a birthday for the 32nd president of the US, the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt (b. 1882), another Hitler vanquisher who said "There is nothing to fear but feat itself" and would have probably been elected to a fifth term had he not died in office during World War II on April 12, 1945 ... 'Til tomorrow ...