Golf Central

On this day, in 1971, the golf world lost its only Grand Slam winner when the legendary amateur Bobby Jones died, aged 69, in his native Atlanta, Georgia, after a 20-year fight against the rare crippling spinal disease syringomyelia, which had left him bound to a wheelchair for the last years of his life.

When news of the death of golf's first global superstar and statesman arrived at St Andrews, the flag was lowered to half-staff at the HQ of the Royal & Ancient Golf Glub, and play was halted on the Old Course for a period of silence.

The reverence was not surprising. Although Jones' accomplishments are far to lengthy and his life too full to completely detail here, his record spoke for itself ...

Robert Tyre Jones Jr., one of golf's last gentleman amateur sportsmen, is still referred to by the Oxford Companion to World Sports and Games as "the greatest player the game has known."

His career was too brief. When he retired from competition, only 28 years old, the rakishly handsome Jones had won 13 major championships, all as an amateur - and completed the single-season Grand Slam in 1930, winning the British Amateur, British Open, US Open and US Amateur, a feat that many golf historians predict will never be repeated, not even by Tiger Woods. He remains the only individual sportsman to receive two ticker-tape parades in New York City.

Strangely, it was also on this day in 1933, exactly 38 years before his death, that Jones announced that he would be among the competitors in a new invitational-only tournament at his new Augusta National Golf Club the following year. That tournament would eventually come to be known as the Masters ...

It's Tuesday night pub-quiz night, so here at IGWT we're arming you with plenty of useless information to take with you to the local:

On this day in 1271, the Mongol hardman Kublai Khan renamed his empire "Yuan" (yuán), officially marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of China. For a bonus point, tell your quizmaster that the Yuan Dynasty came after the Song Dynasty, and was followed by the Ming Dynasty ... Or just go round your neighbourhood muttering "Song, Yuan, Ming ... Song, Yuan, Ming ..." and enjoy your night in the cells.

And on this day in 1642, the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to land in New Zealand. Rumours that Tasman was expelled by a pack of burly fellows in all-black uniforms are just rumours, however it is true that the Aussie island state of Tasmania was named for the explorer, even though it's in bloody Oz ...

And on this day in 1865 slavery was officially ended in the US. Despite the fact that US Civil War fighting ended in April of that year, the slaves were not officially freed until the 13th Amendment of the US Consitution was ratified on December 18, so tell your quizmaster to stick that in his pipe and smoke it ...

So, it's daudz laimes dzimsanas diena!, as they say in Latvia, to the lovely and talented Christina Aguilera, she of the curvy hips in the Candyman video and the four-octave vocal range, who is 27 today. Christina is No. 5 in the MTV 22 Greatest Voices in Music Awards, which is precisely why we like her so much (cough, cough, wink, wink) ...

But we were spoiled for choice on the birthday front today, with Hollywood hunk Brad Pitt turning 44 today. We would have used a sexy pic of Brad on the site front today, but we feared our overwhelmly female-majority readership might object, so we went with Christina, instead. Sorry, girls ...

It's also happy birthday to smash-hit film director Steve Spielberg (61); ageless and invincible rocker Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones (64); tough-guy actor Ray Liotta (52); the tennis Hall of Famer Arantxa Sánchez Vicario (36), or as mouthy sports radio jock Jim Rome calls her, "a rauncy chick from the barrio"; and Tom Cruise's shockingly young and pretty spouse, Katie Holmes (29).

We've got to get at least one silly hip-hop name in the mix, so today is also the 35th birthday of DJ Lethal (born Leor Dimant in Riga, Latvia), who is former turntablist for Limp Bizkit. Oddly enought, DJ Lethal's birthday comes exactly one day after that of DJ Homicide. ... One wonders what would happen if DJ Lethal and DJ Homicide were ever in the same room. Probably something bad ...! Oooooh, we're scared ...

It also would have been the 91st birthday of the actress, singer and dancer Betty Grable, who sadly passed away in '73 but whose legs live on in the Eternal Pin-Up Girls Wing in the Great Beyond.