Golf Central

On this day in 1931, Bobby Jones - just retired from competition at the height of his powers - used some rare free time to travel to Hollywood, where he would film the first instructional golf feature, How I Play Golf, at Warner Brothers studios.

The series of films were revolutionary, using new slow-motion technology to illustrate the beautiful, violent grace of Jones' golf swing, which even in the 1920s and '30s was capable of crushing 290-yard drives even with hickory shafts. The results are beautiful to behold even today, as is the languor of Jones' syrupy Georgia accent, and it's amazing how modern Jones' swing looks ...

Jones received a fee of $250,000 for the big-money production (huge bucks in those days, equivalent to just more than $3 million in today's money) and was paired with hack golfing celebrities of the day such as WC Fields. Fortunately, the films are available today on digitally enhanced DVDs, and of course you can find several clips on YouTube ...

It's also a birthday today for Zach Johnson, the clean-living God-fearing golf pro who was born February 24, 1976 in Iowa City, Iowa. Johnson has won three times on the PGA Tour and twice on the Nationwide Tour, but most notably snatched the Green Jacket from under Tiger Woods' nose last April. Happy 32nd, Zach ...

And in the rest of the world: It was on this day in 1582 that Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull calling out his calendar reforms, and it's a good thing he did, because without the Gregorian Calendar we wouldn't know what day it is even today. And then what would happen to On This Day In History? (that blasted Pope Gregory!) ... And on this day in 1981 it was announced that Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer were planning to marry (and we all know how that turned out) ...

And strangely enough: On this day in 1925 engineers came up with a novel concept to break up a 250,000-tonne ice jam which was causing havoc with shipping on the St Lawrence River near Waddington, New York. They used a thermite magnesium bomb and blew the crap out it, and commerce was saved. It must be fun sometimes to be an engineer, building stuff and blowing it up ...

And in sport: On this day in 1982, the "Great One" Wayne Gretzky scored his 77th goal of the National Hockey League season, breaking the record of Phil Esposito which most fans thought unbreakable. Gretzky wasn't done, going on to put the puck in the net 92 times that season ... and, oddly enough, exactly 10 years later the goofball Mike Myers-Dana Carvey comedy Wayne's World opened in US cinemas ...

That said, it's Co` latha breith sona dhuibh!, as they say in Scots Gaelic, to Rangers and former Scotland football manager Walter Smith (60); to smoky blues-rocker George Thorogood (58); to Apple CEO Steve Jobs (53); to one-hit wonder Rupert Holmes, who wrote the cheesy 1979 No. 1 hit Escape (The Piña Colada Song); to creepy actor Billy Zane (42); to the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world, Floyd Mayweather Jr (31), who made Ricky Hatton look average on Dec. 8, 2007; and to big-hitting Aussie tennis star Lleyton Hewitt (27).

It also would have been a birthday for the famed US Navy admiral Chester Nimitz (b. 1885), whose tactics helped win the war in the Pacific in WWII, had he not permanently gone down with the ship in 1966 ... 'Til tomorrow ...