Golf Central

On this day in 1943, Major Bobby Jones, US Army Air Corps, kissed goodbye his wife Mary and three children at Atlanta's Peachtree Station and embarked for England and his role among thousands in the Battle of Normandy.

Retired from competitive golf since 1930, when Jones won the last three of his major titles, the great amateur champion was a rarity among famous sportsmen of his generation who served in wartime in that he actually ended up on the firing lines. Jones was not particularly gung-ho to go to war, but his famous sense of duty pushed him to volunteer.

Jones joined the Army Air Corps in 1942 at the relatively old age of 40, and due to his high intelligence, three university degrees, and legal background, was commissioned a captain and assigned to the 9th Air Force intelligence command, helping in preparations for the Allied invasion of Normandy. ...

Jones' unit was attached to support infantry operations at Normandy on D-Day Plus-1, and after arrival in France on June 7, 1944 the great golfer and his comrades spent two harrowing days under heavy German fire before the Allied breakout from the beachhead.

After several months in Europe, Jones returned safely from the war as a lieutenant colonel. He is said to have disliked media coverage of his participation in the war as a public figure, and according to Jones' family biographers, the golf legend rarely spoke of his experiences in World War II, "scoffing at the subject in much the same way he scoffed when people wanted to speak about his exploits in golf."

So although he did not single-handedly win World War II like Ben Affleck did in the notoriously god-awful film Pearl Harbour, Bobby Jones did his part ...

In case you're off to another pub quiz tonight, here are some random tidbits to help you through:

On this day in 1919, the legendary baseball player Babe Ruth was sold by the Boston Red Sox to the arch-enemy New York Yankees, who converted Ruth from a pitcher into a slugging outfielder. In urban legend, Ruth's sale kick-started the "Curse of the Bambino", in which the hapless Bostonians were unable to win a championship until 2004. The Sox won again in 2007, and their once long-suffering fans are now merely insufferable, which has led the supporters of the other 29 teams to pray for another curse ...

What do a Nissan and the FM radio have in common, you might ask? Well, you probably wouldn't ask, even if you have an FM radio in your Nissan - but they both came into being on this day in 1933, when the Nissan Motor Company was formed in Tokyo, and the the FM (frequency modulation) radio was patented by its inventor, clever New Yorker Edwin Howard Armstrong ...

Who was the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the US Congress, you might ask? Since you asked, it was Winston Churchill, who did so on this day in 1941 in Washington to a rousing ovation from the Yank politicos. Churchill was lauded for his oh-so British gutsy determination, and predicted that despite "dark days" victory was certain, and that the Axis forces would be on the back foot by 1943. Winnie was right, too, perhaps having accounted for the superhuman effect of Ben Affleck on the war effort ...

And it was on this day in 1982 that Time Magazine's "Man of the Year" award was awarded for the first time to a non-human (unless you count Hitler, of course, in 1938), when the mag honoured the Personal Computer. Take that, Mac lovers! ...

It was also on this day in 1947 that 26 inches of snow fell in just 16 hours in New York City, so no grumbling from the boys in the Brighton HQ of IGWT about the weather today ...

That said, it's qu ni sheng er kuai le, as they say in Mandarin Chinese, to wacko wall-of-sound record producer Phil Spector (67), whose hits include Unchained Melody, Imagine and My Sweet Lord, and is still in deep doo-doo over a murder charge; to Lars Ulrich (44), stickman for Metallica, to Maori actor Temuera Morrison (47) from Star Wars fame; to the baseball legend Ozzie Smith (53), famed for his wizardry at shortstop and for backflips on the field; and to loopy Chilean tennis pro Marcelo Rios (32), who was the ATP world No. 1 for six whole weeks in 1998.

It also would have been a birthday for Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung (b. 1893), who may not have preferred to be "better dead than Red" but ended up being both in 1976.