Golf Central

Nearly eight months after his momentous U.S. Open triumph at The Country Club, Francis Ouimet captures the French Amateur title at La Boulie on this day in 1914, although nobody makes such a big deal about this one. Apart from us.

Elsewhere, in 1959 two monkeys became the first living creatures to survive a space flight. Able, a seven-pound female rhesus monkey, and Baker, a one-pound female squirrel monkey, were fired 300 miles into space in the nose-cone of a Jupiter missile AM-18 from Cape Canaveral in Florida. They both returned home having had the time of their little lives. Able later died from the effects of anesthesia given for removal of electrodes implanted for the mission while Baker survived a similar operation and lived until 1984.

Meanwhile, it's hartelijk gefeliciteerd! as they say in Holland to an array of musicians including Jamaican ska exponent Prince Buster (70), mannered 80s frontman of Fine Young Cannibals Roland Gift (46) and miniscule Australian pop heroine Kylie Minogue (40).

It would also have been the 49th birthday of nipple-baring punk wastrel Wendy O Williams of The Plasmatics had she not joined the amateurish three-chord thrash jam in the sky in 1998.