Golf Central

On this day in 1996, Tim Herron won the Honda Classic in south Florida, knocking off Mark McCumber and Nick Price, which is not particularly notable except we love big Lumpy and not much else happened on this day in golf history.

Herron fired a blistering 62 in the first round and led wire-to-wire over the TPC at Eagle Trace, finishing on a 17-under-par tally of 271 in a downpour to capture the $234,000 first prize. It was the first of four PGA Tour wins for the oversized lad from Minnesota. Nice job, Lumpy! ...

In golf birthdays, today is a happy 67th birthday to Sandra "Don't Call Me Arnold" Palmer, the sweet-swinging Texan who won 19 LPGA Tour events and the 1975 US Women's Open; and it was a birthday for the late Chandler Harper (1914-2004), who won seven times on the early PGA Tour, including the 1950 PGA Championship, and was a mentor to a young Curtis Strange ...

In the real world: On this day in 1801, the first census was conducted, although it has little value today. The details were collected mainly by head-counts, and much of the data no longer exists ... It was also on this day in 1804 that the US completed one of the great rip-offs of modern history by finishing off the transfer of ownership of the Louisiana Territory from France in the Louisiana Purchase ...

Strangely enough: It was on this day in 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell said "Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you" in the first telephone conversation in history. The test of Bell's first phone took place in Boston between the brainy inventor and his not-so-bright assistant ...

In sport: On this day in 2005, the FA laid the wood to Chelsea FC and their brilliant manager Jose Mourinho, hitting "The Chosen One" with a £5,000 fine for accusing Man United players of "diving and cheating" ... along with a £15,000 fine for a previous brawl with Blackburn ...

So it's parabenspara voce!, as they say in Oporto, to FIFA honcho Sepp Blatter (72); to American bad-ass martial artist and Republican booster Chuck Norris (68) of Walker, Texas Ranger fame; to lank-haired 70s rocker Tom Scholz (61), an MIT graduate who invented the Rockman mini-amplifier; to the actress Sharon Stone (50) of the most notorious leg-cross in cinema history; to rappa/producer Timbaland (36); to brilliant Barcelona and Cameroon hitman Samuel Eto'o (27); and to not-so-brilliant Portsmouth and France midfielder Lassana Diarra (23).

Oh, and it's a great big f-bomb to Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, born today in 1957 and possibly still alive in a spider hole somewhere ... To this day, Chuck Norris still has not found him.

It also would have been a birthday for the legendary Japanese grandmaster of ninjutsu, Toshitsugu Takamatsu (b. 1887), who was such a bad-ass ninja he probably could have even taken Chuck Norris and Frank Lickliter II at the same time with one arm tied behind his back, had he not faded into eternal blackness in 1972 (as far as anyone really knows ...) ... 'Til tomorrow! ...