Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 4/5/2011

4/5/2007:
At the age of 102, Elsie McLean of Chico, California, becomes the oldest golfer to hit a hole-in-one on a regulation course. Her drive travels an estimated 100 yards on the par-3 fourth hole at the Bidwell Municipal Golf Course. Shortly before her 103rd birthday next November, Elsie will birdie the same hole. The previous record holder was Harold Stillson, who had a hole-in-one in 2001 at the Deerfield Country Club in Deerfield, Florida, at the age of 101.

Birthdays:
Doggie Julia b. 1901
Doug Favell b. 1945
Rennie Stennett b. 1951
Brad Van Pelt b. 1951
Ike Hilliard b. 1976

Packers Fact:

The Packers acquired Lynn Dickey in April of 1976 by sending two players and two draft choices to the Houston Oilers.

From Wiki on Dickey:
In 1976 he was packaged in a trade to the Green Bay Packers involving John Hadl.^[2] Dickey led the Packers to the playoffs in 1982. They defeated the St. Louis Cardinals in the wild card round after Dickey went 19 of 26 for 286 yards with 4 touchdowns and no interceptions for a 41-16 triumph.^[3] They were eliminated the following week by the Dallas Cowboys in the divisional round after Dickey went 24 of 37 for 274 yards with 1 touchdown and 3 interceptions as the team fell 37-26.^[4]

Perhaps the high point of Dickey's NFL career came in 1983 when he powered the Packers' offense to a then-team record 429 points.^[5][6] He threw for 4,458 yards, which remains a team record.^[7] Dickey also threw an NFL-best 32 touchdowns that season and was named second-team All-NFC behind Joe Theismann.^{[citation needed]} Dickey's Packers had beaten Theismann's Super Bowl champion Washington Redskins in a thrilling Monday Night Football game earlier that season (Washington kicker Mark Mosley missed a field goal in the closing seconds, preserving the Packers' 48-47 win).^[8] The game remains the highest aggregate score in MNF history.^[9] He threw for 4,458 yards, which remains a team record.^[10] Other Packers records that Dickey holds includes highest completion percentage in a game (90.48%), most passing yards in a game (418), and highest average gain in a season (9.21).^[11] Dickey retired from professional football after the 1985 season.^[12]

ON HOOTS, HOLY MAN!

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Host: What country does the spiritual leader the Dalai Lama come from?

Contestant: Scotland.

from a segment on See Hear, BBC2 (UK)

“I sometimes try to be miserable that I may do more work.”

—WILLIAM BLAKE, 18th-century English poet

SWEPT AWAY

This European bestseller deserves to be a blockbuster here. In 1953, at the outset of the epic storm that will inundate 50,000 square acres in the Netherlands and claim many lives, two sisters innocently decide to trade places for an evening. The unmarried sister will attend a party in Amsterdam with the other’s husband; the mother will travel to see her goddaughter’s family in the south and west of Holland and never be seen again. Life gradually picks up, then gathers speed for those left in Amsterdam; for the traveler, time and space contract. The two points of view alternate in a storytelling tour de force.

THE STORM, by Margriet de Moor, translated from the Dutch by Carol Janeway (Knopf, 2009)