ON THIS DAY 6 11 2023

This Day in History: June 11

Featured Event

1950




Capping a dramatic recovery from a near-fatal automobile accident, American golfer Ben Hogan won the U.S. Open.



Ben Hogan, byname of William Benjamin Hogan, (born August 13, 1912, Dublin, Texas, U.S.—died July 25, 1997, Fort Worth, Texas), American professional golfer who became supreme in the decade after World War II. His exceptional will and rigorous practice routine enabled him to play winning golf after an automobile accident (1949) in which he was injured so severely that he was not expected to walk again.


Ben Hogan
Hogan became a golf professional in 1929. Before his injury he won the U.S. Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA) Championship twice (1946 and 1948) and the U.S. Open (1948). He also was a three-time winner (1940, 1941, and 1948) of the Vardon Trophy, awarded annually for the lowest stroke average in PGA-approved tournaments. Hogan was the leading money winner on the PGA tours of 1940, 1941, 1942, 1946, and 1948.

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Featured Biography

Jacques Cousteau
French ocean explorer and engineer




Jacques Cousteau, in full Jacques-Yves Cousteau, (born June 11, 1910, Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France—died June 25, 1997, Paris), French naval officer, ocean explorer, and coinventor of the Aqua-Lung, known for his extensive underseas investigations.
After graduating from France’s naval academy in 1933, he was commissioned a second lieutenant. However, his plans to become a navy pilot were undermined by an almost fatal automobile accident in which both his arms were broken. Cousteau, not formally trained as a scientist, was drawn to undersea exploration by his love both of the ocean and of underwater diving. In 1943 Cousteau and French engineer Émile Gagnan developed the first fully automatic compressed-air Aqua-Lung (scuba apparatus), which allowed divers to swim freely underwater for extended periods of time. Cousteau helped to invent many other tools useful to oceanographers, including the diving saucer (an easily maneuverable small submarine for seafloor exploration), in 1959, and a number of underwater cameras.

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