Question: What is a jalopy?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What does it mean when you say “The Jig is Up?
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History for 12/27/2023
Birthdays: Johannes Kepler, Linwood Dunn, Marlene Dietrich, Louis Pasteur, Oscar Levant, Sidney Greenstreet, Anna Russell, Dr. William Masters of Masters & Johnson, Leslie Maguire, John Amos, Tovah Feldshuh, Heather O’Rourke, Cokie Roberts, Bollywood star Salman Khan, Gerard Depardieu is 76

In Bhutan- Happy Day of the Nine Evils.

Feast Day of Saint John the Apostle.

1784- Francis Asbury was ordained the first Bishop of the Methodist Church in America.

1820- John Quincy Adams wrote a friend that he was sad that Washington DC didn’t have any good monuments yet. It could use one to George Washington and a cathedral like Westminster Abbey. If John Q. could only see DC today, it’s a rock garden of statuary.

1831- Charles Darwin sets sail for the Pacific on board the HMS Beagle. The observations he made of exotic species while on this voyage formed the basis of his theories on evolution and natural selection.

1869- RIEL'S REBELLION- The Red River wilderness of Manitoba were home to French-Indian trappers called the Metis. When the Hudson's Bay Company turned their jurisdiction over to the British Empire and English protestant surveyors and settlers began to arrive, the Catholic Metis banded together and declared independence.

On this day they proclaimed Louis Riel "President of the Provisional Republic of Prince Rupertland and the Northwest Frontier"! They had a militia and newspaper-the New Nation. Louis Riel convened the first bi-lingual non-sectarian parliament. At this time the Governor General of Canada was still referring to his French and Indian subjects as 'Un-Britons '.
The U.S. State Department seriously considered recognizing the Metis to curb British-Canadian expansion to the Pacific, but ultimately decided to stay neutral. In summer 1870 when a British army paddled in bateaux up stream to attack Riel at Ft. Gary (present day Winnipeg), The Metis Republic dissolved and Riel fled across the border. Louis Riel returned in 1885 lead an uprising in Saskatchewan but was finally caught and executed.

1887- Beginning of the Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

1892- In New York City, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine started construction (and is still not finished..) The largest Gothic nave in the world, work was stopped during the Depression and resumed in the 1970s. Part of the problem re-starting construction was finding some Gothic medieval-style stonemasons who were willing to re-locate.

1900- Temperance crusader Carrie Nation staged her first public axe attack on a saloon, the bar at the Carey Hotel in Witchita, Kansas. She shattered a large mirror behind the bar and threw rocks at a titillating picture of Cleopatra nude bathing. She called her actions not vandalism, but “hatchetation”.

1903- The Barbershop Quartet standard “Sweet Adeline” sung for the first time. It was written in praise of opera star Adelina Patti.

1904- PETER PAN, OR, THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T GROW UP, a play by James M. Barrie, opened at the Duke of York Theatre in London. Barrie reserved seats in the opening night performance for orphaned children who laughed and cheered all night.He placed the kids all amongst the London theatre critics. Michael Llewelyn Davies, the little boy Barrie befriended who was the basis for Pan, used to say:” I am not Peter Pan. Mr Barrie is.” Barrie stipulated in his will that all monies earned from the play go to the Great St. Ormond Street Home for Boys, where he was raised. Peter Pan also made the name Wendy popular for girls. Barrie said he got from “Fwendy-Wendy” a nickname he had in the home. J. M. Barrie once said to H.G. Wells:” It’s all right and good to write books, but can you wiggle your ears?”

1927-"ShowBoat" debuted at the Ziegfeld theater. Based on a novel by Edna Ferber, the musical was written by Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein. The play was written for black baritone Paul Robeson but he could not appear in it until 1932.” Ol’ Man River” became his signature song.

1934- The Shah declared the country known as Persia would now be called Iran.

1935- Radio City Music Hall opened. The Art Deco masterpiece was for many years the largest indoor theater in the world, seating over 6,000.

1940- Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler announced their separation.

1942-THE SMOLENSK COMMITTEES- The Nazis began a recruiting campaign in the vast camps of Russian POWs to set up an Anti-Communist Russian Army. They had good results the previous April recruiting among the Soviet-hating nationalist Cossack groups of the Don, Tartar, Kuban and the Ukraine. These men hated Stalin worse than Hitler, so they signed up. Anti-Communist Russian armies eventually numbered as high as 100,000 men under their generals Vlasov, Komorov and Bach-Zelewski. After the war they tried to surrender to the Americans but by secret agreement with Moscow, they were all repatriated to Russia. Most were executed or died in Stalin’s labor camps.

1943- The movie The Song of Bernadette premiered.

1945- Eleven nations signed the Bretton Woods agreement creating the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

1945- Korea had been a Japanese colony since 1910. After Japan’s defeat in WW2 Russia and America agreed to divide occupied Korea into two parts along the 38th parallel, and administer it for 5 years until regulated elections could decide the peninsula’s future. That never happened, because before the five year time limit was up North Korea and South Korea had each set up rival governments. The division stands to this day.

1947- “ Hey Kids, What Time is It?” The "Howdy-Doody Show” debuted on NBC. Buffalo Bob, Howdy and Clarabell the Clown, also known as the Puppet Playhouse. The live audience of children ws called the Peanut Gallery. Gumby was debuted on the show in 1957.

1949- Happy Indonesian Independence Day.

1951- The Crosley car goes into service for the post office in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is the funny little jeep with the steering wheel on the right side, so the mail deliverer didn’t have to get out of his vehicle to reach every curbside mailbox.

1968- Apollo 8 landed safely on Earth after being the first ship to reach the Moon and come back. The brought back spectacular photos of the Earth from space. One of the three astronauts was also the first to barf in deep space, but they aren’t saying which.

1978- King Juan Carlos ratified Spain’s first democratic constitution in 50 years.

1985- Terrorists organized by Abu Nidal open fire in airports in Vienna and Rome. Sixteen tourists killed. When White House aide Oliver North was giving testimony about the Iran Contra Scandal he fixated upon the threat posed by Abu Nidal as though it was his personal vendetta. In 2001 while the world was distracted by the events of 9-11, Saddam Hussein’s police quietly arrested and executed Abu Nidal in Baghdad.

2007- Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. She had been leading the opposition to the government of General Pervhez Musharraf.

2016- Actress-screenwriter Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia in Star Wars), died of cardiac arrest due to sleep apnea while flying from London to Los Angeles. She stopped breathing 15 minutes to landing. The coroner’s report said it was cardiac arrest/deferred. She was 60. Her mother Debbie Reynolds had a stroke and died the next day at age 84.
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Yesterday’s question: What does it mean when you say “The Jig is Up?

Answer: From an old Elizabethan slang for the completion of a lively dance. It came to mean your plans have been found out or foiled. The Dance is Over.