Quiz: In Dicken’s Christmas Carol, how many ghosts appear to Scrooge?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is a jalopy?
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History for 12/28/2023
birthdays: Woodrow Wilson, Robert Sessions, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Hildegarde Neff, Edgar Winter, Stan Lee, Martin Branner the creator of Winnie Winkle, Johnny Otis, Martin Milner (1-Adam-12), Lew Ayres, Lou Jacobi, Terri Garber, Denzel Washington is 69, Maggie Smith is 89, Sienna Miller is 42, Rick Farmiloe is 67

Feast of the Innocents-commemorates the Massacre of the Innocents. King Herod the Great had navigated the kingdom of Israel through the Roman Civil Wars and used his friendship with Augustus to gain favorable status within the empire. But as he grew elderly he became increasingly paranoid. He even executed one of his own sons who he thought was plotting against him. So, when he was told a king was born in Nazareth, he ordered all the first born of that town slain. This is what made Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt.
In Latin American countries this is a kind of April Fools Day, the victim of a practical joke being proclaimed an "innocent".

1065- English King Edward the Confessor dedicated a new abbey church west of London. Since in those days a church was also called a minster, it was known as the West-minster Abbey. (St. Pauls is the East-minster). King Edward himself was too sick to attend the ceremony and died a few days later.

1598- The troupe of actors called The Lord Chamberlains Men was tired of negotiating with their landlord who held the lease on Richard Burbage’s theatre at Blackheath. Burbage was dead and they suspected the landlord had other plans for the property. So this night the actors moved through the snow and slowly dismantled the theatre and reassembled the pieces on the Southbank of the Thames. The completed theatre was christened the New Globe Theatre, where many of William Shakespeare’s greatest works premiered. And Will was one of those actors.

1694- Queen Mary II of England, one half of the husband & wife team William & Mary, died at age 32. She had helped her Protestant Dutch husband overthrow her Catholic father King James II.

1734- ROB ROY- Scottish nationalist guerrilla Robert McGregor, called Rob Roy, died peacefully of old age in his cottage in the Highlands. Made famous by Sir Walter Scot’s novel about him, he spent his last hours making peace with former enemies. His last wish was for a bagpiper to be brought into his room and pipe a tune as he passed away. Hoot-Man!

1793- Thomas Paine, philosopher of the American Revolution, was arrested by Robespierre's Reign of Terror in Paris. English born Paine was kind of an eighteenth century Che Guevarra. He went to Paris to help spread revolution. The American ambassador, Elbridge Gerry, hated Tom, so he took his sweet time about getting him out of the guillotine's shadow. But with the diplomatic pressure of James Monroe he eventually convinced the Revolutionary authorities to release him. While in prison in the Luxembourg Palace, Tom Paine wrote the Age of Reason and had a love affair with pretty inmate Murial Alette, who was arrested for being the mistress of an aristocrat.

1832- Southern states rights advocate John C. Calhoun resigned as Vice President under Andrew Jackson. Calhoun felt “King Andrew” was going to betray the South and force them to give up slavery. Calhoun continued on in government as senator from South Carolina. He was the first sitting Vice President ever to resign, but not the last.

1846- Iowa becomes a state.

1847- Peace Conference of Guadalupe Hidalgo began to try to end the U.S war with Mexico. Diplomat Nicholas Trist was given the tricky assignment of alone seeking out the Mexican authorities, although their government structure was in chaos at the time, and convincing them to sign away half their national territory while hostile American armies roamed their heartland.

1869- CHEWING GUM- William Semple and Thomas Adams of Mt. Vernon Ohio received a patent for chewing gum. Since early times frontiersmen and Indians had the habit of chewing on a piece of pine resin or sap. A 9,000 year old chewed piece of gum was found in Sweden in a glacier in 1993. As early as 1842 Charles Curtis was selling spruce chewing gum from his home in Bangor Maine.
In 1869 a Staten Island photographer named Thomas Adams made friends with exiled Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, he of The Alamo fame. Adams noticed the old general didn’t smoke, but he liked to chew a plug of tree sap he called “Chicle”. It was an ancient custom, going back to the Mayans. Adams took the chicle and put a candy shell around it, and became rich on the invention of Gum Balls. Santa Anna hoped the invention would finance his return to power in Mexico City but that never occurred. Gumball machines appeared in 1918, Bubble Gum in 1928.

1895- THE BIRTHDAY OF CINEMA- In Paris at the Grande Cafe des Capucines the Lumiere brothers combined Edison's kinetoscope using George Eastman’s roll film with a magic lantern projector and showed a motion picture to an audience in a theater. Back in the U.S. Thomas Edison thought the idea of projecting film in a theater was foolish and would never catch on. They called their device a Cinematograph, hence the word Cinema is born. The screening included dancers and people leaving a factory but the biggest reaction out of the audience was from shots of waves crashing on a rocky beach. The audience in the front row jumped for fear of getting wet.

1896- THE JAMESON RAID- The German-Dutch Boers of the Transvaal had led a quasi-independent status in South Africa that annoyed British Empire builders like Sir Cecil Rhodes, the DeBeers diamond millionaire who had created the nation of Rhodesia, today called Zimbabwe. "I am not religious, but I always felt God would like me to paint all of Africa in the colors of the Union Jack." Cecil Rhodes financed a freelance military coup by 70 pro-British mercenaries led by his right hand man Col. Jameson. The attack failed and embarrassed the British Government. The German public was outraged at the bald arrogance of the attempt while the British called Jameson a hero. The tensions aggravated by the incident would result in the Boer War two years later and eventually the First World War and the independence of South Africa. In retrospect Winston Churchill said that the decline of the British Empire may have begun with the Jameson Raid.

1897- Edmond Rostands famous play Cyrano de Bergerac premiered in Paris. There really lived a poet-duelist in the 1640’s named Cyrano de Bergerac-Servigan but little was known about him. Rostand created the hopelessly lovesick big nosed hero who helps another man romance his girlfriend Roxanne.

1908- A massive earthquake devastates Messina Sicily and causes a tsunami tidal wave that causes more destruction in Sicily and the Calabrian coast. More than 100,000 died. It was the largest quake recorded in Europe, an estimated 7.5 on the Richter scale.

1928- Last recording of Ma Rainey, The Mother of the Blues.

1941- Paramount Pictures called Max Fleischer to their business offices in New York. There they told him his contract with the studio would not be renewed and he was fired. Paramount had seized direct control of Max Fleischer Productions in May and put Max and Dave on notice. Dave Fleischer took the hint and left around Thanksgiving. Max was probably holding out that if Hoppity Goes to Town was a hit he might still work out an accommodation. But such was not to be.

1944- On The Town, a musical written by Betty Comden & Adolf Green and young composer Leonard Bernstein premiered in NY.

1945- In Los Angeles, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky and his wife became U.S. citizens. Actor Edward G. Robinson was his friend and witness.

1948- Mahmud Nokrashi-Pasha the Prime Minister of Egypt was assassinated.

1950- The first stretch of the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles was dedicated.

1951- The British film A Christmas Carol with the memorable performance of Alastair Sim as Scrooge premiered in the USA.

1958- Cuban Communist forces under Che Guevara won the Battle of Santa Clara. It was a decisive battle in Fidel Castro's campaign to overthrow the dictator Fulgensio Batista. Today the remains of both Fidel Castro and Che Guevara rest in Santa Clara.

1963-Happy 60th Birthday the Daleks. In the first season of the BBC TV show Dr. Who, this day Dr. Who first met the Daleks.

1968- The Beatles White Album goes to number one on the pop charts.

1973-Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book “The Gulag Archipelago” first published in Paris. The exposing of the Soviet prison camp system was a great success in the west. It gave the word for prison camp-“Gulag” into popular parlance.

1973- Pres. Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law. It saved animals like Bald Eagles, American Buffalo, Grizzly Bears and Gray Whales from extinction.

1983- Dennis Wilson was the original drummer of the Beach Boys, but he had a pretty bad drinking and drug habit. He was once friendly with the Manson Family.
Taking time off from rehab for Christmas he and some friends sat on a yacht doing more drugs and booze near Marquesas Pier. Wilson recalled this very spot was where after breaking up with his first wife he threw her mementos overboard. He wondered if he could get them back and started “pearl-diving “, i.e.-diving holding your breath without any scuba equipment. But being stoned, he miscalculated the depth and drowned.
Dennis Wilson was 37. Of all the Beach Boys he was the only one who liked to surf.

1987- The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles premiered.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a jalopy?

Answer: A jalopy is a beat-up old car that somehow still managed to run. Usually when teenagers could acquire an old Model T Ford cheaply.