Tuesday, December 27, 2011

TODAY IN HISTORY

DECEMBER 27
1932
John D. Rockefeller Jr. opens Radio City Music Hall in New York City as a "palace for the people," with the aim of offering affordable entertainment during the Great Depression. The over-the-top opening night performance features Ray Bolger and Martha Graham, but the Hall is now best known for its high-kicking Rockettes and the annual Christmas spectacular. The art deco style building remains the largest indoor theater in the world.:

1831: Twenty-two-year-old British naturalist Charles Darwin goes aboard the HMS Beagle, departing from Plymouth, England, bound for the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans. During the five-year voyage, Darwin conducted much of the research contributing to his theory of evolution by natural selection.

1900: Temperance advocate Carrie A. Nation smashes up a saloon for the first time, destroying the bar at the upscale Carey Hotel in Wichita, Kan. Although Nation was later jailed for causing hundreds of dollars worth of damage, she would continue her anti-alcohol "hatchetations" around Kansas, using her trademark hatchet to take the enforcement of the state constitution's prohibition of alcohol into her own hands.
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