Ring any BELLS?
It happened on Christmas in Arkansas: A quiz for good readers
Today we present a Christmas quiz inspired by the occasional Monday Style feature Remember when, Arkansas? Only it’s not much like Remember when. In this multiple choice quiz featuring random events that occurred on some Christmas Eve, Day or Night in Arkansas, we test your powers of deduction rather than your knowledge of the recent past.
All these questions and clues refer to matters reported in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette or its antecedent newspapers, but whether you remember them or not is not the question. The question is, can you reason your way to the right answer?
This could become a party game, something to occupy family time between your ritual sacrifice of wrapping paper and the attack on Mom’s peppered ham. Number your paper from 1 to 12. As you read each question, write the answer you selected next to that number. When you get to the end, stop. Look for the answers on Page 6D.
1 On Dec. 25, 1837 … a. Arkansas joined the Union. b. Arkansas became the 25th state in the United States. c. M.H. Eastman posted an ad in the Arkansas State Gazette informing citizens of Little Rock he would open a school for the instruction of scholars in the various branches of an English and classical education.
2 On Christmas Day 1862 … a. Confederate forces led by Gen. Thomas Hindman ate a lunch of reconciliation with Union troops under Gen. James Blunt at Prairie Grove. b. The New York Times reported from Helena that Confederate government agents were willing to sell unlimited quantities of cotton if along with cash one handed over salt and quinine. c. Union forces led by Gen. Thomas Hindman ate a lunch of reconciliation with Confederate troops under Gen. James Blunt at Prairie Grove.
3 On Dec. 25, 1926 … a. Vance Randolph,
who documented Ozark folklore and lived in the hills until his death at 88 in 1980, was born in Pittsburg, Kan.
b. The Arkansas Gazette reported that Calvin and Grace Coolidge gave their pet raccoon Rebecca a collar inscribed “Rebecca, Raccoon of the White House.”
c. Orval Eugene Faubus, a future governor of Arkansas named for American politician and poet Eugene McCarthy, was born in Phillips County.
4 On Christmas Eve 1944 …
a. A funnel cloud spilled live fish on the Faulkner County courthouse lawn in Morrilton.
b. About 60 residents protested a plan to merge the State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind in North Little Rock.
c. Billy Joe Rains, 18, of Midland, died when a stick of dynamite he was holding between his legs exploded while he and four friends were flinging explosives from their car in a celebratory manner. Freeman Howard, seated next to Rains, was badly burned; the other occupants were unharmed.
5 On Dec. 25, 1993 …
a. The menu for President Bill Clinton’s first Christmas dinner in the White House repeated the first family’s first Thanksgiving feast there: turkey, two kinds of dressing, cornbread, giblet gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry mold, a relish tray, fruit salad, cranberry bread and pecan and pumpkin pies.
b. Anglers reported catching piranha in the Felsenthal Wildlife Refuge.
c. Arkansas native Mary Steenburgen announced she would film a movie about the last days of the Rock Island Railroad in her hometown, Pine Bluff.
6 On Dec. 25, 1994 …
a. Gov. Jim Guy Tucker appointed Andree Layton Roaf of Pine Bluff to fill the unexpired term of Supreme Court Justice Steele Hays. The mother of pro football player William Roaf was the 17th woman and 10th Black person to serve on the state high court.
b The Democrat-Gazette editorial page once again published editor Paul Greenberg’s Pulitzer Prize winning Christmas missive, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
c. About 300 lovers of Christmas lights held a candlelight vigil at the darkened gate of the Osborne family home on Cantrell Road in Little Rock, where Jennings Osborne’s multimillion-bulb display was not illuminated.
7 On Dec. 25, 2004 … a. Fistfights broke out at Historic Arkansas Museum during the annual Nog Off when two cooks each claimed the other had copied their eggnog recipe. b. Otus the Head Cat, a humor column supposedly written by a dead cat, reran a 1992 column claiming that a 1989 photo of Gov. Bill Clinton shaking hands with the newspaper’s Otus mascot during the proclamation of Adopt a Cat Month had been added to the permanent collection of the Clinton Presidential Library.
c. North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays held a news conference announcing his acquisition of the World War II Q-ship USS Irene Forsyte (IX-93) for the city’s Inland Maritime Armada.
8 On Dec. 25, 1953 …
a. Holiday tidings crept into municipal court when a police quartet sang “Home, Sweet Home” to 27 city prisoners. The prisoners joined in singing religious numbers. Afterward, Judge Harper Harb gave the inmates sacks of candy, fruit and smokes, and released them. b. The first Little Rock Ugly Sweater 5K drew 25 runners who raced on a new course that included the Big Dam Bridge and the north and south legs of the Arkansas River Trail. c. Andrew Jefferson “Ace” Collins, author of more than 90 published books, was interviewed by late night TV host Johnny Carson, who loved Collins’ latest novel, “The Fruitcake Murders.”
9 For Christmas 1929 …
a. A version of “Silver Bells” recorded by Jimmy Wakely of Mineola with Margaret Whiting climbed the pop charts. Wakely was a country and western singer and actor sometimes dismissed as a “low budget Gene Autry.”
b. Memphis native George Hamilton, an actor hailed as looking “dashing,” played Santa Claus in the movie “A Very Cool Christmas.”
c. Julia Burnell “Bernie” Smade Babcock presented her Museum of Natural History and Antiquities, then occupying a storefront on Main Street, to the city of Little Rock. In time this museum became the Museum of Discovery.
10 On Dec. 25, 1922 …
a. Little Rock’s first Broadway Bridge was still under construction over the Arkansas River, but work had advanced enough that local officials, engineers and construction company bosses could drive across it for the first time.
b. John Paul “Pete” Caldwell (1908–1976), a well-known banker and community leader at Parkdale in Ashley County who dropped out of college during the Great Depression, took up carving woodblocks to make Christmas cards to mail to his many friends. c. Civic leader Maud Crawford vanished from her home in Camden.
11 On Christmas Eve 1864 …
a. Lost Forty Brewing, named for a 40-acre forest in Calhoun County, opened its first taproom/restaurant in Little Rock.
b. Frederick Hanger, whose family lived in a two-story house at 1010 Scott St. for 78 years, invented a prototype of the wire coat hanger that bears his name while trying to fish his wife’s lorgnette out from behind the Christmas tree.
c. Confederate guerilla fighter Howell A. “Doc” Rayburn dressed as a woman to infiltrate a Christmas dance hosted by federal officers. Afterward Rayburn stampeded the horses in the federal corral, giving each man of his command a horse for Christmas.
12 Early on Christmas Day 1955 … a. Outside Arkansas’ largest nightclub, the Silver Moon in Newport, where Sonny Burgess had been singing lead vocals for the Moonlighters, Francis “Fats” Callis’ final drunken conflict with police ended when Jackson County Sheriff Jake Winningham shot him squarely between the eyes.
b. Descendants of the First Nebraska Cavalry rode down the center line of U.S. 67 to re-enact the occupation of Batesville, where their horses were soon joined by horses of descendants of the 11th Missouri Cavalry Regiment and the 4th Arkansas Mounted Infantry.
c. Five North Little Rock taxpayers who objected to paying holiday overtime to excavation crews chained themselves to the Funland train, impeding the search for Civil War-era tunnels under Burns Park.