Milestones: December 21, 2023

December 21, 2023 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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LOCKERBIE — A PRE-CHRISTMAS TRAGEDY UNFOLDED WHEN Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York exploded in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, in a terror attack. The explosion and resulting crash killed all 243 passengers and 16 crew members aboard, as well 11 Lockerbie residents on the ground. A bomb hidden inside an audio cassette player detonated in the cargo area when the plane was at an altitude of 31,000 feet. The disaster, which became the subject of Britain’s largest criminal investigation, was believed to be an attack against the United States, as 189 of the victims were American. The attack was believed to be in retaliation for either (or both) of two incidents: the 1986 U.S. air strikes against Libya, in which leader Muammar al-Qaddafi’s young daughter was a 1988 incident, in which the U.S. mistakenly shot down an Iran Air commercial flight over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 people.

After a 15-year back-and-forth between the United States and Libya over sanctions put in place, Libya in 2003 finally accepted responsibility for the bombing, but without remorse for the deaths. Libya agreed to pay each victim’s family approximately $8 million in restitution in what that country’s prime minister called “the price for peace.”

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FIRST PLAYED WITH PEACH BASKETS — THE GAME OF BASKETBALL WAS PLAYED FOR THE FIRST TIME ON DEC. 20, 1891, and a Canadian is credited with the idea. James Naismith, age 30 at the time, invented a game based on his 13 Rules, in which two competing teams, each with nine players, throw a soccer ball into a peach basket that had been attached to a balcony ten feet up. The teams testing out the game were students at the International Young Men’s Christian Association Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. Naismith had left his athletic directorship job at McGill University in Montreal to become a physical education teacher at the YMCA International Training School. He later told WOR-AM Radio in New York City that he invented the game to fill a need: keeping unruly Y students in line.

During the 1890s, the first organized collegiate basketball games were played, but with two different sets of rules.

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FRENCH PRESIDENT— CHARLES DE GAULLE WAS OVERWHELMINGLY ELECTED PRESIDENT OF FRANCE’S 5TH REPUBLIC ON DEC. 21, 1958. De Gaulle, a veteran of the First World War, had fled to London following the June 1940 Nazi armistice signing with French premier Henri Pétain, the same month in which Germany invaded Paris. De Gaulle then organized the Free French forces, which won victories in North Africa. He was named head of the French government in exile in June 1944. He then returned the favor to the Nazis by triumphantly entering Paris on Aug. 26, 1944. He was named provisional president. Disillusioned, he left that post but was called out of retirement when the French citizenry considered him the only true leader who could quash a revolt in the colony of Algeria.

Although he was given dictatorial power, de Gaulle chose to have a new constitution drafted, which was approved in a referendum in September 1958. During his time as president, he granted independence to Algeria.

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FILM OF ITS TIME — THE MOVIE ‘THE GRADUATE,” starring Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft and Katharine Ross, opened in two New York City theaters on Dec. 21, 1967: the Coronet on Third Avenue and the Lincoln Art Theater on Broadway. A statement of its times in a decade of upheaval and loosening mores, “The Graduate” focused on a recent college graduate from an affluent family who seemingly has found no direction for his life. He is seduced by an unhappily-married older woman (Bancroft) but then falls in love for real with Bancroft’s daughter (Ross).

“The Graduate” also produced another star — a bright-red luxury car. The Alfa Romeo that Hoffman’s character, Benjamin Braddock, drives became very popular in real life, also because of its design, “a two-seat convertible roadster,” with glass-covered headlights, and a “classic scallop” running down the side.

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‘KING OF THE JUKEBOXES’ — JAZZ ARTIST LOUIS JORDAN’S SINGLE, THE FAST-PACED AND HUMOROUS “AIN’T NOBODY HERE BUT US CHICKENS,” premiered on Dec. 21, 1946, on the R&B charts. His hit made it to #1 along with the song, “Let the Good Times Roll.” During the 1940s Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five launched fifty-four singles on the R&B charts; a third of these (18) songs hit number one. Louis Jordan introduced jump blues and boogie-woogie to the public and was called King of the Jukeboxes.

Louis Jordan, who was born in 1908, began playing the saxophone at age seven. As his father was the bandleader of the famed Rabbit Foot Minstrels, young Louis often toured with them. He later majored in music at Arkansas Baptist College.

See previous milestones, here.