History Book: An overlooked founding document

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, November 21st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Next up on The World and Everything in It: the WORLD History Book. Today, the 30th anniversary of a devastating series of tornadoes that hit a major city. Plus, the longest continually running play debuted 70 years ago this week. But first, the contract that laid the foundation for our country’s constitutional republic. Here’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: Thanksgiving is just a few days away, so let’s start aboard the Mayflower as the Pilgrims arrive on this continent in 1620. Their charter from King James grants them his permission to join the Colony of Virginia in their search for religious freedom.

But storms have pushed them off course. So they land instead in what’s now the hook of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Provisions are running short, and it is late in the year. So the Pilgrims decide to winter over right where they are—but some of the non-sepratist passengers known as “strangers” say that invalidates their agreement. They threaten to exercise their liberty and leave.

The Pilgrims decide to establish their own government in hopes of preventing the split. They pledge allegiance to the king, but determine to rule themselves for the common good. Forty one men sign the agreement on November 11th, 1620. It becomes known as the Mayflower Compact.

Audio here from a Heritage Foundation presentation celebrating the 400th anniversary of the document:

MCCLAY: In that document, they committed themselves to…covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic …

Wilfred McClay is history professor at Hillsdale College.

MCCLAY: …this would turn out to be one of the most primal constitutional moments in history, one that established the principle of self-rule that would be the heartbeat of the American Republic, and its free institutions.

One hundred years ago, governor Calvin Coolidge said the Mayflower Compact was the “foundation of liberty” as it was democratic, acknowledged liberty under law and order, and gave each person the right to participate in the government—while at the same time promising to be obedient to its laws.

Once again, historian McClay:

MCCLAY: … The signatories were following the same pattern of self-government that New Englanders would use in organizing their churches. Just as in the congregational churches, ordinary believers came together to create self-governing churches. So with the Mayflower Compact, a group of ordinary people came together to create their own government, and in doing so asserted their right to do so.

The original compact document is lost to history. But three versions of the text exist from the 17th century. Two of them, written by William Bradford, including one from his journal. That copy is in a vault at the State Library of Massachusetts.

Next, November 25th, 1952. Mystery writer Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap opens in London's West End. It’s based on a radio drama she’d written for the queen five years earlier to mark her 80th birthday. After that broadcast Christie decided she’d turn it into a short story.

AUDIO BOOK: Mollie Davis stepped back into the road and looked up at the newly painted board by the gate: Monksville Manor Guest House…

It was published in the United States as Three Blind Mice in May 1948. Audio here from an undated audio version of the story posted to YouTube:

AUDIO BOOK: So the great experiment was set underway with advertisements put in the local paper and The Times and various answers came…and now today, the first of the guests were to arrive…

The story begins with a murder and then switches scenes as guests begin to arrive.

AUDIO BOOK: The only thing that was wrong was the weather…for the last two days it had been bitterly cold and now the snow was beginning to fall. She hoped anxiously that the pipes wouldn’t freeze. It would be too bad if everything went wrong just as they started…

The guests get snowed in and a police officer arrives with questions about the earlier murder—linked to the manor by a notebook found at the crime scene. Soon another murder happens—this time at the manor—and the race is on to discover who the murderer before he, or she, strikes again. Each of the guests have secrets that cast suspicion.

Christie decided to turn the short story into a play. She asked that it not be published in the United Kingdom as long as it continued to run on the stage. Little did she know then how long that would be. The play ran without interruption until March 16th, 2020, when it was shut down due to COVID restrictions. Mousetrap re-opened last year. It has been performed at the St Martin’s Theatre more than 28,500 times—selling over 10 million tickets over the last 70 years.

The play has an unexpected ending, and the program asks the audience not to reveal that ending after leaving the theater. Though if you really want to know, plot synopsis are available online.

And finally today, a somber anniversary.

WEATHER WARNING: The National Weather Service in League City has issued a tornado warning…

On November 21st, 1992, a deadly tornado strikes Houston, Texas.

NEWSCAST: Good evening, everyone. Hundreds of Houstonians are without homes tonight. Thousands of others without power after a series of twisters struck randomly around the Harris County area today.

It is the beginning of one of the largest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history.

NEWSCAST: And what a weekend this has been for the 1000s of Houstonians touched by the devastating series of tornadoes the cleanup is just beginning today.

A cluster of six tornadoes hit the Houston area. Later the same day, an F4 tornado strikes near Brandon, Mississippi. It stays on the ground for nearly a hundred miles—volunteer fireman Alton Webb is one of the first on the scene.

WEBB: Everything basically was just gone. I mean, it was just just nothing but debris everywhere. I could hear people calling for help. Now that’ll put a chill down your spine, that's for sure because it's just you know, you don't know what to do first…

The weather system spawns at least 95 tornadoes over a 41-hour period—hitting Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, North and South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland.

By the time it’s over, 26 people are dead, 641 injured, and leaving behind over $300 million in personal property damage.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book, I’m Paul Butler.

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