Carousel (1945) is the second musical by the team of Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics), after their hit Oklahoma! (1943). It was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting the setting to the U.S. state of Maine. Carousel barker Billy Bigelow's romance with millworker Julie Jordan cost them their jobs; after he attempts a robbery that goes tragically wrong, he is given a chance to make things right. The show includes the songs "If I Loved You", "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" and "You'll Never Walk Alone". It opened on Broadway on April 19, 1945, and was an immediate hit with both critics and audiences. It initially ran there for 890 performances, and duplicated its success in the West End in 1950. It has been repeatedly revived and recorded. A 1992 production by Nicholas Hytner enjoyed success in London, in New York, and on tour. Rodgers later wrote that Carousel was his favorite of all his musicals. In 1999, Time magazine named it the best musical of the 20th century.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carousel_(musical)

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1111:

Henry V, the last ruler of the Salian dynasty, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperor

1829:

The Roman Catholic Relief Act was granted royal assent, removing the most substantial restrictions on Catholics in the United Kingdom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Relief_Act_1829

1943:

World War II: German news announced the discovery of a mass grave in Katyn, Russia, of Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet forces, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government-in-exile and the USSR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

1958:

In the midst of the Cold War, American pianist Van Cliburn won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Cliburn

1984:

Indian forces launched Operation Meghdoot, a preemptive attack on the disputed Siachen Glacier region of Kashmir, triggering a military conflict with Pakistan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siachen_conflict

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

magnality: A great or wonderful thing; a marvel. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/magnality

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights; that confidence is every where the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no farther, our confidence may go; and let the honest advocate of confidence read the Alien and Sedition Acts, and say if the Constitution has not been wise in fixing limits to the government it created, and whether we should be wise in destroying those limits; let him say what the government is, if it be not a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred on the President, and the President of our choice has assented to and accepted, over the friendly strangers, to whom the mild spirit of our country and its laws had pledged hospitality and protection; that the men of our choice have more respected the bare suspicions of the President than the solid rights of innocence, the claims of justification, the sacred force of truth, and the forms and substance of law and justice. In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.   --Thomas Jefferson https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson