Previous Installment in this Series: Bummer Halloween
January 3, 2014: Islamist extremists burn the Christian books of Al-SaŹ¼e Library in Tripoli, Lebanon.
January 5, 2015: Danish martial artist/model/actor Khan Bonfils is rehearsing for a London stage production of Dante’s Inferno when he collapses suddenly. Paramedics are unable to revive him, and the 42-year-old is pronounced dead at the scene.
January 7, 2015: Two Islamist extremists target the headquarters of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Twelve people are killed, including five cartoonists and two editors.
January 8, 1970: Actor George Ostroska, playing the lead role in a St. Paul, Minnesota, production of Macbeth, dies of a heart attack at the beginning of the play’s second act. Ostroska is 32 years old.
January 9, 1946: Poet Countee Cullen dies at age 42 of high blood pressure and uremic poisoning (kidney failure).
January 11, 1879: The Birmingham Central Library in England catches fire and loses about 49,000 of its 50,000 books and other circulating materials.
January 12, 1965: Author Lorraine Hansberry dies of pancreatic cancer at the age of 34.
January 14, 1898: Mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodson, who wrote under the name Lewis Carroll, dies of pneumonia while suffering from influenza.
January 19, 1729: Restoration-era playwright William Congreve dies of complications from internal injuries he suffered in a September 1728 carriage accident.
January 23, 1943: Algonquin Round Table wit Alexander Woollcott, who regularly performed on the radio, appeared in a panel discussion about Adolph Hitler on CBS Radio. Listeners noticed he was uncharacteristically quiet during the discussion.
In fact, Woollcott was having a heart attack. He wrote “I am sick” on a pad to paper to let the other participants know he needed medical attention. He died in the hospital a few hours later.
January 28, 1960: African-American folklorist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston dies from heart disease after suffering a stroke.
January 29, 1933: Poet Sara Teasdale overdoses on sleeping pills, an apparent suicide. She is 48 years old.
January 30, 2006: 55-year-old playwright Wendy Wasserstein dies of lymphoma.
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