More Unfortunate Literary Happenings of Past Januaries

Read last year's post "Bummer New Year: Unfortunate (Mostly Literary) Happenings of Past Januaries."

Here are only a few more updates I've added over the past year:

January 6, 1977: Natalina Maria Vittoria “Dolly” Sinatra, age 79, the mother of singer/actor Frank Sinatra, dies when the private Learjet she’s taking to visit her famous son in Las Vegas crashes into the San Gorgonio Wilderness in southern California. Mrs. Sinatra’s friend Mrs. Anthony Carboni is also killed, along with the jet’s two pilots.

January 13, 1908: One hundred seventy-one people die as a result of a fire that started during the intermission of a stage play at Rhoads Opera House in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. The audience was in its seats to watch a Magic Lantern show. A Magic Lantern machine was a technology somewhat in between a slide show and a movie projector, with slide-like images that gradually faded into the next image.

The gases used to run the Magic Lantern caught fire after someone knocked over one of the kerosene lamps being used to light the stage. The dead include 170 audience members and one firefighter killed while responding. This tragedy spurs the Pennsylvania state legislature to pass a variety of safety laws governing indoor public spaces.

Incidentally, the playwright of the drama being performed was Harriet Earhart Monroe. Mrs. Monroe was not present, but her sister Della Earhart Meyers was on stage as the narrator or chorus of the drama. Della Earhart Myers was among those who perished. Harriet and Della were the sisters of Samuel Stanton Earhart, who was the father of aviator Amelia Earhart.

January 14, 1986: Actress Donna Reed dies of pancreatic cancer. She’s been diagnosed with the disease only three months earlier.

January 15, 2018: Limerick, Ireland’s alternative rock band The Cranberries’s lead singer Dolores O’Riordan dies at age 46 after becoming intoxicated with Champagne and five small bottles of liquor and then accidentally drowning in a London hotel bathtub.

January 26, 2010: Boa Sr, an approximately 65-year-old woman of the Bo people on her mother’s side and the Jeru people on her father’s side, dies. She was the last fluent native speaker of the Aka-Bo language of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, part of India.

January 28, 1856: Robert and Margaret (called Peggy) Garner and their four children, an enslaved family running for their freedom along the Underground Railroad, shelter at the home of free person of color Joseph Kite on the west side of Cincinnati, Ohio. U.S. Marshalls, required by the cruel Fugitive Slave Act to track down escaping enslaved persons, surround Mr. Kite’s home and demand the surrender of the Garner party. 

To their horror, Peggy has attempted to kill her two sons and two daughters rather than seeing them returned to slavery in Kentucky. She’s succeeded in killing her second-youngest child, her 2-year-old daughter Mary. She’d intended to kill her children and then herself; the other three children were wounded but survived. After a trial, the surviving Garners were forced back into enslavement. Peggy Garner’s story became the basis of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved.

January 31, 1957: A Douglas DC-7B aircraft takes off from Santa Monica Airport on a test flight, accompanied by two U.S. Air Force Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jets. The role of the jets is to test the DC-7B’s radar capabilities. At 11:18 a.m. local time, one of the Scorpions collides with the DC-7B. The pilot of the Scorpion is killed in the crash; the radar operator ejects from the jet, and despite severe burns and a broken leg, survives. 

All four crew members aboard the DC-7B are killed when the craft crashes, partially into the grounds of Pacoima Congregational Church and partially into the grounds of Pacoima Junior High School, where a boys’ gym class is taking place outdoors. Three students are killed, and approximately 75 students are injured by falling debris. 

Among the witnesses of the mid-air collision is musician Ritchie Valens, 15 years old at the time. Valens himself will die in a plane crash two years and three days later.