Bummer August

This is a repost of some previous Pagan Spirits book blog content. It combines the original Bummer August post from 2022 with the update.

August 1, 1994: An electrical fault sparks a fire at Norwich Central Library in Norwich, England, that destroys an estimated 100,000 books and historical papers.

August 1, 2018: 32-year-old Canadian model, artist, and actor Rick Genest, known as Zombie Boy for his numerous bone- and viscera-themed tattoos, dies from an accidental fall from an icy balcony where he has apparently gone to smoke a cigarette.

August 2, 1973: Approximately 50 people are killed when the Summerland indoor amusement park catches fire. The building’s ceiling is constructed using a transparent acrylic material, which melts, raining burning-hot liquid acrylic down on the victims of the fire.

August 2, 1997: William S. Burroughs dies, having had a heart attack the previous day.

August 3, 1924: Author Joseph Conrad dies of a heart attack at age 66.

August 3, 1966: 40-year-old comedian Lenny Bruce is found dead of an apparently accidental morphine overdose.

August 4, 1875: Hans Christian Andersen dies, possibly suffering from liver cancer and never having recovered from injuries from falling out of his bed.

August 4, 1962: Marilyn Monroe dies, apparently by suicide, of an overdose of prescription sleeping medicine.

August 7, 2016: 10-year-old son Caleb Schwab is killed while riding the Verrückt water raft ride at Schlitterbahn Water Park in Kansas City, Kansas. The tallest such ride in the world at the time, the ride had a screen over the top, held in place with a series of metal support rings, to keep guests from accidentally flying off the ride in the event that the raft should become airborn. Caleb, who was riding on the front of a raft with two unrelated women riding on the back, struck the metal support ring and was decapitated when his raft became airborne.

August 8, 1965: American author Shirley Jackson dies at age 48 of cardiac arrest, possibly brought on by her alcoholism and use of a variety of prescription medicines. 

August 10, 1978: Three teenage girls, all members of the Ulrich family, are killed in an automobile accident while riding in a Ford Pinto. The state of Indiana charges the Ford Motor Company with homicide, claiming that the company was aware of manufacturing defects that made the vehicle more likely to cause death in the event of certain types of accidents. Ford is found not guilty.

August 12, 1964: Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels and of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, dies.

August 12, 1982: Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes into a mountain after the pilots lose the ability to steer the plane. Of the 509 passengers and 15 crew members, only three passengers and one crew member survive. Rescue operations are delayed due to darkness and mountainous terrain, which means many people who may have initially had non-fatal injuries died of exposure, blood loss, and other conditions. 

August 12, 2022: Indian-British* author Salman Rushdie is stabbed ten times at an event in Chautauqua, New York, allegedly by a 24-year-old man from New Jersey. Rushdie suffers nerve damage to one arm, one eye, and his liver. The attacker was apparently motivated by a late Iranian religious leader’s description of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses as blasphemous since it depicted the prophet Muhammad as a fictional character. 

Rushdie is an atheist. The attacker had not read The Satanic Verses.

*Rushdie now lives in the United States with his wife, American poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

August 13, 1521: Hernán Cortés and his small army of Spanish conquistadores conquer the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán after an extended siege that began in 1519. 

August 13, 1944: Lucien Carr, friend of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, stabs and kills his acquaintance David Kammerer. Carr will serve two years in prison for manslaughter, then go on to father children who include novelist Caleb Carr.

August 16, 1949: Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell dies in the hospital of injuries she sustained on August 11th when she was struck by a speeding car with an intoxicated driver. The driver was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served 11 months in jail. 

August 17, 1966: English race car driver Ken Miles is killed when the Ford Mk IV he is test-driving crashes at over 200 miles per hour.

                  Christian Bale played Miles in Ford v. Ferrari. Here is a fic that I particularly like.

August 18, 1992: On or around this date, 24-year-old adventurer Christopher McCandless dies of apparent starvation in the Alaskan wilderness. The story of his nomadic, short life is the basis of the book and film Into the Wild. 

August 19, 1936: According to LitHub, “Federico García Lorca—the Spanish avant-garde poet, playwright, and ardent socialist—was shot and killed by Nationalist militia before being buried in an unmarked mass grave somewhere outside Granada, where he remains to this day.”

Lorca had predicted his manner of death in his 1929 poem “The Fable And Round of the Three Friends:”

“Then I realized I had been murdered.

They looked for me in cafes, cemeteries and churches

…. but they did not find me.

They never found me?

No. They never found me.”

https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/Federico-Garc%C3%ADa-Lorca-FIGHT-FASCISTS-by-ErinORiordan/142424208.EJUG5

August 21, 1986: A naturally-occurring limnic eruption of Lake Nyos in Cameroon releases poisonous carbon dioxide into the air, killing 1,746 people. 

August 23, 1981: East German comedic actor Rolf Herricht suffers a heart attack and dies while performing in Kiss Me Kate at Berlin’s Metropol theatre.

August 25, 1984: Truman Capote dies of liver disease.

August 25, 1914: During World War I, German troops occupying Leuven, Belgium, set fire to the city and destroying almost half of it. 300 civilians die. Included in the burning and destruction is the library of the Catholic University of Leuven, which loses approximately 230,000 materials, including priceless medieval manuscripts.

August 25, 1992: The National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina is destroyed by Serbian bombing during the Siege of Sarajevo.

August 26, 2001: Tit and I got out of bed this morning and turned on the news to hear that the singer/dancer/actor Aaliyah had perished in a plane crash in the Bahamas. Born in 1979, she was only 22 years old.

August 27, 1883: Mount Krakatau (Anglicized as Krakatoa), which had begun to erupt on the 20th of May, intensifies in seismic activity with an eruption that destroys more than two-thirds of its island. The eruption is one of the loudest sounds ever heard by human ears, with the explosion being heard 4,800 miles away from the Indonesian site of the volcano. Pyroclastic flows, ash expelled into the atmosphere, and resulting tsunamis are estimated to have killed more than 36,400 people. Only the 1815 Mount Tambora explosion is thought to have been deadlier.

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August 28, 2020: 43-year-old actor Chadwick Boseman passes away from colon cancer.