Almanac for July 1st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 1st: https://ko-fi.com/Post/1st-of-July-L3L11HQ7XO

Artist Birthday: Andre Braugher
French Republican Calendar Day Name (13 Messidor): Clove

Beatles Trivia
July 1, 1968: John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s collaborative art exhibit You Are Here (To Yoko from John Lennon, With Love) opens in London.

Bummer July 1st

July 1, 1955: Actor Isabel Bonner collapses and dies of a cerebral hemorrhage while performing in the play The Shrike, written by her husband, in Los Angeles.

July 1, 1976: 23-year-old West German woman Anneliese Michel dies of malnutrition at her home. Over the last year of her life, Michel has been cared for by her parents and priests from the Roman Catholic Church, who performed rites of exorcism under the belief that Michel was possessed by demons. Michel had previously been diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy and major depressive disorder, but was not being seen by health care professionals at the time of her death. Her parents and several members of the Catholic Church are tried and convicted for negligent homicide.

July 1, 1996: Model/actor Margaux Hemingway, the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, is found dead inside her home in Santa Monica, California. She has died by suicide after overdosing on the barbiturate medication Luminal.

Margaux Hemingway in 1976. Publicity photo, unknown author, public domain.

July 1, 2002: 71 people die when passenger jet BAL Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937 and a DHL Cargo ship collide in midair near the border between Germany and Switzerland. The Russian passenger jet carried nine crew members and 60 passengers, many of whom were gifted children on a UNESCO cultural exchange trip to Barcelona. The DHL cargo flight carried two crew members. 

The crew of the Russian jet received contradictory instructions from TCAS automated guidance system and from Swiss air traffic control. At the time, Russian pilots didn’t have a clear set of instructions on whether TCAS should override verbal commands from air traffic control or vice versa. (Now, pilots are told to prioritize TCAS, which gathers more data at a quicker rate than a human being on the ground.) Air traffic controller Peter Nielsen, who was the only person on duty at that time and therefore had to monitor two air traffic control work stations at the same time, set the Russian jet on a course that caused it to directly collide with the cargo plane. 

Almanac for June 30th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 30th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-30-Gone-With-the-Wind-N4N41HQ7U1

Bummer June 30th

June 30, 1882: Charles J. Guiteau, the assassin of President James Garfield, is executed by hanging.

June 30, 1995: 45-year-old jazz singer and Broadway actress Phyllis Hyman dies in the hospital after having been found unresponsive in her home. She has overdosed on prescription barbiturate medication and alcohol. 

Almanac for June 29th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 29th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-29-The-Feast-of-Saints-Peter-and-Paul-R5R01HQ7QE

Bummer June 29th

June 29, 1950: Ring Lardner (Jr.) reports to prison to begin his 1-year sentence for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He’ll serve nine months. 

June 29, 1967: 34-year-old American model/actress Jayne Mansfield is killed when the car she is riding in collides with the back of a tractor-trailer. Her 20-year-driver Ronnie Harrison and her attorney Sam Brody are also killed. Manfield’s three children, Miklós, Zoltán, and Mariska Hargitay, all of whom are riding in the back of the car, suffer only minor injuries.

June 29, 1971: Cosmonauts Georgy Dobrovolsky, Viktor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov die aboard their Soyuz 11 space capsule when their cabin depressurizes. As of 2025, they remain the only three human beings ever to have died in space.

June 29, 1978: Hogan’s Heroes actor Bob Crane is found dead in his apartment in Scottsdale, Arizona, by a dinner theater co-worker when he fails to show up for a meeting. Crane is 49 years old.

Unknown to the public, for whom Crane was considered uncontroversial, Crane had a habit of videotaping consensual sexual encounters with women. His friend and partner in these escapades, Sony video equipment salesman John Henry Carpenter, is considered one of the primary suspects in Crane’s bludgeoning death. The weapon used to bludgeon Crane is believed to have been a camera tripod, although this has never been conclusively proven. Carpenter was tried and acquitted of the crime in 1992; he died in 1998.

June 29, 2013: 31-year-old aerialist Sarah "Sasoun" Guyard-Guillot dies of blunt force trauma after a fall while performing in the Cirque du Soleil show Kà in Las Vegas, Nevada. As she is being lifted to a catwalk, approximately 94 feet in the air, Guyard-Guillot’s harness comes free of its safety wire and she drops into a pit. Guyard-Guillot is pronounced dead on the way to the hospital.

Almanac for June 28th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 28th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-28-The-Eve-of-the-Feast-of-Saints-Peter-and-W7W41HQ7MV

Achille Beltrame, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bummer June 28th

June 28, 1914: Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Maria Josephine Albina Gräfin Chotek von Chotkow und Wognin are assassinated in Sarajevo (then part of Austria-Hungary, now in Bosnia and Herzegovina) by Gavrilo Princip. 

June 28, 2018: A gunman attacks the offices of Annapolis, Maryland, newspaper The Capital. The assailant became enraged at the newspaper after it published a story about his arrest for harassing an acquaintance through social media. Reporter Wendi Winters, sports reporter John McNamara, columnist Gerald Fischman, editor Rob Hiaasen, and sales assistant Rebecca Smith are killed. 

Almanac for June 27th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 27th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-27-Emma-Goldman-E1E81HQ7JE

French Republican Calendar Day Name (9 Messidor): Absinthe

Koroven, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Artist Birthday: H. Addington Bruce

Bummer June 27th

June 27, 2015: Colorful corn starch thrown into the air as an amusement at Formosa Fun Coast water park in Bali, New Taipei City, Taiwan, ignites, causing a fire. Performers on a stage throw the dust at guests who are dancing in a drained swimming pool. The dust ignites in a fire ball low to the ground, resulting in burns to many guests’ legs and lower torsos. More than 500 people are injured, 200 of them critically, and 15 people die.

Almanac for June 26th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 26th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-26-Hieroglyphs-R6R81HQ7DQ

Bummer June 26th

June 26, 2015: Although apparently not coordinated, a series of terrorist attacks in France, Kuwait, Somalia, Syria, and Tunisia kill approximately 750 people. The Syrian Kurdish town of Kobanî is hardest hit, with more than 220 civilians killed by the Islamic State of the Levant (ISIL). 

Almanac for June 25th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 25th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-25-King-and-Queen-of-the-Fairies-F1F81HQ799

Artist Birthday: George Orwell

Bummer June 25th

June 25, 1959: 20-year-old Charles Starkweather is executed by electric chair at the federal prison in Lincoln, Nebraska. Between December 1957 and January 1958, Starkweather and his 14-year-old accomplice, Caril Ann Fugate, kill 11 people, including Fugate’s mother, stepfather, and half-sister. Fugate is sentenced to life in prison and paroled in 1976.

June 25,  2009: Singer Michael Jackson, age 50, dies from improper use of the medication propofol. Jackson’s personal physician had administered the drug to Jackson at home, although it is typically only used for anesthesia in hospital settings.

Almanac for June 24th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 24th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/June-24-St-Johns-Day-M4M51HQ735

The Deal (Collector's Edition) (Off-Campus, 1) - affiliate link

Bummer June 24th

June 24, 1938: Linda Laura Hazzard, a con woman and quack medical practitioner who advocated extreme fasting, massage, and enemas as a cure for everything, dies of starvation while undergoing her own “fasting cure.”

June 24, 1973: An arson attack against an LGBTQ+ bar in New Orleans, Louisiana known as the Up Stairs (or Upstairs) Lounge kills 32 people. Although no one is charged with or convicted of causing the fire, a patron who had been ejected from the bar earlier that day is considered a suspect.

June 24, 2006: Three men in Pretzien, eastern Germany, burn copies of Anne Frank’s diary and the American flag in apparent support of the Nazis. The members of a far-right-wing group are charged with incitement of racial hatred.

June 24, 2023: Hikers in the San Gabriel Mountains of San Bernardino County, California, discover human remains. These turn out to be the remains of actor Julian Sands, age 65, who had been reported missing after failing to return from a hike on January 13, 2023. Winter storms, avalanches, and record snowfall in the area had hindered the search for him, although eight official searches were conducted during the five months he was missing.

Almanac for June 23rd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 23rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-23-Madeline-Miller-J3J51HQ6YE

Read the book first: Verity by Colleen Hoover (affiliate link)

Bummer June 23rd

June 23, 1985: Air India Flight 182 is destroyed by a terrorist bomb over the Atlantic Ocean approximately 120 miles from Ireland. All 329 people on board are killed.

Friday, June 23, 2006: An imam in Kolkata issues a fatwa against Bangladeshi-Swiss physician and author Taslima Nasreen. The then-imam of Kolkata's Tipu Sultan Mosque accused Nasreen of making anti-Islamic remarks at a conference in that Indian city on Saturday, June 10, 2006. He called her a "Jewish spy" (there is no evidence that Nasreen has any ties to Israel) and offered a bounty of 50,000 rupees to anyone who drove her out of India. (Source: The Times of India)

Almanac for June 22nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 22nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-22-Tropic-of-Cancer-G2G41HQ6TR

Bummer June 22nd

June 22, 1918: Near Hammond, Indiana, a 26-car train bearing workers and performers from the Hagenbeck–Wallace Circus crashes when the engineer falls asleep at the wheel. An estimated 86 people are killed in the accident. The fire resulting from the crash is severe enough that some of the victims are never able to be identified. 

Here is an article about the train accident at Smithsonian Magazine.

June 22, 1969: 47-year-old Judy Garland dies of an apparently accidental drug overdose.

Judy Garland at Aurora's Gin Joint blog: https://aurorasginjoint.com/tag/judy-garland/

June 22, 2015: Composer James Horner, who composed the score of numerous films from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) to James Cameron’s Titanic and Avatar, loses control of his Short Tucano single-occupant aircraft over Los Padres National Forest in Santa Barbara County, California. Horner, apparently under the influence of prescription medications he took for headaches, appeared to have been unable to navigate the forest terrain and came within 100 feet of crashing into a nearby mountain before he fatally crashed into the forest.

Almanac for June 21st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 21st: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-21-Solstice-W7W21HQ6PX

Today's Observance: Fathers Day, First day of summer (Northern Hemisphere)

Artist Birthday: Marcella Detroit, a.k.a. Marcy Levy, co-writer of the Eric Clapton hit "Lay Down, Sally," and the American half of Shakespears Sister

Bummer June 21st

June 21, 1858: Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens’s brother Henry dies of wounds he received on June 13th as a crew member on the steamboat Pennsylvania when the boat’s boiler exploded. Mark Twain, at the time working as a crew member on the riverboat A.B. Chambers, felt guilt for the rest of his life for convincing his younger brother to work aboard a riverboat.

This is an affiliate link: https://bookshop.org/a/118698/9780525561743

June 21, 1964: Young civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner are murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan for registering African-American voters in Mississippi.

***

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Almanac for June 20th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 20th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-20-Sagrada-Familia-Q5Q01HQ6LW

Don't forget: Tomorrow is Fathers Day!

Bummer June 20th 

June 20, 1756: The infamous “Black Hole of Calcutta,” a dungeon belonging to Siraj-ud-Daulah, the ruler of Bengal in Mughal India, kills approximately 43 prisoners who are either British or supporters of the British. The fortress cell was designed to hold two to three prisoners; an estimated 64 to 66 people are forced inside by military officials, although apparently without Siraj-ud-Daulah’s knowledge. The men suffer crush injuries, heat exhaustion, and dehydration. Only 21 to 23 people survive. 

June 20, 1973: An 18-year-old man drowns in the river surrounding the Tom Sawyer’s Island location at Disneyland. He and his 10-year-old brother had attempted to remain on the island past the park’s closing time. When told by park security that they have to leave, the two brothers try to swim across the river; apparently, neither knows how to swim. The 10-year-old is rescued by a staff member.

June 20, 1979: ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart and interpreter Juan Espinosa are executed by a member of the Nicaraguan National Guard while attempting to cover the Nicaraguan civil war for the televised news broadcast. Their film crew captures the murders on camera and survives to escape and share the footage, which is aired on the evening news broadcast.

June 20, 2007: A young couple (both 21 years old) climbs to the roof of the Palmetto State Armory building (a gun shop) on the Isle of Palms in South Carolina in the early morning hours. They take off their clothes to have sex. Unfortunately, the metal roof of the building is rather slippery. The couple suffers an accidental fall from the roof. A homeless couple witnesses the accident and alerts a taxi cab driver, who finds the couple severely injured, lying in the road. Both are taken to the hospital, where they die from their multiple traumatic injuries.

***

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Almanac for June 19th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 19th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-19-Juneteenth-J3J31HQ6I8

Today's Observance: Juneteenth

Bummer June 19th

June 19, 1986: Two days after being drafted by the Boston Celtics, 22-year-old University of Maryland standout small forward Leonard (Len) Bias dies of cocaine-induced cardiac arrythmia in his dorm room. His friends see him have a seizure and call paramedics, who attempt to revive Bias, to no avail.

June 19, 1999: Stephen King suffers a broken leg, a broken hip, a collapsed lung, and a lacerated scalp when he’s struck and thrown 14 feet by a Dodge minivan driven by Bryan Edwin Smith. Smith, who was distracted by the movements of his unrestrained dog in the back of the vehicle, pled guilty to a moving violation and received a six-month suspended sentence.

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June 19, 2016: 27-year-old Russian-American actor Anton Yelchin dies of blunt trauma asphyxia when a design flaw in his SUV causes the vehicle to slip into neutral gear, roll down an incline, and pin the actor between the vehicle and a wall.

Almanac for June 18th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 18th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-18-Paul-McCartney-Richard-Nixon-P5P31HQ6E0

Beatles Trivia

June 18, 1942: Paul McCartney and Roger Ebert are born.

June 18, 1968: London’s Old Vic theatre performs the stage adaptation of John Lennon’s first book, In His Own Write. Lennon attends with Yoko Ono, but the audience is horrible to her and shouts racist insults at her.

June 18, 1973: John Lennon-Ono and Yoko Ono-Lennon attend the Watergate court hearings and hear John Dean testify. They sit beside Nixon adviser Elvin Bell in the second row, behind Dean’s wife Maureen.

Sandy Allen was born on June 18, 1955.

Bummer June 18th

June 18, 1982: A postal clerk crossing Blackfriar’s Bridge in London finds the body of “God’s Banker” Roberto Calvi hanging underneath the bridge. Calvi has about $14,000 and five bricks in his pockets. He had recently lost his job at Italy’s Banco Ambrosiano and was under indictment for embezzling the bank’s funds. The death was officially ruled a suicide, but Calvi’s family suspects murder. 

June 18, 1984: Jewish talk show host Alan Berg is gunned down by two members of a white supremacist terror group in Denver. He is 50 years old.

June 18, 2023: Five people die aboard the submersible craft Titan when the underwater vehicle’s pressure barrier fails on a voyage to see the wreck of the Titanic. The Titan’s designer, billionaire Stockton Rush, had the submersible’s hull made of carbon fiber and titanium, materials which are not typically used for deep sea submersibles. It was not subject to the safety regulations of any nation since it operated in international waters.

Rush is one of those killed when the submersible implodes. Also killed are the voyage’s guide, deep sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet; and three paying passengers: English billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani-English billionaire Shahzada Dawood, and Dawood’s 19-year-old son Suleman.

Almanac for June 17th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 17th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-17-Z8Z61GMIOG

Beatles Trivia
June 17, 1974: John Lennon is in a New York recording studio working on his album Walls and Bridges when Elton John pays him a visit. Elton John hears the potential in the track “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night” and agrees to play piano on the song.

Bummer June 17th

June 17, 1871: Clement Vallandigham, an attorney who once represented Ohio in the U.S. House of Representatives, dies after accidentally shooting himself in the abdomen. The wound happened the previous day while Vallandigham demonstrated to a courtroom how the alleged victim of his client (Vallandigham represented the defendant) may have accidentally shot himself.

June 17, 1952: 37-year-old rocket scientist Marvel Whiteside “Jack” Parsons is killed in an accidental explosion while mixing explosive fuel in his home laboratory. Since Parsons was known to be meticulously careful in the lab, some have speculated that his unexpected death could have been the result of suicide or foul play. 

Sadly, when she heard the news of her son’s death, Parson’s mother Ruth Whiteside killed herself by taking an overdose of barbiturates.

June 17, 1966: A 19-year-old man who illegally entered Disneyland in Anaheim, California, is struck and killed by the park’s Monorail. 

***

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Almanac for June 16th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 16th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-16-M4M21GMIPO
Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Bloomsday

Artist Birthday: Daniel Brühl

Beatles Trivia

June 16, 2001, South Bend: Once upon a time, South Bend had a summer festival called the Ethnic Festival. Tit and I, living in a downtown apartment near where the festival took place, visited it both yesterday and today. On this day we ate lunch while listening to a reggae band named Indika. 

We went home for a while, but came back out after dinner to have a funnel cake and listen to a Beatles tribute band. They wore the full Beatles suits and wigs even in the heat. They played many lesser-known songs such as “Boys” and “Taxman.” For a free concert on a beautiful night in the park, it was great. We watched the fireworks afterward.

Bummer June 16th

June 16, 1944: 14-year-old George Stinney becomes the youngest person to be executed in the U.S. in the 20th century when he dies by electric chair in Columbia, South Carolina. The African-American teen was convicted of the murders of two white girls, aged seven and 11, although the South Carolina court vacated his conviction and declared Stinney wrongfully executed in 2014. Stinney’s body was so much smaller than the average prisoner, he had to sit on a Bible as a booster seat in the electric chair.

June 16, 1959: Between 1 and 2 a.m., actor George Reeves is found dead of a single gunshot wound to the head in a bedroom of a home in Los Angeles where is a party is taking place. Officially ruled a suicide, witness reports conflict, and some of Reeves’s friends and family members have questioned whether the death may have been an accident or perhaps a homicide.

June 16, 1970: Chicago Bears halfback Brian Piccolo, age 26, dies of embryonal cell carcinoma, a rare and aggressive form of testicular cancer, that has spread to his lung, liver, and other organs.

Prime Video (this is an affiliate link): https://amzn.to/4wVaSDc

June 16, 1994: Kristen Pfaff, bassist for the band Hole, dies of a heroin overdose. She is 27 years old.

***

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Almanac for June 15th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 15th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-15-X8X31GMIR3

Bummer June 15th

June 15, 1785: The first recorded deaths in aviation history occur when hot air balloonists Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and Pierre-Ange Romain crash into the French coast while attempting to balloon across the English Channel.

June 15, 1996: Legendary jazz and popular vocalist Ella Fitzgerald dies of complications of diabetes.

Good luck, España, in today's FIFA World Cup soccer match vs. Cabo Verde!
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Almanac for June 14th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 14th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-14-E1E21GMIZ8

Bowman Gum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bummer June 14th

June 14, 1949: 19-year-old typist Ruth Ann Steinhagen shoots and almost kills Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus in one of the earliest recorded cases of what comes to be known as stalking. Steinhagen, a resident of Cicero, Illinois, has been obsessed with Waitkus since she sees him playing for the Chicago Cubs in 1946. She even leaves an empty plate at the dinner table for him when eating with her family. Steinhagen was seeing a psychiatrist, but this didn’t stop her from traveling to Chicago’s Edgewater Beach Hotel, leaving a note with Waitkus’s roommate asking to meet, then shooting the baseball player with a .22 caliber rifle when he came to see her. She shot him in the chest, puncturing one of his lungs.

After shooting Waitkus, Steinhagen allegedly looked for a second bullet with which to shoot herself, but was unable to find one. Instead she called the police and told them, “I just shot a man,” allowing Waitkus to reach medical care before his injury killed him. He had to sit out the rest of the ‘49 baseball season, but returned in 1950. Eddie Waitkus developed a drinking problem and died in 1972 of esophageal cancer.

June 14, 1986: Three roller coaster riders are killed and a fourth is permanently disabled when their car derails on the Mindbender at Fantasyland (now Galaxyland) Amusement Park in West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada. 

June 14, 2017: The Grenfell Tower apartment building in London catches fire due to an electrical fault in a refrigerator on its fourth floor. Fire and smoke spread rapidly, trapped by the building’s exterior cladding and insulation, which act like a chimney. 70 people die in the 24-story tower before the fire can be extinguished and two more die in the hospital. 70 others are injured.

On the same day in the United States, six people are shot at a Congressional charity baseball game, including U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (a Republican), a Capitol Police officer, and a Congressional aide. The 66-year-old perpetrator is shot by police and dies of his injuries. All of those who are injured eventually recover fully, aside from physical and psychological scars.

Almanac for June 13th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 13th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-13-J3J01GMJ0X

Bummer June 13th

June 13, 2012: 26-year-old Indonesian singer Irma Bule performs in a village in West Java, using a live king cobra as a stage prop. The snake bites Bule. She continues performing, but collapses and dies from the venomous bite 45 minutes later.

Bule wasn’t a well-known performer. Like many other young, single mothers in Indonesia hoping for more lucrative musical careers, she performed for a small fee plus whatever tips she could get from the audience. Performers who incorporate snakes into their act are paid slightly more, but the snakes are generally non-venomous and often have their mouths taped shut. Bule’s mother believes Bule did not know the snake she was performing with was venomous.

Good luck to Brazil in today's FIFA World Cup match vs. Morocco! 
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Almanac for June 12

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 12th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-12-D1D21GMJ1Z

Bummer June 12th

June 12, 2015: Musician Dave Grohl falls from the stage, breaking his leg, while performing with the Foo Fighters in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Good luck to Canada (Group B) and the USA (Group D) in the FIFA World Cup!
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Almanac for June 11th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 11th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/June-11-E1E31GMJ32

Bummer June 11th

June 11, 1955: The 24 Hours of Le Mans auto race turns disastrous when Pierre Levegh’s Mercedes-Benz rear-ends Lance Macklin’s Austin-Healey. Macklin had swerved in front of Levegh to avoid hitting a third driver. The Mercedes-Benz leapfrogs over the Austin-Healey, flies over an earthen barrier, strikes the spectator area twice (breaking apart in the process), and comes to land on the barrier. In the process, Levegh is thrown from his car onto the track and killed instantly.

83 spectators are killed in the accident. An additional 120 people are injured. Levegh’s car burns for hours after the crash; its body is made with magnesium. Water poured on the car by rescue workers intensifies the magnesium fire. Among the injured are spectators burned by the magnesium sparks. 

June 11, 1979: Marion Morrison, who acted under the stage name John Wayne, dies of stomach cancer at the age of 72. 

This is an affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3HJNxiC

Almanac for June 10th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 10th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/June-10-F2F31GMJ3T

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Fanny Burney

Bummer June 10th

June 10, 1692: One person found guilty of witchcraft is executed by hanging in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

June 10, 1898: The last-known native speaker of the Dalmatian language, Tuone Udaina, dies. Udaina is killed in an explosion caused by road work. 

June 10, 1990: British Airways Flight 5390, flying between Birmingham, England, and Málaga, Spain, experiences explosive decompression when an improperly-installed front windowpane falls off the aircraft. The captain, 42-year-old Timothy Lancaster, is partially propelled outward, with his lap belt and crew members managing to prevent him from exiting the aircraft. Remarkably, Lancaster survives, and the aircraft makes an emergency landing without fatalities. Lancaster suffers cuts and bruises, frostbite, shock, and a broken right arm, and later develops PTSD from the incident.

June 10, 2016: 22-year-old singer Christina Grimmie is shot as she signs autographs after a performance in Orlando, Florida, and will die the following day. The perpetrator also killed himself.

What was Diane Meyer grateful for on June 10th, 2024?

https://bottlecap.press/products/ordinarygratitude

Need some gratitude today!
good hot dogs
mom and dad
grocery shopping with dad
cooking
visiting Grandma
go outside tomorrow!
podcasts
kombucha
baking brownies for friends
birthday plans
things work out! don't catastrophize

Almanac for June 9th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 9th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/June-9-R5R51GMJ4M

Today's Observance: St. Columba's Day
Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Jurassic Park 
Artist Birthday: Cole Porter

Bummer June 9th

June 9, 1865: Charles Dickens and his friend/perhaps lover Ellen Lawless Ternan are riding in a train on a voyage home from Paris. The train is near the village of Staplehurst, Kent, when it crosses a bridge. The engineer is unaware, until it's too late, that the bridge is closed for repairs and about 42 feet of track have been removed.

Dickens and Ternan, riding in the first-class car near the front of the train, are carried over the gap by the momentum of the engine. Their car lands on its side, but although they're shaken, they don’t have any serious injuries.

The center and rear cars of the train fall into the river below. Ten passengers are killed. Approximately 50 others are injured. Dickens helps render aid to the victims at the scene; some of them die in front of him. For the rest of his life he suffers flashbacks; in modern terms he could probably be said to suffer from PTSD.

June 9, 1930: Jack Lingle, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, is shot and killed by Leo Brothers, who worked as a bouncer at a club owned by Al Capone. Initially hailed as a martyr for freedom of the press, Lingle is later discovered to have connections to illegal gambling and liquor bootlegging.

Almanac for June 8th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 8th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/June-8-P5P21GMJ5L

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: John Everett Millais
Artist Birthday: Science fiction author Robert F. Young

Bummer June 8th

June 8, 1913: Emily Wilding Davison dies of her injuries, including a skull fracture, four days after being knocked down by Anmer, a horse owned by King George V of England, during the 1913 Derby at Epsom Downs. Davison attended the Derby to protest in favor of voting rights for English women, carrying the purple, white, and green flag used at the time by the women’s suffrage movement. She climbed around a guard rail and onto the track as Anmer passed by, traveling approximately 35 miles per hour. As she reached for the animal’s reins, the horse knocked her down. 

Since Davison hadn’t discussed her plans for the protest with anyone who knew her, her exact intentions are unclear. She may have been trying to attach the suffrage movement flag to Anmer’s bridle.

June 8, 1971: J.I. Rodale, an early advocate of sustainable and organic farming and founder of Rodale Press, appears as a guest on a pre-taped episode of The Dick Cavett Show. In his interview for the show, Rodale states that he’s never felt better and intends to live to be 100 years old. Unfortunately, he suffers a fatal heart attack at the age of 72 that evening, as he’s sitting in a chair on the Cavett Show set listening to another guest being interviewed. Rodale is pronounced dead on arrival at a local hospital; the episode is never aired.

June 8, 1982: Jaren Elizabeth Gunn Pate, who married rock ‘n roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis in 1971, is staying with a friend while in the process of divorcing Lewis. The two were scheduled to meet in divorce court on the 21st of June. Less than two weeks prior to the court date, Pate drowns in the friend’s swimming pool.

June 8, 1997: Chemistry professor Karen Wetterhahn is taken off life support and dies from acute mercury poisoning. On August 14, 1996, she had been working with the highly toxic chemical dimethylmercury when several drops of the substance fell onto her latex glove-covered hand. The chemical permeated her glove and was absorbed by her skin; she began having neurological symptoms of heavy metal poisoning within three months.

June 8, 2018: Chef Anthony Bourdain, age 61, dies of suicide by hanging.

Almanac for June 7th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 7th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-7-J3J61GMJ6G

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: The ancient Roman goddess Vesta

Bummer June 7th

June 7, 1937: 26-year-old actress Jean Harlow dies of kidney failure. Her illness may have been a complication from a case of scarlet fever she contracted as a teen.

June 7, 1984: On or around this date, the Indian Army burns the Sikh Reference Library building in Punjab, India, to the ground. The library held approximately 20,000 materials, including irreplaceable handwritten manuscripts. The status of these materials is unknown and considered classified by the Indian government; they may have been destroyed, sold off into private collections, or held in an undisclosed archive somewhere.

June 7, 1993: NBA player Dražen Petrović is killed in a road accident while riding on the German Autobahn highway system in Bavaria. Petrović is not wearing a safety belt and is ejected from the vehicle, which is driven by his girlfriend.

June 7, 2016: Recent college graduate Colin Scott, age 23, goes to see his sister Sable. The two visit Yellowstone National Park together. Near the Norris Geyser Basin, Sable and Colin veer off the boardwalk where visitors are encouraged to walk. Colin falls into a natural hot spring, where he dies by some combination of drowning and burns from the scalding-hot water. Colin’s body cannot be recovered, having largely been dissolved in the hot, acidic water. 

Almanac for June 6th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 6th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/June-6-S6S21GMJ82

Bummer June 6th

June 6, 1867: Archduchess Mathilde Marie Adelgunde Alexandra of Austria, who is smoking a cigarette, attempts to hide the cigarette from her father, Archduke Albert, Duke of Teschen, by concealing it behind her back. She accidentally sets her delicate gauze dress on fire and very shortly afterward dies of her second- and third-degree burn injuries.

June 6, 1892: Yale University student Wilkins Rustin dies of peritonitis. He’d participated in a Delta Kappa Epsilon hazing in which he’d been led through the street toward Moriarty’s Café while blindfolded. Rustin walks directly into a carriage pole, rupturing his intestine.

June 6, 1968: U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy (Sr.) is assassinated by gunshot in Los Angeles.

June 6, 1971: A mid-air collision between a U.S. military plane that had deviated from its flight plan and commercial Hughes Airwest flight 706 kills 50 people. Only 1st Lt. Christopher E. Schiess, the radar intercept officer aboard the F-4B fighter jet, survives the collision that occurs over Duarte, California. Schiess, 24 years old at the time, is able to eject himself from the jet and parachute to safety.

June 6, 2006: American artist Luis Alfonso Jiménez Jr. dies in his Hondo, New Mexico, studio while working on his 32-foot-tall sculpture titled Blue Mustang, which is now at the Denver International Airport. A large piece of the sculpture came loose from a hoist, fell on him, and severed an artery in his leg.

This is a completely different blue Mustang.

Almanac for June 5th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 5th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-5-Love-and-Friendship-J3J41G1GUR

Artist Birthday: Federico Garcia Lorca

Bummer June 5th

June 5, 1981: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issues its first report on a cluster of medical cases in what will soon become known as the AIDS epidemic. This report described an unusual cluster of Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) in people who otherwise appeared to be healthy; this opportunistic infection had previously been seen only in people who were known to have compromised immune systems. The human immunodeficiency virus would be identified some time between 1984 and 1986.

Almanac for June 4th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 4th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-19-Queenie-Z8Z41AZGDD

Beatles Trivia
June 4, 1969: The Beatles release “The Ballad of John and Yoko” in the U.S. In the U.K. it came out on May 30th. 

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: National Cognac Day

Bummer June 4th

June 4, 1923: Jockey Frank Hayes, age 22, has a sudden fatal heart attack in the middle of a horse race. His horse, Sweet Kiss, is the first to cross the finish line, still carrying Hayes’s body. Hayes’s heart attack may have been related to his crash dieting, since jockeys are required to weigh as little as possible.

June 4, 1978: A search party discovers the body of Ted Weiher, age 32, inside a remote camping shelter in Plumas National Forest in northern California. Weiher died of starvation and dehydration and has severe frostbite on both feet. He and his four close friends (all of whom had intellectual disabilities and/or mental health challenges) had last been seen by their families on February 24th of that year, when they attended a basketball game together. The bones of three of the others were discovered in the woods nearby, apparently dispersed by scavenging animals. They’re thought to have died of hypothermia. No trace of the fifth man has ever been found. 

June 4, 2004: A 52-year-old man in Granby, Colorado, goes on a spree during which he uses a steel- and concrete-reinforced bulldozer to destroy several buildings, including Granby’s mayor’s house and the town hall. The man had modified the vehicle over the course of a year and a half, plotting his revenge against the town based on a grievance stemming from a bill he owed for illegally dumping sewage from his business rather than properly connecting the business to the town’s sewage system. In the process of destroying the local hardware store, the bulldozer falls into the building’s basement and the engine stops working. The man, armed with several firearms inside of and protruding from the armored bulldozer, then dies by suicide. No one else is harmed.