Almanac for May 2nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for May 2nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/May-2nd-Q5Q41EMSFE

French Republican Calendar day name (13 Floréal): wallflower

Bummer May 2nd

May 2, 1536: Anne Boleyn, Queen of England and second wife of Henry VIII, is arrested and charged with incest, witchcraft, adultery, and treason. She’s taken to the Tower of London. These charges are false: Henry’s real reasons for wanting to be rid of Anne include her failure to provide him with a male heir and his desire to court her lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour. 

May 2, 1957: Censured U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy dies of hepatitis at the age of 48 after struggling with severe alcoholism and morphine addiction. 

May 2, 1981: Antiques dealer Jim Williams shoots 21-year-old Danny Hansford at Williams’s historical home, Mercer House (formerly owned by composer Johnny Mercer) in Savannah, Georgia. The lovers had been in an argument; Williams argued the killing was self-defense. After four trials, Williams was acquitted. The homicide is the basis of John Berendt’s book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. 

What was Diane Meyer grateful for on May 2nd, 2024?

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classical music
pasta and wine
do your best!
finishing a book
seeing mom soon
honesty over everything
peanut butter
life is because of, and meant for, learning experiences,
becoming

***

Mother's Day is coming on Sunday, May 10!

Almanac for May 1st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for May 1st: https://ko-fi.com/post/May-1st-O4O71EMO0Z

Mother's Day is May 10th.
This is an affiliate link: https://amzn.to/48EPSWx

Today's Observance: Beltane

Bummer May 1st

May 1, 1866: Rioting breaks out in Memphis, Tennessee. The violence begins with a shoot-out between Black veterans of the Union Army and the all-white Memphis police. It escalates to mobs of white civilians, with the support and participation of the police, attacking Black neighborhoods. Over the next three days, 46 Black residents and two white residents of Memphis are killed and more than 91 buildings are burned, including all of the city’s Black churches and schools. 

May 1, 1947: 23-year-old Evelyn McHale jumps to her death from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. She lands on her back on top of the roof of a car, her shoes having fallen off her feet, one gloved hand grasping her pearl necklace. Photography student Robert C. Wiles takes a picture of her body where it lies. The photo is published in Time magazine, later reproduced as a print by Andy Warhol, and then recreated by David Bowie in his “Jump They Say” video.

May 1, 2003: A coach bus filled with trade union delegates travels toward QwaQwa, Free State, South Africa, for May Day celebrations. As the driver becomes disoriented in the dark shortly after passing the town of Bethlehem, he apparently turns down an unlit gravel road, unknowingly headed directly toward Sol Plaatje Dam and driving too fast. The bus drives directly into the water and overturns. By the time police arrive the next day, 51 people have drowned. Only 10 people are able to escape the overturned bus and get to safety. 

May 1, 2017: One day after his 70th birthday, jam band pioneer Bruce Hampton gets on stage for a tribute concert called Hampton 70: A Celebration of Col. Bruce Hampton. Members of R.E.M., Widespread Panic, and other well-known bands participate. During the encore, Hampton collapses on stage, as he often does during his shows. The tribute band onstage continues to play for several minutes before anyone realizes anything is wrong. Hampton is then taken to a nearby hospital, where he dies of a massive heart attack.

Almanac for April 30th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 30th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-30-W7W11EMNZ8

Today's Observance: Walpurgisnacht

Bummer April 30th

April 30, 1987: American astronomer Marc Aaronson is accidentally killed while working at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Aaronson is standing on the ladder leading up the telescope’s rotating dome when the dome’s hatch swings toward him and crushes him.

April 30, 1994: Take Asai, also known as Tahkonanna, dies at age 92. She was the last known fluent native speaker of the Sakhalin Ainu language.

***

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Almanac for April 29th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 29th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-29-X8X01EMNYQ

Today's Observance: Bruno Mars was surprised to see Pete Wentz
Artist Birthday: Uma Thurman
Uma Thurman at Dorothy Surrenders: https://dorothysurrenders.blogspot.com/search/label/Uma%20Thurman

Bummer April 29th

April 29, 1986: A fire at the Los Angeles Public Library’s Central Library destroys 400,000 books and other circulating materials. 

Almanac for April 28th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 28th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-28-K3K61EMNXS

Artist Birthday: Harper Lee

I'm not obsessed with Harper Lee. Shut up.

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Terry Pratchett's birthday

Now available on Spotify: Mathilda, a tragic novella by Mary Shelley

Bummer April 28th

April 28, 1988: Aloha Airlines Flight 243 experiences an explosive decompression during a flight between Hilo and Honolulu International Airports. A section of the left side of the jet’s roof shears off. Flight attendant C.B. Lansing is swept out of the aircraft; her body is never recovered. Eight people are seriously injured, although the aircraft is able to land safely on a runway in Maui. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigates the incident and determines that metal fatigue, exacerbated by the humid, salty Hawaiian climate, is the likely cause.

April 28, 1996: A 25-year-old man in Port Arthur, Tasmania (Lutruwita), Australia, sits down at the Broad Arrow Café. He eats a meal, then points a rifle at the table next to his and kills two tourists from Malaysia. Within the next 15 seconds he has fired 17 shots, killing 12 people and wounding ten. The man then proceeds to a gift shop nearby, where he kills eight more people and wounds two more. He kills seven more people, including a 3-year-old and a 6-year-old, in the parking lot. He then kills four occupants of a car and steals the car. At a service station, he kills a woman and locks her boyfriend inside the trunk of his car. The boyfriend’s body is found the next day, along with the bodies of a husband and wife with whom the perpetrator has had an argument. 

In all 35 people die in Australia’s worst incident of gun violence. Although the citizens of Tasmania are known as generally supportive of gun ownership rights, this appalling incident convinced many Australians to participate in the subsequent voluntary gun buy-back program. Australia also strengthened its gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre. The perpetrator is sentenced to life in prison.

Almanac for April 27th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 27th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-27-E1E81EMNWW

Bummer April 27th

April 27, 1932: Poet Hart Crane, age 32, dies by suicide by drowning in the Gulf of Mexico. He jumps off the steam ship on which he’s traveling from Mexico to New York. Crane is believed to be heavily intoxicated when he jumps and had recently been badly beaten when he made advances on a male crew member. His body is never recovered.

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April 27, 2000: Broadway actress and dance music singer Vicki Sue Robinson dies of cancer at the age of 45.

Almanac for April 26th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 26th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-26-F2F51EMNVT

Free shipping continues through today at Bookshop.org!

https://music.amazon.com/live/events/L7XL3ZYRAO?musicTerritory=US&ref=dm_sh_S3SYvJ0ilNlEMYSo7M7D7w8S0

Beatles Trivia
Sunday, April 26, 1998, St. Mary’s College: I spent most of the day writing papers and working on a Sculpture project. In the evening I saw the 200th Simpsons episode, “Trash of the Titans” (production code 5F09). Bart and Homer crashed a U2 concert; best guest voices ever. The episode was dedicated to another previous guest voice, Linda McCartney.

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Ludwig Wittgenstein

Bummer April 26th

April 26, 1865: John Wilkes Booth dies of a gunshot wound inflicted in the attempt to capture him.

April 26, 1909: Major League baseball catcher Michael “Doc” Powers dies of peritonitis. On April 12th he’d collided with the wall in Shibe Park in Philadelphia, sustaining internal injuries. His peritonitis resulted from one of three surgeries he endured in attempts to repair his injuries.

April 26, 1937: Spanish dictator Francisco Franco coordinates with Adolph Hitler to have the Luftwaffe bomb the Basque town of Guernica. Franco knew Guernica to be a stronghold of his political opponents the Republicans. Between 400 and 1,600 civilians are killed in the bombing.

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April 26, 1942: An estimated 1,500 miners lose their lives in the Benxihu (Honkeiko) Colliery in Liaoning province, China, when coal dust ignites. The Japanese, who operated the mine at the time, are believed to have sealed the mine before it was completely evacuated, needlessly adding to the death toll. Only 31 of the dead were Japanese. Most of the those killed didn’t die from the explosion, but from carbon monoxide poisoning after the Japanese shut off the ventilation system.

April 26, 1986: Lucille Ball dies of an aortic rupture at the age of 77. 

On the same day, the Chernobyl Power Plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, experiences a nuclear meltdown that leads to a massive fire throughout the plant. The radioactive fallout in the 19-mile radius around the plant is expected to remain too contaminated for human habitation for 20,000 years.

April 26, 2006: A van carrying nine students and a staff member from Evangelical Christian school Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, is traveling along I-69 when it collides with a tractor trailer. Five people inside the van died at the scene. A survivor of the crash is initially identified as Laura van Ryn. 

Unable to communicate and suffering from head trauma, the young woman is cared for in the hospital by Laura van Ryn’s family. Five weeks after the crash, the survivor was able to identify herself as Whitney Cerak. Laura van Ryn had been among those killed in the crash and was given a burial by Cerak’s family and buried under Cerak’s name. 

Almanac for April 25th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 25th - https://ko-fi.com/post/April-25-St-Marks-Day-D1D41EHK3H

Today's Observances: St. Mark's Day, Independent Bookstore Day

Artist Birthday: Ella Fitzgerald

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Walter de la Mare

Bummer April 25th

April 25, 1995: Actress, dancer, and singer Ginger Rogers dies at age 83 of natural causes in Rancho Mirage in the Coachella Valley in California.

April 25, 2002: Rapper Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes is driving an SUV in La Cieba, Honduras, where she’s filming a documentary while on a spiritual retreat with her two siblings. She swerves to avoid an oncoming vehicle, only to swerve into the path of another vehicle, causing her to swerve sharply to the left. She strikes two trees, throwing her and three passengers from the SUV. Lopes, who is only 30 years old, dies instantly of severe head trauma. Her passengers are injured, but survive.

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Almanac for April 24th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 24th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-24-Barbra-M4M61E8X0V

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Halley's Comet

Artist Birthday: Barbra Streisand
Yentl post by Movies of the 80s
Barbra Streisand at Dorothy Surrenders

Bummer April 24th

April 24, 1915: About 250 Armenian intellectuals and political leaders are arrested in then-Constantinople, Turkey, in the beginning of what will become known as the Armenian Genocide. Those arrested on this day are deported to Ankara, where they’re eventually killed. The Armenian Genocide will last nine years.

April 24, 1954: French Formula One driver Guy Mairesse is killed during practice when his vehicle collides with a wall.

April 24, 1967: Soviet test pilot Vladimir Komarov is killed when Soyuz 1 crashes into the Earth upon reentry, its parachute having failed to deploy. Komarov’s death is the first fatality due to space flight.

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Almanac for April 23rd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 23rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-23-St-Georges-Day-World-Book-Day-A0A21E8VQE

Today's Observance: St. George's Day/Diada di Sant Jordi
Artist Birthday: William Shakespeare
French Republican Calendar day name (4 Floréal): hawthorn

Bummer April 23rd

April 23, 1902: Mount Pelée on the Caribbean island of Martinique begins erupting. By the 5th of May, the erupting volcano has triggered a mudslide that buries about 150 people who work in a sugar mill. On the 8th of May, the town of Saint-Pierre is destroyed, killing an estimated 28,000 people.

April 23, 1940: More than 200 people perish at the Rhythm Night Club when it catches fire in Natchez, Mississippi. The night club, which was originally built as a blacksmith’s shop, had only one exit and most of its windows were nailed shut.

April 23, 1974: 59-year-old Carl Barnett conducts Bach’s Come, Sweet Death at Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and dies of heart attack during the performance.

April 23, 2017: A U.S. Border Patrol agent fires a bullet at a target containing the explosive Tannerite as part of a gender reveal party in Arizona. (The unborn child was a boy.) The explosion sparks a fire, and although the agent immediately calls authorities, firefighters are unable to contain the blaze. It grows to become known as the Sawmill Fire, which burns 46,991 acres of Arizona and costs more than $8 million. The Border Patrol agent is fined $220,000 and sentenced to five years of probation for starting a fire without a permit.

Almanac for April 22nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 22nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-22-Happy-Earth-Day-to-You-B0B31E8UU2

Today's Observance: Earth Day

Bummer April 22nd

April 22, 1915: 27-year-old poet Rupert Brooks dies of sepsis due to wounds he received fighting for the British Royal Navy during the First World War.

April 22, 1987: 52-year-old Ruthie Mae McCoy, who lives in the Grace Abbott Homes public housing project in Chicago, called the police to report that, “...some people next door are totally tearing this down, you know–” When the dispatcher pressed her for clarification, McCoy said, “Yeah, they throwed the cabinet down...I’m in the projects, I’m on the other side. You can reach—can reach my bathroom, they want to come through the bathroom.” 

What the dispatcher didn’t know was that in the Grace Abbott Homes, the contractors who built the building had left the apartments’ back-to-back bathrooms connected by a narrow tunnel, which had made access easier for the plumbers. Neighborhood residents intent on burglary had discovered that by removing the bathroom mirror of one apartment, they could crawl through the narrow tunnel and reach the bathroom of the apartment on the opposite side.

This is what happened to McCoy: would-be burglars came through the space where her bathroom mirror had been and shot her to death. A second 911 call from a neighbor reported the sound of gunshots coming from McCoy’s apartment. Police knocked on McCoy’s door that night, but when they received no answer, they left without entering the apartment. Apparently they were unwilling to break down the door due to the prospect of being sued. 

McCoy’s lifeless body is found the next day; she has been shot four times. The tragic story of urban neglect and the intruders who entered the apartment through a bathroom mirror inspired the movie Candyman. 

April 22, 1992: An estimated 252 to 1,000 people die in a series of explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico. Gasoline fumes enter the sewer and water systems, but the city’s mayor declines to evacuate the affected area under the mistaken belief that the chances of explosion are low.

April 22, 2012: Brazilian actor Tiago Klimeck is taken off life support and dies. He has been in a coma since accidentally hanging himself while performing as Judas Iscariot in an Easter passion play in Itarare, Brazil. Klimeck is 27 years old. He may have accidentally gotten some of his clothes tangled in the safety harness meant to give him the illusion of hanging by his neck.

April 22, 2000: Playing Judas in an Easter play in Rome, Renato Di Paolo dies by accidental hanging. His death is caught on film by a member of the audience.

April 22, 2021: 57-year-old Gregory Jacobs, the musician who rapped under the name Shock G and other aliases, dies of an apparently accidental overdose of fentanyl, alcohol, and methamphetamine. 

Almanac for April 21st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 21st: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-21-Charlotte-Bronte-P5P41E8UA7

Artist Birthday: Charlotte Brontë

Oh, Toby Stephens as Mr. Rochester, you rascal.

Bummer April 21st

April 21, 1910: Mark Twain dies in Redding, Connecticut, as Jill Badonsky writes in The Awe-manac, “just one day after Halley’s Comet’s perihelion.” The author born Samuel Langhorne Clemens is quoted as having said, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year and I expect to go out with it.”

April 21, 1978: English folk-rock singer Sandy (Alexandria) Denny dies at age 31 from head injuries sustained from a fall down some stairs at her home. Denny, who had bipolar disorder, was known to use falls as a form of self-harm and had sustained a previous head injury from another fall down the stairs. Denny was being treated for headaches with a medication known to mix poorly with alcohol, so it’s unclear if Denny’s ultimate fall was an act of self-harm or an accident precipitated by mixing her medication with alcohol. 

April 21, 2016: The musician who performs as Prince (Prince Rogers Nelson) is found dead in an elevator inside his home. He has apparently passed away from taking pills of the opioid medication hydrocodone, to which he was addicted, which were counterfeit and laced with fentanyl. He is 57 years old.

On the same day, true crime writer Michelle McNamara dies in her sleep of an accidental overdose of street drugs and prescription medication. McNamara’s husband, actor Patton Oswalt, has acknowledged that McNamara was addicted to opioids. Her health condition was caused, in part, by her harrowing research on her book I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer. The book tells the story of a serial rapist and murderer who was not caught until 2018, two years after McNamara’s death.

Almanac for April 20th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 20th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-20-2002-A0A71E8OZ6

Bummer April 20th

April 20, 2010: Eleven workers are killed and a large-scale environmental disaster unfolds when the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform explodes. On September 4, 2014, the BP corporation who contracted the work on the rig was found to be legally negligent in the incident.

April 20, 2013: Virginia State University students Marvell Edmondson and Jauwan Holmes drown in the Appomattox River while taking part in a fraternity hazing event held by the Men of Honor, a local, unsanctioned fraternity. Five others are rescued from the river. Fraternity members plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter and hazing.

April 20, 2016: The first of an eventual 33 deaths resulting from the intentional poisoning of laddu, a baked sweet, occurs in the Layyah District of Punjab, Pakistan. The laddu was purchased at a shop belonging to a pair of brothers. The brothers had an argument, and one added the pesticide chlorfenapyr to the sweets mixture to spite his brother. Celebrants at a party for a baby born on April 17th ate the laddu and 33 of them died, including the baby’s father and five children.

***

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Almanac for April 19th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 19th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-19-The-Story-of-an-Hour-W7W21E0SSE

Beatles Trivia
April 19, 1998, South Bend: Mom, Stephanie, and I saw City of Angels at University Park Mall. I liked it because it was a celebration of why it’s good to be human. Afterward we went to Denny’s and had pie and coffee. Later, sitting in my room reading a People magazine with Tammy Wynette on the cover, I heard on the radio that Linda McCartney had died. She and Paul had been together for the past 30 years. 

Bummer April 19th

April 19, 1824: George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron, dies of malaria while fighting in Greece for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. He is 36 years old.

April 19, 1995: The federal government building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is destroyed by a terrorist truck bomb. White supremacist domestic terrorists destroy the building in retaliation for incidents in which civilians were wrongly killed by the federal government. An estimated 168 people are killed and almost 700 more are injured. Among the dead are six children who were in day care inside the building.

April 19, 2000: Ten-year-old Candace Newmaker dies of suffocation after taking part in a “rebirthing session” initiated by her adoptive mother Jeane. Candace reportedly had behavior problems while adjusting to being removed from the home of her biological parents, entering foster care, and being adopted. A psychologist in her home state of North Carolina referred Jeane Newmaker to unlicensed Colorado therapist Connell Watkins, who worked with co-therapist Julie Ponder.

Watkins and Ponder wrapped Candace in a flannel sheet and covered her with pillows, then told her to free herself to simulate the experience of being born. They hoped Candace would then start to bond with Jeane as a newborn baby would naturally born with its biological birthing parent, based on the theory of reactive attachment disorder. Candace complained that she couldn’t breathe and vomited inside the wrappings, but the therapists did not offer any help in releasing her. After Jeane left the room, Ponder releases Candace, who is not breathing and unresponsive. Candace is taken to a hospital in Denver, where she dies on the 19th without ever regaining consciousness. 

Watkins and Ponder are sentenced to 16 years in prison for child abuse; Jeane pleads guilty to a lesser charge and receives a 4-year suspended sentence, which is later expunged.

Almanac for April 18th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 18th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-18-F1F71E0SHV

French Republican Calendar Day Name (29 Germinal): Blueberry

Bummer April 18th

April 18, 1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake strikes Northern California. About 80% of the city is destroyed. The collapse of so many buildings and subsequent fires are responsible for around 3,000 deaths. Fire chief Dennis T. Sullivan was among the victims of the earthquake, so the interim fire chief requested help from the U.S. military. 

Both psychologist Henry James and writer H.G. Wells (on his first visit to the United States) remarked on the positive attitude and general helpfulness of the survivors in the rebuilding effort.

April 18, 1966: A fire at the Jewish Theological Seminary library in Manhattan destroys 70,000 books. Fortunately, most of these were additional copies of books housed on the ground floor of the library, which was not damaged in the fire. The library’s collection of rare manuscripts is also unharmed.

***

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Almanac for April 17th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 17th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-17-Hardcover-Bound-2-V7V21E04ML

Bummer April 17th

April 17, 1960: Early rock ‘n roll musician Eddie Cochran dies at the age of 21 from injuries he sustained the previous day in a car accident while touring in England.

April 17, 1987: Comedian Dick Shawn performs a comedy routine at Mandeville Hall on the campus of U.C. San Diego. In the middle of a bit about the end of the world, he collapses face-down on the stage. Audience members assume this is part of the show, even when a stage hand checks on Shawn and asks if a doctor is present. Only when the paramedics arrive does the audience finally realize that Shawn has died on stage.

April 17, 1998: Linda McCartney dies of breast cancer that has spread to her liver. She’s 56 years old.

April 17, 2016: Joan Laurer, the professional wrestler who wrestled under the name Chyna, dies at age 46 of an overdose of prescription medications mixed with alcohol.

April 17, 2018: Engine failure aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 from New York City to Dallas causes explosive depressurization of the cabin. Part of the engine cowl breaks off, damaging the fuselage and causing the loss of a cabin window. A passenger seated near the window, Jennifer Riordan, is partially sucked out the window opening before the other passengers are able to pull her back in. The flight makes an emergency landing in Philadelphia. Despite attempts to perform CPR on Riordan, she is pronounced dead at the hospital.

Almanac for April 16th

Erin O'Riordan's almanac for April 16th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-16-Shrimp-Cocktail-H2H11DYOX7

Artist Birthday: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Beatles Trivia

April 16, 1971: Ringo Starr releases his single “It Don’t Come Easy.”

April 16, 1973: ABC broadcasts the tv special James Paul McCartney, on which McCartney debuts “Live and Let Die.”

Bummer April 16th

April 16, 1689: Playwright Aphra Behn dies. She is 48 years old.

April 16, 1947: The French-owned ship SS Grandcamp is docked in the port of Texas City, Texas, in Galveston Bay when a fire breaks out onboard. The fire ignites the ship’s cargo of ammonium nitrate. The resulting explosion destroys everything in a 2,000-foot radius, including a Monsanto Chemical Company building, killing 145 of the 450 workers on duty at the time. 27 of Texas City’s 28 volunteer firefighters are killed.

That first explosion loosed the ship High Flyer free from its moorings; it drifts across the bay until it comes to rest beside the SS Wilson B. Keene. But the cargo of the High Flyer is slowly burning, and it explodes. It destroys the Wilson B. Keene. Super-heated steel from the High Flyer rains down on Texas City, igniting fires. At least 581 people are killed in the chain reaction started by the Grandcamp.

April 16, 1958: 37-year-old x-ray crystallographer and chemist Rosalind Franklin, who helped discover the structures of DNA and RNA molecules, dies of ovarian cancer.

April 16, 2021: English actress Helen McCrory, age 52, dies peaceful in her home of breast cancer.

Almanac for April 15th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 15th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-15-Ready-Player-One-U7U11DHWDX

Artist Birthday: Bessie Smith

The San Antonio Light, Nov. 22, 1925

Bummer April 15th

April 15, 1865: After being in a coma for eight hours, Abraham Lincoln dies from the bullet wound inflicted on him by John Wilkes Booth.

April 15, 1888: English poet Matthew Arnold dies. He has suffered a heart attack while chasing after a streetcar.

April 15, 1912: The HMS Titanic sinks into the Atlantic Ocean, having struck an iceberg shortly before midnight. Of the approximately 2,200 people on board, 1,500 die. 

April 15, 1989: Nearly 100 spectators die in a crowd crush at a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England.

April 15, 2013: In a terrorist attack by two brothers from Chechnya at the Boston Marathon, two pressure cooker bombs detonate, killing three people and injuring hundreds of others. The older brother of the two terrorists is also killed while trying to evade police. The other is tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.

Almanac for April 14th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 14th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-14-Coal-Miners-Daughter-V7V51DHVCW

Beatles Trivia
April 14, 1963: The Beatles and the Rolling Stones meet for the first time. The Beatles are in Richmond, England, to film a TV appearance. The Rolling Stones are performing at a Richmond club; the two groups meet backstage.

Bummer April 14th

April 14, 1865: U.S. president Abraham Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth.

April 14, 1922: Shortly after she heard a radio program on which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes his Spiritualist beliefs, a New Jersey woman named Maude Fancher decides she wants to live in the spirit world with her 2-year-old son Cecil. She kills Cecil, then attempts to kill herself by drinking a bottle of Lysol cleaning solution. Maude Fancher survives.

April 14, 1965: Perry Edward Smith and Dick Hickok are executed by hanging by the state of Kansas for the murders of the Clutter family on November 15, 1959.

April 14, 2017: 5-year-old Charlie Holt is crushed to death when his head becomes lodged in a small space between the stationary and rotating sections of the Sun Dial rotating restaurant at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia.

Almanac for April 13th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 13th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-13-Fail-Better-V7V61DHV43

Bummer April 13th

April 13, 1928: The town of West Plains, Missouri, is rocked by an explosion, the reason for which is unclear. It may have started with the accidental ignition of gasoline fumes leaking from a downtown gas station. In any event, among the buildings damaged by the explosion was the Bond Dance Hall, where a dance was occurring. The explosion of the dance hall killed 37 people and injured 22 others.

***

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Almanac for April 12th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 12th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-12-Bog-Life-C0C01DG2KO

Bummer April 12th

April 12, 1204: Christian Crusaders turn on the Christian capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, in three days of looting and burning. The rampage destroys the Library of Constantinople and other priceless works of art and ancient artifacts.

April 12, 1945: U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, vacationing at his home in Warm Springs, Georgia, tells his staff “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head.” These will be his last words, as Roosevelt slumps forward in his wheelchair and dies shortly afterward from a cerebral hemorrhage. The 32nd POTUS is the 7th U.S. president to die in office, and the 4th of these to die of natural causes.

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Almanac for April 11th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 11th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-11-Doughnuts-Free-to-Ghosts-X8X61DG1ZB

Beatles Trivia
April 11, 1964: The Beatles have 14 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart hits, including “Can’t Buy Me Love” at #1 and “Twist & Shout” at #2. 

Bummer April 11th

April 11, 1965: In what becomes known as the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak, severe weather and six confirmed tornados kill 266 people in Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio.

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Almanac for April 10th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 10th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-10-Where-the-Wild-Things-Are-G2G41DG0PT

Bummer April 10th

April 10, 1931: Lebanese-American novelist Kahlil Gibran dies at age 48 of cirrhosis and tuberculosis.

April 10, 1945: Gloria Dickson dies of asphyxia along with her pet dog. The 27-year-old film and stage actor is sleeping in a second-floor bedroom when an unextinguished cigarette sets a chair on the first floor on fire. Dickson awakens and is apparently attempting to escape her burning house via the bathroom window when she and the dog are overtaken by smoke and fumes.

April 10, 1962: Stu Sutcliffe, the 21-year-old Scottish musician and original Beatles bass player, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage. This internal injury, a ruptured aneurysm, may have been related to a head injury Sutcliffe suffered in 1961 as a result of a street fight in which John Lennon also suffered minor injuries.

April 10, 2003: When the United States invades the Iraqi capital of Baghdad to depose Saddam Hussein, officials at the Iraqi National Library and Archives fear that its archives of papers related to Hussein and his Ba’athist Party will incriminate them. They hire local people, many of them poor and likely motivated by the money, to loot and set fire to the library. These acts destroy about 60% of the archives and 25% of the library materials, including one of the oldest known copies of the Koran.

April 10, 2016: Fireworks stored for an upcoming celebration inside Puttingal Temple in Kerala, India, cause an explosion and subsequent fire that kills 111 people and injures more than 300 others, some of them severely burned.

Almanac for April 9th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 9th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-9-The-Battle-of-George-Washingtons-Big-Fat-Q5Q01DFYEB

Let us never forget the Battle of George Washington's Big Fat Head. Even though it definitely did not happen in real life.

April 9, 1925 El Dorado (Arkansas) Daily News

Beatles Trivia

April 9, 1965: The Beatles release “Ticket to Ride” as a single.

April 9, 1969: Bob Dylan releases his Nashville Skyline album, featuring Johnny Cash on “Girl From the North Country.” On the same day, Bruce McBroom photographs the Beatles in their second-to-last photo shoot as a group.

Bummer April 9th

April 9, 1945: Nazis execute Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer by hanging at Flossenbürg concentration camp.

© Ad Meskens / Wikimedia Commons

April 9, 2009: Los Angeles Angels at Anaheim pitcher Nick Adenhart is killed, along with the driver and two other passengers in an SUV, when a drunk driver runs a red light and strikes the SUV, propelling it into a telephone phone. Adenhart is 22 years old. The drunk driver is convicted and sentenced to 51 years to life in prison.

April 9, 2016: New Orleans Saints football player William Raymond Smith III, age 34, is shot and killed in a road rage incident by a driver who has rear-ended Smith’s Mercedes SUV. Smith’s wife Racquel is injured in the incident. 

April 9, 2017: 45 Egyptian (Coptic) Christians are killed in two coordinated bombings of Palm Sunday church services carried out by Islamist terrorists.

 

April 9, 2021: Earl Simmons, a.k.a. rapper DMX, dies of multiple organ failure. He has been in a persistent vegetative state since April 2nd, when he suffered a cocaine-induced heart attack. He had essentially died on the 2nd, but after half an hour of resuscitation attempts, he survived for another week on life support in a semi-comatose state. 

The Park County (WY) Herald, April 7, 1926

Almanac for April 8th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 8th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-8-Cobain-A0A61DFX3L

Today! This is an affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3P78IyT

Beatles Trivia
April 8, 1963: John and Cynthia Lennon’s son John Charles Julian Lennon is born in Liverpool, U.K.

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Betty Ford Quotes

Bummer April 8th

April 8, 1994, South Bend: On my last real day of spring break, I woke up rather late in the morning, then had some leftover Taco Bell for breakfast. I took Maggie the dog for a walk without incident, which was a shame because I was hoping there would be incident. 

When I got back I turned on MTV and involuntarily learned that Kurt Cobain had been found dead at his home in Seattle. Very sad, not only that he left behind a wife and a very young daughter but also that Nirvana only had time to record four albums.

April 8, 1997: 49-year-old singer/songwriter Laura Nyro dies of ovarian cancer. Nyro’s mother Gilda Mirsky Nigro had also died of ovarian cancer at the age of 49.

Almanac for April 7th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 7th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-7-Lady-Sings-the-Blues-I3I11DE96A

Tomorrow! This is an affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3P78IyT

Bummer April 7th

April 7, 1498: King Charles VIII of France, age 27, dies of head trauma after accidentally striking his head against the lintel of a door.

This 16th-century depiction of Charles VIII by an unknown artist is in the public domain.

April 7, 1994: Members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front militia begin the massacre of Tutsi civilians, a minority group, in Kigali, Rwanda. The killing will continue for about 100 days, until the 15th of July. Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana is among those killed.

April 7, 2021: Phillip Matthew Adams, who retired from the U.S. National Football League (NFL) in 2016, arrives at the Rock Hill, South Carolina, home of Robert and Barbara Lesslie. Robert is a physician. Adams shoots and kills six people at the home: Robert and Barbara, their 5- and 9-year-old grandchildren Noah and Adah, and two air conditioning technicians working at the house, James Lewis and Robert Shook. Adams then barricades himself inside the home, leading to a standoff with police. When police enter the home on April 8th, they find that Adams has taken his own life.

On autopsy, Adams, who was 32 years old and had no prior criminal record, is found to have amphetamines and kratom in his system. He also has pathology consisted with a severe case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition associated with concussion and other football-related head injuries. Although it can only be diagnosed at autopsy, CTE is associated with mood and behavioral changes including increased aggression.