Almanac for September 8

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 8th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-8-International-Literacy-Day-E1E812SM6D

French Republican Calendar day name (22 Fructidor): Noisette (hazelnut)

Bummer September 8

September 8, 1965: Cleveland-born actress/dancer Dorothy Dandridge, the first Black woman to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, dies at the age of 42, either from an accidental overdose of the tricyclic antidepressant imipramine or a fat embolism that broke free and entered her bloodstream due to a fractured bone in her foot, an injury she’d sustained in a fall a few days before.

September 8, 1985: Cuban-American ecofeminist installation artist Ana Mendieta falls from the window of her apartment on the 34th floor of a building in Greenwich Village. Mendieta’s husband, sculptor Carl Andre, insists that her death was accident. Andre was acquitted of any legal responsibility in Mendieta’s death, but witnesses heard them arguing just prior to her fall from the window, and Andre had scratches on his face. Andre’s exhibitions are frequently protested by Mendieta’s fellow feminist artists.

September 8, 2016: 59-year-old performer The Lady Chablis, who’s featured prominently in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt and played herself in the 1997 film based on it, dies of pneumonia at Candler Hospital in Savannah, Georgia.

September 8, 2017: Kenneka Jenkins, age 19, attends a party at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare hotel. The next day her body is found inside a latched freezer belonging to the hotel’s kitchen; she appears to have frozen to death after entering the freezer for an unknown reason. 

Footage from the hotel’s cameras show her wandering the halls with a small injury on one foot. Authorities speculate her unusual behavior may have resulted from the combination of alcohol and a migraine medication, possibly not prescribed to Jenkins (sources vary), found in her system; this combination may have also hastened the effects of hypothermia.

Almanac for May 25th: Memorial Day

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for May 25th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/May-25-Pabst-Mansion-U6U01G1EYH

Today's Observance: Memorial Day

Bummer May 25th

May 25, 1812: An explosion at Felling Colliery in England kills 92 men and boys.

May 25, 1895: Oscar Wilde is convicted of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" and taken to Newgate Prison for processing. He is later transferred to Pentonville Prison, where he is sentenced to hard labor, is malnourished, and is only allowed to read either the Bible or The Pilgrim’s Progress. 

May 25, 1979: American Airlines Flight 191, bound from Chicago to Los Angeles, loses an engine shortly after takeoff due to improper maintenance. It crashes less than a mile from the end of the runway. All 271 people on board are killed, as are two people on the ground. 

My mother’s first cousin, James Zielinski, was one of the passengers killed in this accident.  

May 25, 1985: Tropical Storm One, formed over the Bay of Bengal on May 22nd, reaches Bangladesh. The storm surge, torrential rains, and floods kill more than 11,000 people. 

This is an affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4a7yD0K

Almanac for May 17

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for May 17th: https://ko-fi.com/post/May-17-Beauty-and-the-Beast-T6T11FR3LW

Bummer May 17th

May 17, 1946: William Jefferson Blythe Jr., the father of future 42nd U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton, is driving from Chicago toward his home in Hope, Arkansas when his Buick’s tire blows out. Blythe loses control of car, which crashes, throwing him into a ditch. Blythe survives being thrown from the vehicle but is unable to pull himself out of the water in the ditch before he drowns. The future president is born three months after his father’s death.

May 17, 1995: A 35-year-old man in San Diego steals a 56-ton M60A3 tank from the National Guard. The Army veteran, who’s dealing with substance abuse issues and their consequences, destroys an estimated $149,000 worth of property as the tank crushes vehicles and infrastructure including utility poles, fire hydrants, and traffic lights. No one else is hurt, but when the tank becomes disabled, San Diego police force the hatch open and shoot the tank thief, killing him.

May 17, 2012: Singer Donna Summer dies of lung cancer.

Bonus: Spotify is turning 20 and celebrating by telling us all of our favorite songs. I don't remember, but apparently I started using Spotify on March 31, 2017. Right around this time. (God, I love Colin Dickey's books.)

No surprise there.

"Joyride" by Kesha Rose Sebert - an obsession since August 2024.

"Hymn to Virgil" was a 2025 obsession. I feel like Lady Gaga's "Disease" came in between the "Joyride" days and the winter of "Hymn to Virgil." My tag for Hozier on Tumblr is "our lord and savior Andrew Hozier Byrne," and I'm only a little bit being ironic.

I need to read If Not For My Baby, the romance novel based on a Hozier rpf.

That Rihanna song? Reminiscent of JohnLock, to me. This is a meme I made in 2017.

"Here With Me" by Dido is from Love, Actually, a film which has both BBC Sherlock's Martin Freeman and Andrew Lincoln of Walking Dead and Wuthering Heights fame.

"Cruel Summer" was my #24 most-listened song of 2025, when I wrote, "24. Cruel Summer - Taylor Swift: My #4 song last year and probably the Taylor Swift song that brings me the purest joy. But I can only listen to it in the summer. I abandon it when autumn comes. I forgot that I started listened to it because of Good Omens. 

"I have to admit, the revelation that Neil Gaiman is a garbage heap of a human being really dulled my enthusiasm for Ineffable Spouses. David Tennant and Michael Sheen, it's not your fault."

But now, in May 2026, Good Omens 3 is out and I will be watching it soon.

"Joke's on You?" Harley Quinn-related.

"Already Gone?" For me, it's part of the soundtrack to a podfic I really need to finish recording.

That '80s bop by Tiffany, of course, besides having been part of my 1980s childhood, was also on the Umbrella Academy soundtrack.

I've been listening to Nirvana since the '90s, but what rekindled my love for "Come As You Are" specifically was its appearance in the Captain Marvel movie.

"I Drove All Night?" Destial playlist. "Boom Clap?" I'll always associate that with the film version of The Fault In Our Stars. And then there's this, with Danila Kozlovsky from the Vampire Academy movie.

We'll look at the second half tomorrow.

Almanac for February 17th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 17th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-17-Michael-Jordan-S6S71AOSGI

Today's Observance: Mardi Gras/Lunar New Year. Happy year of the Fire Horse!

Bummer February 17th

February 17, 1600: The Roman Catholic Church burns philosopher Giordano Bruno at the stake for heresy for his insistence that each star is the sun of its own galaxy and that the Earth is not the center of the universe, which has no center.

February 17, 1673: French playwright Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, who wrote under the pen name Molière, suffers a tuberculosis-induced pulmonary embolism while performing in his own play The Invalid. He finished out the show, but was carried immediately home afterward, where he died.

February 17, 2003: At the E2 Night Club in Chicago, Illinois, a fight breaks out, and a security guard uses pepper spray in the attempt to break up the fight. A stampede to exit the club follows, and 21 people are killed in the crowd crush.

February 17, 2010: Three Tesla Motors employees are killed when their Cessna 310 aircraft crashes into a residential neighborhood in East Palo Alto, California. They had taken off from Palo Alto Airport and were headed for the Tesla design studio in Hawthorne, California. Foggy weather is thought to have been a factor.

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#Nonfiction: 'Tinder Box: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster 1903'

Tinder Box: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster 1903 by Anthony P. Hatch

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is really well-written and well-researched, but what happened in 1903 is so terribly, terribly sad. Seriously, don't read this book if you'll be disturbed by gruesome injuries and deaths caused by horrible accidents. Not only was there a fire, but there was a panic, and the poor design of the theater caused a lot of deaths by crush asphyxia, a particularly horrible way to die.

But if you can stomach the nauseating details, it's a fascinating glimpse into life in Chicago in the early 20th century, a scathing look into the devastation caused by Gilded Age laissez-faire capitalism, and an importance lesson for the public spaces of today. This book is about 10 years old now, but the importance of preventing panics in theaters is very high when now we have to worry about random acts of violence, such as the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting.

This was a library book I checked out from HooplaDigital.com, and I was not obligated to review it in any way. This review represents my own honest opinion.