Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
November 2, 2004: Vincent Van Gogh’s 47-year-old great-grand-nephew Theo Van Gogh, a filmmaker, is shot and then has his throat slit while riding his bicycle on the east side of Amsterdam. His killer is a 26-year-old man, Mohammed Bouyeri, who has ties to Egyptian terrorist group Jama'at al-Muslimin, a radical Islamist offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Van Gogh was a vocal critic of some Islamic practices, especially those associated with fundamentalist Islam.
November 3, 1793: Playwright and early feminist Olympe de Gouges is executed by guillotine by the French Revolution’s Revolutionary Tribunal. Although convicted of “seditious behavior” and attempting to reinstate the monarchy, of which de Gouges is not guilty, her real “crime” is criticizing the Revolution and wondering in writing if it had gone too far.
November 4, 1918: One week before the Armistice that will end the war, the poet Wilfred Owens is killed in the First World War.
November 4, 1982: The family of Dominique Dunne takes 22-year-old Dominique off life support after medical tests reveal that she has no brain activity. The young actress has been in this state since she was attacked and strangled by her estranged boyfriend on October 30th.
Her killer was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder and sentenced to only six years in prison. Dunne’s parents, Dominick and Lenny Dunne, became advocates for crime victims after the outrage of their daughter’s killer’s light sentence.
November 5, 1605: Guy Fawkes attempts to blow up the English Parliament, an act known as the Gunpowder Plot. The plot is foiled, Guy Fawkes is convicted and hanged, and burning an effigy of Fawkes becomes an English tradition.
November 7, 1837: Anti-slavery newspaper editor Elijah Parish Lovejoy is shot to death by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, which is near Illinois’ border with “slave state” Missouri.
November 7, 1908: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are killed in a shootout with police in Bolivia.
November 7, 1980: Actor Steve McQueen dies in his sleep following surgery in Juárez, Mexico. He’d been diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, which metastasized and caused large tumors in his neck, chest, and abdomen.
Between February and October 1980, McQueen had attempted to treat his disease with alternative therapy directed by William Donald Kelley, who called his quack treatment regimen “non-specific metabolic therapy.” In McQueen’s case, the treatments didn’t distract him from seeking conventional medicine; his doctors had already told him his cancer was inoperable and terminal. The quack “alternative medicine” did, however, cost him thousands of dollars while having no effect whatsoever on his disease. Kelley also falsely claimed in the media that his treatment of McQueen was successful, and this false claim may have cost other cancer patients their lives if they chose not to seek conventional treatment. Kelley, who died in 2005, did not have a license to practice medicine.
November 8, 1965: 52-year-old journalist Dorothy Kilgallen dies at home of an apparently accidental overdose of alcohol and barbiturates.
November 8, 2020: Beloved Canadian-American game show host Alex Trebek dies of pancreatic cancer.
November 11, 1995: Kenule (Ken) Beeson Saro-Wiwa, who belonged to the Ogoni people of Nigeria, became a well-known playwright and environmental activist in response to the degraded environment of his native Ogoniland region caused by irresponsible petroleum waste disposal. He is assassinated by hanging under the false charge that he’d been involved in the murder of four Ogoni chiefs. Eight other activists are similarly falsely accused and executed by Nigeria’s military dictatorship.
November 12, 1981: Popular 1950s actor William Holden dies after slipping on a rug in his bedroom, striking his forehead on the bedside table, and bleeding to death while apparently too intoxicated to help himself in Santa Monica, California.
Suzanne Vega reads the account of Holden’s death in the newspaper while sitting in a diner and memorializes this diner trip in her song “Tom’s Diner.” She was a frequent patron at Tom’s Restaurant, on the corner of Broadway and 112th St. in New York, while she attended Barnard College.
Vega performs the song “Tom’s Diner” a capella on her 1987 album Solitude Standing. In 1990, English music producers Nick Batt and Neal Slateford, working under the artist name DNA, add an instrumental background to Vega’s track. The collaborative version was certified gold in the U.S. and was a #1 hit in four European countries.
The lyrics include:
“I open
Up the paper
There's a story
Of an actor
Who had died
While he was drinking
It was no one
I had heard of
And I'm turning
To the horoscope
And looking
For the funnies”
The day Vega describes must have been Nov. 18, 1981, when the New York Post carried the story about the discovery of Holden’s body. We know Vega read the story in the Post because it was the only one of New York’s then-daily newspapers that had “funnies,” or comic strips.
November 13, 1974: 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr. shoots to death the other members of his Amityville, Long Island family: his father Ronald DeFeo Sr., mother Louise, sisters Dawn and Allison, and brothers Marc and John. John, the youngest, was nine years old. The house in which the familicide occurs will later become infamous as the focus of the Amityville Horror book and films.
November 14, 1928: Dr. Sabin Arnold von Sochocky, the inventor of radium dial paint used to make wristwatches that glow in the dark, dies of aplastic anemia caused by his exposure to radium. His death helps make the legal case for the so-called “radium girls,” workers in the watch factories who became sick and often died from the same exposure to radioactivity, who sued their employer for the unsafe conditions in the factories.
November 14, 1916: Masterful British short story writer H.H. Munro, who published under the pen name Saki, is killed by a German sniper while serving in the First World War. His last words are reportedly, “Put that bloody cigarette out!”
November 15, 1959: Herb and Bonnie Clutter and two of their four children, Nancy and Kenyon, are murdered by Dick Hickock and Perry Smith in Holcomb, Kansas. The murders form the basis of Truman Capote’s “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood. All four were shot, and Herb is also stabbed.
November 16, 1960: 59-year-old actor Clark Gable, who has had a heart attack on November 6th, seems to be recovering when he suffers a second, fatal heart attack.
November 20, 1934: Poet, printmaker, and adventurer Everett Ruess is seen for the last time when he sets out to explore the Escalante River Basin in the Utah desert. Ruess’s two donkeys are discovered in February or early March 1935 in a corral he’s made for them. No other sign of Ruess is ever found.
November 22, 1963: C.S. Lewis dies in Oxford of kidney failure. Approximately seven hours later, Aldous Huxley dies of laryngeal cancer in Los Angeles. This news is overshadowed by the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on the same day.
November 23, 1958: Despite valiant efforts to revive him, comedian Harry Einstein dies of a heart attack he has suffered during a Friars Club roast of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Einstein collapses onto fellow comedian Milton Berle. Berle asks the audience, “Is there a doctor in the house?” This is initially taken by the audience to be a joke. When it became clear that Einstein needs medical attention, two physicians in the audience try to treat him. He is pronounced dead in the early hours of the 23rd.
Comedian Bob Einstein is 16 years old when his father dies; his brother, who performs under the stage name Albert Brooks, is 11.
November 24, 1991: Freddie Mercury dies of complications of AIDS in London.
November 25, 1990: Race car driver William (Billy) John Vukovich III is killed during racing practice in Bakersfield, California when the throttle on his car got stuck and the vehicle crashed into a wall. Vukovich’s grandfather had been killed during the 1955 Indianapolis 500.
November 27, 2019: Taiwanese-Canadian actor and model Godfrey Gao (born Tsao Chih-hsiang), age 35, collapses while filming the reality show Chase Me. Gao is taken to a nearby hospital, where medical personnel attempted to resuscitate him, but is pronounced dead due to cardiac arrest a few hours after collapsing.
American audiences may remember Gao best from the movie adaptation of Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.
November 28, 1694: Matsuo Bashō dies. A wandering poet and teacher who owned almost no worldly possessions, Bashō is considered Japan’s greatest writer of haiku.
November 29, 2001: Musician George Harrison dies at age 58 of lung cancer that has spread to his brain in a Los Angeles home belonging to his friend and former bandmate Paul McCartney.
November 30, 1882: Actress Annie Von Behren is accidentally shot and killed during a performance of Clifton W. Tayleure's play Si Slocum in Cincinnati, Ohio. Von Behren’s co-star Frank Frayne is supposed to shoot an apple off Von Behren’s head. The gun misfires and the bullet strikes Von Behren just above the eye; she dies less than 15 minutes later.
November 30, 1900: 46-year-old Irish writer Oscar Wilde dies of meningitis. His health has been in decline since he was imprisoned and sentenced to hard labor after being convicted of “gross indecency.” His crime was being in a relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, whose father did not like Wilde.
November 30, 1923: Vaudeville and early film actress Martha Mansfield dies of severe burns in the hospital. The previous day she had been dressed in a Civil War-era costume on the set of the film The Warrens of Virginia when a crew member lit a cigarette, then carelessly tossed the match. The match ignited Mansfield’s costume, which was difficult to remove due to its hoop skirt and many layers. The film was finished and released after Mansfield’s death, but is now considered lost.
November 30, 1958: Welsh actor Gareth Jones, performing in a television play broadcast live, dies of a massive heart attack during a break in between two scenes in which his character was to appear. Jones’ character was scripted to die from a heart attack during the teleplay.
November 30, 2013: Beloved Fast and Furious actor Paul William Walker IV leaves a Santa Clarita, California charity event as the passenger in his Porsche Carrera GT. The driver, Roger Rodas, reaches speeds of up to 93 mph in a 45 mph zone. He apparently loses control of the vehicle. It crashes into a lamp post and two trees, catching fire and killing them both. Rodas was 38; Walker was 40.
October 1, 1941: 52-year-old Aline Murray Kilmer, herself a poet and also the widow of Joyce Kilmer, a poet killed in World War One, dies following three years of an unknown, but excruciatingly painful, illness.
October 1, 1951: Journalist Pauline Pfeiffer dies at age 56 of acute shock. She had a rare pheochromocytoma tumor on one of her adrenal glands. It appears that when Pauline’s transgender daughter Gloria was arrested for using a women’s bathroom and Gloria’s father Ernest Hemingway called his ex-wife Pauline to tell her, the news of Gloria’s arrest caused Pauline’s adrenal tumor to produce the hormones that caused the fatal state of physical shock.
October 2, 2018: Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi, who resides in the U.S., is murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Khashoggi’s writings were critical of the Saudi government, and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is suspected of being involved in the assassination.
October 2, 2019: Guitarist Kim Shattuck, who played for groups including Pixies, the Muffs, and the Pandoras, dies of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at the age of 56.
October 3, 1849: On this election day, Edgar Allan Poe is given alcohol and marched from polling place to polling place in an illegal voting scam that was popular at the time. It may have contributed to his death four days later.
October 4, 1951: Henrietta Lacks passes away from complications of cervical cancer. She had been treated with radiation therapy at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. As a result of her cancer and/or the radiation, her organs failed. After her death and without her knowledge or consent, Lacks’ cancerous cells will be collected and used to start an “immortal” cell line that will be used in most of the major medical research of the 20th century.
October 4, 1970: Her road manager finds 27-year-old singer Janis Joplin dead on the floor of her motel room in Los Angeles. She has apparently died of a heroin overdose.
October 4, 1974: Poet Anne Sexton dies by suicide in her car, locked inside her garage, by carbon monoxide poisoning. She is 45 years old.
October 5, 1995: 50-year-old voice actor Linda Gary, who provided an impressive number of cartoon characters with their voices in American animation of the ‘70s and ‘80s, dies of brain cancer.
October 5, 2001: Robert Stevens, a photographer for the tabloid newspaper Sun in Boca Raton, Florida, dies of pulmonary anthrax. His death is the first in a series of anthrax terror attacks that killed Stevens and four other people and sickened 17 others.
Microbiologist Bruce Ivins is the lead suspect in the FBI investigation into the anthrax attacks. He dies by suicide before he can be arrested and charged.
October 7, 1849: In Baltimore, Edgar Allan Poe dies.
October 7, 1992: The last fluent speaker of the Ubykh language, Tevfik Esenç, dies at the age of 88. The Ubykh people are a subset of the Circassian people, who were the victims of ethnic cleansing by the Russians in the 18th and 19th centuries.
October 10, 1901: 23-year-old David Park Barnit, a poet of the Decadent school of poetry, dies suddenly of what newspapers describe as “an enlarged heart.” Some suspect this may be a cover story and that the young poet may have taken his own life.
October 10, 1963: 47-year-old French cabaret singer Édith Piaf dies of liver failure from liver cancer and cirrhosis after years of alcohol and drug addiction.
October 10, 1984: One employee and three customers are killed when a fire breaks out at Ole's Home Center in South Pasadena, California. The youngest victim is two years old. The fire is determined to be arson by investigators who include John Leonard Orr. In 1992, Orr will be convicted of this and several other arson fires in the Los Angeles area.
October 12, 1943: Poet Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV, best known as Robert Lowell or Robert Lowell, Jr., is sentenced to a year in prison for draft evasion for being a conscientious objector to service in World War II.
October 19, 1950: Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, age 58, dies after apparently suffering a heart attack and falling down the stairs of her home.
October 19, 1977: A small fire breaks out aboard the charter plane used by members of the band Lynyrd Skynyrd. No one is hurt, but the fire makes Cassie Gaines hesitant to board the plane the next day.
October 20, 1728: The Copenhagen Fire of 1728 begins and burns through October 23rd. It destroys nearly a third of the city’s buildings, leaving approximately 20% of Copenhagen’s population homeless. The University of Copenhagen library loses approximately 35,000 texts.
October 20, 1977: Cassie Gaines, her brother Steve Gaines, Ronnie Van Zant, road manager Dean Kilpatrick, and pilots William Gray and Walter McCreary die when Lynyrd Skynyrd’s chartered plane runs out of fuel and crashes in the woods outside Gillsburg, Mississippi. Drummer Artimus Pyle, guitarist Gary Rossington, and keyboardist Billy Powell all survive with serious injuries.
October 20, 1990: Stunt performer Brian Jewell, portraying a hanged man at a New Jersey “haunted hayride” attraction, accidentally hangs himself in earnest.
October 21, 1966: “[On this date] a massive coal-tip slid down a mountainside and engulfed the Welsh mining village of Aberfan, killing 144 persons, mostly school children. In response to an appeal the following week in a national newspaper, an English psychiatrist, J. Barker, obtained a large number of reports from respondents who felt they may have received paranormal information concerning this tragedy. After all claims were carefully checked out, thirty-five cases remained which Dr. Barker considered worthy of confidence. In twenty-four cases, the respondents had related the information to someone else before the landslide occurred. Dreams figures in twenty-five of these accounts. In one, the dreamer saw, spelled out in large, brilliant letters, the word ABERFAN, In another, a telephone operator from Brighton talked helplessly to a child, who walked toward her, followed by a billowing cloud of black dust or smoke.” - Our Dreaming Mind by Robert L. Van de Castle
October 22, 2009: The county government of Zhenyuan, Gansu province, China, announces on social media that it has burned 65 “illegal publications” outside of a local library. It describes the books as either “religious” or displaying “leanings,” presumably leanings that tend to disagree with the Chinese government.
On the same day, in the United States, novelist/blogger Mac Tonnies dies at age 34 of a cardiac arrhythmia.
October 23, 1731: Fire breaks out at Ashburnham House in Westminster, England. The house holds the Cotton Library, a collection of books and historical documents gifted to the British Crown by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, a Member of Parliament who died in 1631. The fire destroys 13 manuscripts and damages 200 others. The Nowell Codex, the single manuscript on which the Epic of Beowulfis recorded, is among those damaged.
October 24, 2010: Pan Jin-yu dies at the age of 96 in Taiwan. She was the last fluent native speaker of the Pazeh language.
October 26, 1952: Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American to sing on the radio in the U.S. and the first African-American to win an Academy Award for acting, dies of breast cancer in Los Angeles. She’s 59 years old.
October 26, 1990: 15-year-old William Anthony Odom, setting up a gallows scene for a Halloween tableau in North Carolina, accidentally hangs himself when the rope he’s using tightens on him.
October 26, 2018: A bomb addressed to then-Senator Kamala Harris is intercepted by authorities in Sacramento, California. Cesar Altieri Sayoc, Jr. is later convicted of the terroristic threat.
October 26, 2022: Food writer Julie Powell dies of cardiac arrest at age 49 after battling a COVID-19 infection.
October 28, 1991: The commercial fishing boat Andrea Gail is lost amid the so-called Perfect Storm weather event that began with Hurricane Grace, formed on October 26th. The boat sinks with six crew members aboard near Sable Island, Canada. Their bodies are never recovered. In all, the Perfect Storm claims 13 lives.
October 31, 1871: Emily and Mary Wilde, the older half-sisters of Oscar Wilde, attend a Halloween party at Drumacon House near Ulster, Ireland. During the last dance of the evening, Mary gets too close to a candlestick and catches her dress on fire. Emily, too, catches her dress on fire as she rushes to help her sister. Party host Andrew Reid leads the women outside in the hope that the snow would help them extinguish the flames, but both sisters die of their injuries, Mary (age 22) on November 9th and Emily (age 24) on November 21st.
On Tuesday, April 15th, the husband and I did worked a gig at a chiropractor's office (hi, Dr. Josh!), hanging a tv and some signs. The music playing inside the office was classic rock. I heard "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel.
Since I wrote about literary references in 3 songs in the previous post, I wondered if there was any crossover with "We Didn't Start the Fire."
This Tumblr post (not by me) links every reference in the Billy Joel song to the corresponding Wikipedia page. I won't replicate that work. Let's see what we've got here in the lyrics:
"We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel and Mick Jones (Michael Leslie Jones, guitarist for Spooky Tooth and Foreigner)
[Verse 1] Harry Truman, Doris Day Red China, Johnnie Ray South Pacific [1] Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon Studebaker [2], Television North Korea, South Korea Marilyn Monroe [3]
Rosenbergs, H-Bomb Sugar Ray, Panmunjom Brando [4], The King And I [5], And The Catcher In The Rye [6]
Eisenhower, Vaccine England's got a new queen Marciano, Liberace Santayana goodbye
[Chorus] We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No, we didn't light it But we tried to fight it
Verse 1 Footnotes:
1. April 7 almanac entry: April 7, 1949: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific premieres on Broadway. 2. That Time I Tried Out for Jeopardy! We visited a former Studebaker showroom in Chicago. It hasn't come up on this blog yet, I don't think, but at least three generations of my family worked for the Studebaker automobile company in South Bend. One of my great-grandmothers was a seamstress there. 3. Monroe is, of course, on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. That's our first crossover with the previous post. 4. March 27 almanac entry: March 27th, 1973: Liza Minnelli wins a Best Actress Academy Award for her role in Cabaret. She beats out Diana Ross, nominated for her role as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings The Blues.
At this same Academy Awards ceremony, Marlon Brando wins an Oscar for his role in The Godfather. He turns down the award, having boycotted the ceremony to bring awareness to Native American rights and representation in film. In his place, actress and activist Sacheen Littlefeather, a self-reported member of the Apache and Yaqui nations, declines the award on Brando’s behalf. According to legend, John Wayne has to be physically restrained from attacking Littlefeather as she is speaking. She is escorted off the stage by the award presenter, Roger Moore.
[After Littlefeather’s death in 2022, journalists investigating her claim of indigenous North American ancestry uncovered that Littlefeather was most likely of European and Mexican descent, with no ties to the Yaqui or Apache peoples. Of course, people who are indigenous to Mexico are native North Americans, but this does not excuse Littlefeather from making a claim to ancestry that she had no legitimate status to claim.] (end of almanac entry)
Brando is also on the Sgt. Pepper's cover with Marilyn Monroe. 5. February 22 almanac entry: February 22, 1930: Soprano Marni Nixon (in full, Margaret Nixon McEathron) is born in California. Her voice can be heard singing on behalf of the non-singing leading ladies in musical films including West Side Story, The King and I, and My Fair Lady. (end of almanac entry)
My Fair Lady is based on the stage play Pymalion by George Bernard Shaw, who is on the Sgt. Pepper's cover.
May 23 almanac entry: Saturday, May 23, 2009: Weekend trip to Milwaukee! We chose Milwaukee because it’s one of the settings of my novel Midsummer Night and we needed intimate details. We drove there in about four hours, taking a stop for a bathroom break in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
We arrived in Milwaukee around 7 p.m. and checked into the Hyatt Regency hotel downtown, right across Kilbourn Avenue from the stadium where the Bucks play. We rode the glass elevator to the 18th floor. As we settled in, I called author and Milwaukee native Barbara Vey, one of my Facebook friends. We made plans to meet up. Then Tit and I ate dinner at a Thai restaurant, The King and I. 6. Banned Books Week: Is The Catcher in the Rye Morally Destructive? February 22 almanac entry (again): February 22, 1995, South Bend: Having finished its course of studying Dante’s Inferno, Miss Fox’s Novel class began studying J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. July 16 almanac entry: July 16, 1951: J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is published.
[Verse 2]
Joseph Stalin, Malenkov Nasser and Prokofiev Rockefeller, Campanella Communist Bloc Roy Cohn, Juan Peron Toscanini, Dacron
Dien Bien Phu Falls, "Rock Around the Clock" [1] Einstein, James Dean [2] Brooklyn's got a winning team Davy Crockett, Peter Pan Elvis Presley [3], Disneyland
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev Princess Grace, Peyton Place Trouble in the Suez [4]
[Chorus] We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No, we didn't light it But we tried to fight it
Verse 2 Footnotes:
1. May 10 almanac entry: May 10, 1954: Bill Haley and the Comets release “Rock Around the Clock,” written by Max Freedman and James Myers. It becomes the first rock and roll single to reach #1 on the Billboard singles charts. 2. You might think that James Dean should be on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's, but he isn't.
February 8 almanac entry: February 8, 1931: James Dean is born in Marion, Indiana. May 2 almanac entry: May 2, 1991: Paula Abdul’s single “Rush, Rush” is released. Its music video is an homage to the classic James Dean film Rebel Without a Cause with Abdul in the Natalie Wood role and Keanu Reeves in the Dean role. October 10 almanac entry: October 10, 1956: The film adaptation of Edna Ferber’s novel Giant premieres, one year and 11 days after its star, James Dean, was killed in a traffic accident. December 9 almanac entry: December 9, 1994: I spent the day on a college visit to St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana. I sat in on an Introduction to Literature class, which discussed a short story about the Day of the Dead. I went on a guided tour, then had a one-on-one interview designed to see if I would be a good fit for St. Mary’s College.
After my interview, Mom and I had lunch in the dining hall. We went to the college’s bookstore. She asked me if I wanted a Maya Angelou book, and when I said yes, she bought it for me. I then met my hostess for the evening, a student named Susan who’d gone to Marian High School in Mishawaka. She showed me her room and then I went to her Intro to Spanish class with her. She had to study for a History exam after that, so I sat in her room with her, reading my new Maya Angelou book. I found that I recognized some of the poems because they’d been in the movie Poetic Justice*.
She took me to dinner at the dining hall with five of her friends and another visiting high school student. As “Monkey Man” by the Rolling Stones played in the background, the college students had a discussion of the Chipmunks cartoon and whether Dave was hot. In another dorm room, I helped Susan with a community project, making “Santa-grams” for St. Mary’s students to sent to one another. Susan ushered me out of there as soon as some of the women started mixing drinks.
We went to her friends’ room and watched Newsies with these musical-obsessed young women. I went to sleep in a comfy makeshift bed on Susan’s floor with all of her pictures of James Dean looking down upon me. *Footnote to the footnote: This '90s movie starring Tupac Shakur and Janet Jackson features a brief, early appearance by Clifton Collins, Jr. 3. I have the hardest time getting myself to be interested in anything to do with Elvis Presley. His music and movies are simply not to my taste. But he's pretty much culturally ubiquitous in the U.S., so he does merit a few almanac mentions. September 23 almanac entry: September 23, 1994, South Bend: Mr. Gerencher got sent to a convention in Indianapolis, so our substitute in Media showed us a movie about Elvis Presley. September 26 almanac entry: September 26, 1992: Marilyn, Therese, and I went to the Centreville, Michigan, County Fair. Despite the rain, Therese and I rode the rides, played carnival games, and won a lot of cheap, plastic toys. We ate fried mushrooms, caramel apples, and German almonds. We also bought tickets to the Ricky Van Shelton concert.
The warmup act was a sounds effects artist who made noises such as a doorknob falling down a flight of stairs. I’d have preferred another musician. Now, most of Ricky Van Shelton’s songs I didn’t recognize; Marilyn is the country music fan. But he did the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” a Patsy Cline song called “She’s Got You” (he changed the “she” to a “he”), and an Elvis Presley song called “Wear My Ring Around Your Neck.” I recognized those. October 12 almanac entry: October 12, 1994, South Bend: In Media, Mr. Gerencher told us the tragedy of how early rock ‘n roll almost fizzled out in the 1950s: Buddy Holly was dead, Little Richard entered one of his religious phases, Chuck Berry went to jail, Jerry Lee Lewis had a nervous breakdown, and Elvis Presley joined the army. He also told us an anecdote about meeting the Everly Brothers while working as a bellhop. December 15 almanac entry: December 15, 1994, South Bend: Mrs. Haas’s senior Brit Lit class watched part of the Wuthering Heights film starring Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff. After school I watched a tribute to Elvis Presley that featured Bono and Melissa Etheridge. Etheridge performed “Burnin’ Love.” December 31 almanac entry: December 31, 1992, South Bend: “You were a pretty good year, 1992. I laughed and cried, I looked and listened, I lived and breathed. I bled, I read, I wrote and sneezed and told jokes and drank water. I came in 14 and went out 15. Elvis Presley is still dead, and I don’t really miss him. But in old 1992 talk is cheap. Thus I leave you with one word: Goodbye.” 4. A different trouble in the Suez happened again in 2021.
[Verse 3] Little Rock, Pasternak Mickey Mantle, Kerouac [1] Sputnik, Zhou En-lai Bridge On The River Kwai Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle California baseball Starkweather Homicide Children of Thalidomide
Buddy Holly [2], Ben-Hur [3] Space Monkey, Mafia Hula Hoops, Castro Edsel is a no-go
U-2, Syngman Rhee Payola and Kennedy Chubby Checker, Psycho [4] Belgians in the Congo
Belgians in the Congo not only committed shocking historical atrocities but continue to cause problems into the 21st century.
[Chorus] We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No, we didn't light it But we tried to fight it
January 14 almanac entry: January 14, 1995, South Bend: Uncle Paul installed a modem on our computer. I went to the library and checked out Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums.
On the same day, Ernest Hemingway’s sister Madelaine “Sunny” Hemingway Miller died at the age of 90. [Ernest Hemingway's coming up in Verse 4.] February 8 almanac entry, again: February 8, 1926: Beat Generation writer Neal Cassady is born in Salt Lake City. In On the Road, Jack Kerouac referred to him as “Dean Moriarty.” February 24 almanac entry: Friday, February 24, 1995, South Bend: In study hall, I finished reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. This wasn’t an assignment; this was for fun. March 12 almanac entry: March 12, 1922: Jack Kerouac is born. “Jack Kerouac so closely entwined his dream world with his writing that it is almost impossible to separate the two. His Books of Dreams, published in 1961, contains nearly 250 dream reports, ranging from very brief accounts to lengthy descriptions ‘scribbled after I woke from my sleep...sometimes written before I was even wide awake.’ Aware that many of his dream events were similar to events in his novels, he actually provided a key in his preface, indicating which characters in his dreams had appeared, with different names, in such books as On the Road and The Dharma Bums.” - Our Dreaming Mind by Robert L. Van de Castle July 17 almanac entry: July 17, 1947: Jack Kerouac embarks on his first cross-country road trip. August 13 almanac entry: August 13, 1944: Lucien Carr, friend of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, stabs and kills his acquaintance David Kammerer. Carr, 19 years old at the time, will serve two years in prison for manslaughter, then go on to father children who include novelist Caleb Carr. August 15 almanac entry: August 15, 1968: According to a (fake) plaque hung in Lowell, Massachusetts (as a marketing gimmick), “...authors Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) and William S. Burroughs (1919-1997) came to blows over a disagreement regarding the Oxford comma. The event is memorialized in Kerouac’s ‘Dr. Sax’ and in the incident report filed by the Lowell Police Department. According to eyewitnesses, Burroughs corrected the spelling and grammar of the police report before passing out. The report is now in the permanent collection of the Mogan Center.”
According to Atlas Obscura, “The plaque, one of a few faux historical markers at Mill No. 5, is a marketing creation of Constantine Valhouli and Jim Lichoulas III, to help promote their commercial venture, a conversion of old industrial space into a hive of new businesses, galleries, studios, and tech labs. The developers really intended it as a lark—little did they anticipate how quickly two dead writers could create an online viral ruse.” August 23 almanac entry: August 23, 1949: Jack Kerouac writes in his diary, “It’s about time for me to start working on On the Road in earnest. For the first time in ages, I want to start a new life.” September 5 almanac entry: September 5, 1957: Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is published. October 2 almanac entry: October 2, 1958: The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac is published. October 7 almanac entry: October 7, 1955: Allen Ginsberg gives the first public reading of his poem “Howl” at Six Gallery in San Francisco. The emcee of the poetry reading event was Kenneth Rexroth. Other poets who read their work that day included Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Philip Lamantia. Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Neal Cassady were all in the audience. October 20 almanac entry: October 20, 1923: Poet Philip Whalen is born in Portland, Oregon. In The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac called him “Warren Coughlin.” 2. 2013 blog post: Imbolc, Buddy Holly, and Human Sacrifice 2016 blog post: J.K. Rowling, Writing as Robert Galbraith, Doesn't Fear the Reaper 2025 blog post: Bummer February
January 23 almanac entry: January 23, 1986: The first members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are inducted. They are all men. They include Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, and Little Richard. January 31 almanac entry: January 31, 1959: 17-year-old Robert Zimmerman, the future Bob Dylan, sees Buddy Holly perform at the Duluth Armory. This will be one of Holly’s last performances before his plane crash death in the early morning hours of February 3rd. February 3, 1959 almanac entry: February 3, 1959: “The Day the Music Died,” when early rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson were all killed in a plane crash outside Clear Lake, Iowa. The musicians had performed at Clear Lake’s Surf Ballroom and were on their way to their next show in Minnesota. This accident is remembered in poetic form through the Don McLean song “American Pie,” recorded on May 26, 1971. September 7 almanac entry: September 7, 1936: Rock and/or roll pioneer Buddy Holly is born in Lubbock, Texas, as Charles Hardin Holley. 3. 2014 blog post (brief mention): Currently Reading: Vampyres of Hollywood by Adrienne Barbeau and Michael Scott
April 10 almanac post: April 10, 1827: Ben-Hur author Lewis (Lew) Wallace is born in Brookville, Indiana. His father, David, was the governor of Indiana from 1837-1840, during which time the family lived in Indianapolis. Today if you want to visit General Lew Wallace Study & Museum, you’ll find it in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
As a Union general, Wallace defended Washington, D.C. from Confederate attack. When Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ was published in 1880, Lew Wallace was the governor of New Mexico Territory, not yet a state, appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes. Among his dubious accomplishments as territorial governor was, allegedly, offering outlaw Billy the Kid a full pardon if The Kid agreed to testify against the murderers of a Lincoln County lawyer. When his governorship ended in 1881, Lewis was appointed U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire, a diplomatic post. He retired to Crawfordsville in 1885 and is buried there. July 1st almanac entry: July 1, 1902: German-Jewish-American film director William Wyler is born in Mülhausen, Alsace-Lorraine, German Empire. (It’s part of France now.) He directed Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights, Charleton Heston in the remake of Ben-Hur, Audrey Hepburn in The Children’s Hour (from the play by mayonnaise non-inventor Lillian Hellman [Simpsons reference]) and Roman Holiday, and Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl. He won the Oscar for directing three times and was one of the most frequently nominated directors in Oscar history. 4. 2019 blog post: 'A Stir of Echoes' by Richard Matheson - Mid-Century Spooky Story 2023 blog post: Unfortunate (Mostly Literary) Happenings of Past Septembers
April 10 almanac entry, again: April 10, 1959: R&B singer, songwriter, and producer Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds is born in Indianapolis, Indiana. On the same day, Robert Bloch’s Psycho is published, and NBC airs Benny Goodman’s Swing Into Spring tv special featuring Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton, and Peggy Lee. October 10 almanac entry: October 31, 2019, Indianapolis: Tit and I were at Hilbert Circle Theatre listening to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra perform the Psycho film score live while the film played. We had popcorn and beer, and then later, decafs. This may have been the most fun I’ve ever had at the symphony.
[Verse 4] Hemingway [1], Eichmann Stranger in a Strange Land Dylan [2], Berlin Bay of Pigs invasion Lawrence of Arabia British Beatlemania [3] Ole Miss, John Glenn Liston beats Patterson
Pope Paul, Malcolm X British Politician sex J.F.K. blown away What else do I have to say?
[Chorus] We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No, we didn't light it But we tried to fight it
January 14 almanac entry: January 14, 1896: Novelist John Dos Passos is born in Chicago. Ernest Hemingway broke Dos Passos's arm in 1930.
“A novel is a commodity that fulfills a certain need; people need to buy daydreams like they need to buy ice cream or aspirin or gin.” - John Dos Passos February 7 almanac entry: The Key West Diaries March 3 almanac entry: March 3, 1911: Harlean Harlow Carpenter is born in Kansas City, Missouri. She’ll be known to the world as Jean Harlow. She’ll star in such movies as Hell’s Angels (1930), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932) and be name-checked in Madonna’s song “Vogue” (1990).
“Maybe it is like those dreams you have when someone you have seen in the cinema comes to your bed at night and is so kind and lovely. He’d slept with them all that way when he was asleep in bed. He could remember Garbo still, and Harlow. Yes, Harlow many times. Maybe it was like those dreams.” - For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway March 4 almanac entry: March 4, 1952: Ernest Hemingway finishes writing The Old Man and the Sea. May 8 almanac entry: Ernest Hemingway Birthplace Museum July 8 almanac entry: July 8, 1918: Ernest Hemingway is wounded while serving as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Red Cross during World War I. July 21 almanac entry: July 21, 1899: Ernest Hemingway is born.
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.” - Ernest Hemingway in Esquire magazine, December 1934
July 21, 1959: A U.S. District Court in NYC rules that D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover is not pornographic.
On the same day, Ernest Hemingway’s 60th birthday, Hemingway’s fourth wife Mary Welsh Hemingway threw him a birthday party in Málaga, Spain. Guests included Lauren Bacall and bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez. The menu included sweet-and-sour turkey and a cake with 90 candles, 60 for Ernest and 30 for Antonio’s wife Carmen. The celebration’s fireworks display sets fire to a palm tree, so the local fire department has to come out. Legend has it that after the blaze was quelled, the firefighters joined the party. September 1st almanac entry: September 1, 1952: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway is published. October 15 almanac entry: October 15, 1937: Ernest Hemingway’s fourth novel, To Have and Have Not, is published. October 21 almanac entry: October 21, 1940: Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is published. November 1st almanac entry: November 1, 1930: Ernest Hemingway crashes his car while returning home from a hunting trip he took with John Dos Passos, breaking his arm. November 10 almanac entry: November 10, 1957: CBS airs The World of Nick Adams, based on the short stories by Ernest Hemingway, adapted into a play by A.E. Hotchner, featuring incidental music written by Aaron Copland, directed by Robert Mulligan, and starring Steven Hill as Nick Adams. 2. Bob Dylan is on the Sgt. Pepper's cover.
January 17 almanac entry: January 17, 1975: Bob Dylan’s album Blood on the Tracks is released. Some of its memorable tracks include "Shelter From the Storm" and "Tangled Up in Blue." February 5 almanac entry: February 5, 1972: Neil Young releases the single “Heart of Gold,” with backing vocals by James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt. It will be the Canadian artist’s only single to reach #1 on the charts in the U.S. Bob Dylan will say of the song, "Shit, that's me. If it sounds like me, it should as well be me." March 8 almanac entry: March 8, 1996, St. Mary’s: My Jazz and Pop course opened up the discussion of folk music by focusing on Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Bob Dylan. March 29 almanac entry: March 29, 2017: Bob Dylan agrees to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature he’s been awarded six months before. April 9 almanac entry: 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. April 11 almanac entry: April 11th, 1961: Bob Dylan plays his first gig at Greenwich Village’s Gerde's Folk City, opening for John Lee Hooker. He plays “Blowin’ In the Wind.” April 24 almanac entry (it's not in the published version yet, but it will be there once I update this entry): April 24, 1961: Bob Dylan plays on his first record, Harry Belafonte’s “Midnight Special,” as the harmonica player. He’s paid $50 for the recording session. April 27 almanac entry: April 27, 2012: Bob Dylan receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. May 12 almanac entry: May 12, 1950: Gabriel Byrne is born in Dublin. He’s the first of his parents’ six children, three boys and three girls. All the girls sleep in one bed and all the boys in a second bed. Byrne won’t have a bed to himself until age 11, when he goes away to seminary school in England. His father is a cooper, making barrels at the Guinness factory.
“I’ve never fallen out of love with books like Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre. When I read them both for the fourth time, I absorbed them whole and unquestioningly. Jane Eyre was the first book I ever read. It was read to me by my mother and we went to see the movie of it, Orson Welles’ Jane Eyre. I think I was 8 or 9 at the time. I can still see the image of that black horse on the heath, rearing up in the half-darkness, from that angle, with Jane looking up in the mad eyes of Orson Welles. It gave me nightmares for years and years afterwards.” - Gabriel Byrne
Do you know who else, besides the Byrne parents, has three daughters and three sons? Bob Dylan. When he married Sara Lowndes, she had Maria, whom Bob adopted. Bob and Sara had Jesse, Anna, Sam, and then Jakob together. After they divorced, he married Gospel singer Carolyn Dennis; Bob and Carolyn have Desiree. Maria, Anna, Jesse, Sam, and Jakob’s younger half-sister Desiree is a lovely Black Jewish queer woman whose wife’s name is Kayla.
May 17 almanac entry: May 17, 1964: Bob Dylan gives his first public concert in the U.K. at the Royal Festival Hall in London. May 24 almanac entry*: May 24, 1941: Bob Dylan is born (as Robert Zimmerman) in Hibbing, Minnesota, USA. His Traveling Wilburys names are Lucky and Boo. June 9 almanac entry: June 9, 1964: Bob Dylan and producer Tom Wilson record 14 songs: The entire Another Side of Bob Dylan album, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and two others. July 20 almanac entry: July 20, 1965: Columbia Records releases Bob Dylan’s single “Like a Rolling Stone.” July 25 almanac entry: July 25, 1965: Bob Dylan shows up at the Newport Folk Festival, sets up electronic equipment, and plays a rock-based set with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band as his backing band. The audience, expecting an acoustic folk music set, boos and jeers so loudly they can barely hear “Maggie’s Farm” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” August 9 almanac entry: August 9, 1962: Bob Zimmerman legally changes his name to Bob Dylan. August 26 almanac entry: August 26, 1970: Joan Baez, Miles Davis, The Doors, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell and a variety of other performers perform at the Isle of Wight Festival. August 30 almanac entry: August 30, 1965: Bob Dylan’s album Highway 61 Revisited is released by Columbia Records. September 7 almanac entry again: September 7, 1965: Bob Dylan releases the stand-alone single “Positively 4th Street.” September 22 almanac entry: September 22, 1985: The first of the Farm Aid concerts organized by Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Neil Young is performed in Champaign, Illinois. Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, B.B. King, and Loretta Lynn are among the performers. More than $9 million is raised for the benefit of American family farmers who are in danger of losing their land and homes to mortgage debt. September 27 almanac entry: September 27, 1997: Bob Dylan performs “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” at the World Eucharist Congress for an audience of 300,000 people that includes Pope John Paul II. October 13 almanac entry: October 13, 2016: Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize for Literature. October 16 almanac entry: October 16, 1992: At The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, Madison Square Garden, Bob Dylan and a variety of other musical artists performed in recognition of Dylan’s 30 years in the music industry. A live double album was recorded from that performance. It features Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, Lou Reed, Kris Kristofferson, Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, Tracy Chapman, and Richie Havens, among others. October 21st almanac entry again: October 21, 1970: Bob Dylan’s album New Morning is released. It features the title track and a song called “Father of Night,” which had originally been intended to be used for an adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benét’s The Devil and Daniel Webster produced by poet Archibald MacLeish. The collaboration was cancelled due to creative differences. October 24 almanac entry: October 24, 1975: Bob Dylan records his song “Hurricane.” October 26 almanac entry: October 26, 1963: Bob Dylan plays a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. November 6 almanac entry: November 6, 1967: Bob Dylan records “All Along the Watchtower.” November 22 almanac entry: Bob Dylan 1996 (the time I attended a Bob Dylan concert) December 7 almanac entry: December 7, 1997: Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, Charlton Heston, Jessye Norman, and ballet dancer Edward Villella all receive Kennedy Center Honors for their contributions to the performing arts at a ceremony at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D.C. President William Jefferson Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton preside. December 27 almanac entry: December 27, 1967: Both Leonard Cohen’s debut album and Bob Dylan’s album John Wesley Harding are released. 3. Hemingway and Dylan were a lot. Let's save Beatlemania for another day.
*Footnote to the footnote: May 24th is also the birthday of Pedro Gonzales Gonzalez. The grandfather. Of Clifton Collins, Jr.
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh Richard Nixon back again Moonshot, Woodstock Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine Terror on the airline Ayatollahs in Iran Russians in Afghanistan Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride Heavy metal suicide Foreign debts, homeless vets AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz Hypodermics on the shores China's under martial law Rock and Roller cola wars I can't take it anymore
[Chorus] We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire But when we are gone It will still burn on, and on And on, and on
[Outro] We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No, we didn't light it But we tried to fight it We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No, we didn't light it But we tried to fight it
We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No, we didn't light it But we tried to fight it
What song is Erin obsessed with right now?
I've been very into the Swedish band Ghost, fronted by one Tobias Forge in various Satanic incarnations. I recently discovered this Shakespears Sister [that is the correct spelling of the band name, without the "e" and without an apostrophe] cover featuring actor Patrick Wilson (husband of Polish-American actor/novelist Dagmara Dominczyk) from the horror movie Insidious: The Red Door (which Wilson also directed).
The original:
Shakespears Sister is American musician Marcella Detroit and English girl group veteran Siobhan Fahey, formerly of Bananarama. The name comes from a 1929 essay by Virginia Woolf.
Derived from a digital capture (photo/scan) of the book cover (creator of this digital version is irrelevant as the copyright in all equivalent images is still held by the same party). Copyright held by the publisher or the artist. Claimed as fair use regardless. Fair use.
November 5, 1605: Guy Fawkes attempts to blow up the English Parliament, an act known as the Gunpowder Plot. The plot is foiled, Guy Fawkes is convicted and hanged, and burning an effigy of Fawkes becomes an English tradition.
In V for Vendetta, the character V wears a mask representing Guy Fawkes.
November 7, 1908: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are killed in a shootout with police in Bolivia.
November 7, 1980: Actor Steve McQueen dies in his sleep following surgery in Juárez, Mexico. He’d been diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, which metastasized and caused large tumors in his neck, chest, and abdomen.
Between February and October 1980, McQueen had attempted to treat his disease with alternative therapy directed by William Donald Kelley, who called his quack treatment regimen “non-specific metabolic therapy.” In McQueen’s case, the treatments didn’t distract him from seeking conventional medicine; his doctors had already told him his cancer was inoperable and terminal. The quack “alternative medicine” did, however, cost him thousands of dollars while having no effect whatsoever on his disease. Kelley also falsely claimed in the media that his treatment of McQueen was successful, and this false claim may have cost other cancer patients their lives if they chose not to seek conventional treatment. Kelley, who died in 2005, did not have a license to practice medicine.
November 8, 2020: Beloved Canadian-American game show host Alex Trebek dies of pancreatic cancer.
Me and Alex Trebek in 2012
November 11, 1995: Kenule (Ken) Beeson Saro-Wiwa, who belonged to the Ogoni people of Nigeria, became a well-known playwright and environmental activist in response to the degraded environment of his native Ogoniland region caused by irresponsible petroleum waste disposal. He is assassinated by hanging under the false charge that he’d been involved in the murder of four Ogoni chiefs. Eight other activists are similarly falsely accused and executed by Nigeria’s military dictatorship.
November 14, 1928: Dr. Sabin Arnold von Sochocky, the inventor of radium dial paint used to make wristwatches that glow in the dark, dies of aplastic anemia caused by his exposure to radium. His death helps make the legal case for the so-called “radium girls,” workers in the watch factories who became sick and often died from the same exposure to radioactivity, who sued their employer for the unsafe conditions in the factories.
November 16, 1960: 59-year-old actor Clark Gable, who has had a heart attack on November 6th, seems to be recovering when he suffers a second, fatal heart attack.
November 23, 1958: Despite valiant efforts to revive him, comedian Harry Einstein dies of a heart attack he has suffered during a Friars Club roast of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Einstein collapses onto fellow comedian Milton Berle. Berle asks the audience, “Is there a doctor in the house?” This is initially taken by the audience to be a joke. When it became clear that Einstein needs medical attention, two physicians in the audience try to treat him. He is pronounced dead in the early hours of the 23rd.
Comedian Bob Einstein is 16 years old when his father dies; his brother, who performs under the stage name Albert Brooks, is 11.
November 24, 1991: Freddie Mercury dies of complications of AIDS in London.
November 25, 1990: Race car driver William (Billy) John Vukovich III is killed during racing practice in Bakersfield, California when the throttle on his car got stuck and the vehicle crashed into a wall. Vukovich’s grandfather had been killed during the 1955 Indianapolis 500.
November 27, 2019: Taiwanese-Canadian actor and model Godfrey Gao (born Tsao Chih-hsiang), age 35, collapses while filming the reality show Chase Me. Gao is taken to a nearby hospital, where medical personnel attempted to resuscitate him, but is pronounced dead due to cardiac arrest a few hours after collapsing.
American audiences may remember Gao best from the movie adaptation of Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.
November 29, 2001: Musician George Harrison dies at age 58 of lung cancer that has spread to his brain in a Los Angeles home belonging to his friend and former bandmate Paul McCartney.
November 30, 1882: Actress Annie Von Behren is accidentally shot and killed during a performance of Clifton W. Tayleure's play Si Slocum in Cincinnati, Ohio. Von Behren’s co-star Frank Frayne is supposed to shoot an apple off Von Behren’s head. The gun misfires and the bullet strikes Von Behren just above the eye; she dies less than 15 minutes later.
November 30, 1923: Vaudeville and early film actress Martha Mansfield dies of severe burns in the hospital. The previous day she had been dressed in a Civil War-era costume on the set of the film The Warrens of Virginia when a crew member lit a cigarette, then carelessly tossed the match. The match ignited Mansfield’s costume, which was difficult to remove due to its hoop skirt and many layers. The film was finished and released after Mansfield’s death, but is now considered lost.
November 30, 1958: Welsh actor Gareth Jones, performing in a television play broadcast live, dies of a massive heart attack during a break in between two scenes in which his character was to appear. Jones’ character was scripted to die from a heart attack during the teleplay.
November 30, 2013: Beloved Fast and Furious actor Paul William Walker IV leaves a Santa Clarita, California charity event as the passenger in his Porsche Carrera GT. The driver, Roger Rodas, reaches speeds of up to 93 mph in a 45 mph zone. He apparently loses control of the vehicle. It crashes into a lamp post and two trees, catching fire and killing them both. Rodas was 38; Walker was 40.
