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.
Today's Observance: Eastern Orthodox Christmas Artist Birthday: Zora Neale Hurston
Bummer January 7th
January 7, 1943: Inventor Nikola Tesla dies alone, of a heart attack, at the Hotel New Yorker.
January 7, 1948: 25-year-old Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Captain Thomas F. Mantell crashes his P-51 Mustang fighter plane near Franklin, Kentucky. Prior to the crash, Mantell told Godman Army Airfield that he had sighted an unidentified aerial object (which officials speculate may have been an unpiloted balloon collecting atmospheric data). In pursuit of the unknown object, Mantell banked sharply upward; the lack of oxygen at the higher altitude may have contributed to his loss of control of the aircraft.
January 7, 2012: Eleven people are killed when a hot air balloon over Carterton, Aotearoa (New Zealand), catches fire while attempting to land.
January 7, 2015: Two Islamist extremists target the headquarters of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Twelve people are killed, including five cartoonists and two editors.
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"The latter festival [Epiphany] is derived from the Roman Saturnalia, the main feature of the celebration being lawlessness and wild fun. Many of the features of former times are no longer in vogue [in France], but the Twelfth-Night supper still continues in favor, when songs, toasts, and a general good time finishes the holiday season." - Yule-Tide in Many Lands
Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Athena (goddess/Greek mythology)
Bummer January 6th
January 6, 1925: University of Utah at Salt Lake City student Reginald Stringfellow dies of a class hazing ritual called “tubbing,” in which Stringfellow’s head was held underwater repeatedly.
January 6, 1939: 23-year-old developmentally disabled man Joe Arridy is executed by gas chamber in Colorado. Convicted of the sexual assault and murder of a 15-year-old teenager, Arridy lacked the capacity to understand his trial or the process of execution and was likely coerced into a false confession by police. He is pardoned posthumously in 2011.
January 6, 1960: Mid-flight between New York City and Miami, National Airlines Flight 2511 explodes, killing all 29 passengers and five crew members. Authorities never determine who carried out the apparent bombing.
January 6, 1977: Natalina Maria Vittoria “Dolly” Sinatra, age 79, the mother of singer/actor Frank Sinatra, dies when the private Learjet she’s taking to visit her famous son in Las Vegas crashes into the San Gorgonio Wilderness in southern California. Mrs. Sinatra’s friend Mrs. Anthony Carboni is also killed, along with the jet’s two pilots.
January 6, 2021: In Washington, D.C., a mob of Americans tried to disrupt the Constitutional process of the certification of a free and fair election. A mob of Donald Trump supporters, many of them allied with white supremacist extremists/domestic terrorists, apparently became enraged that the American people chose a Black and South Asian-American woman as our Vice President. They stormed the U.S. Capitol, breaking into the building.
At that time, both houses of Congress were in session to certify the Electoral College votes that made Joseph Biden the president-elect. This is merely a formality and a ceremonial gesture. Some Republican senators objected to the certification, but they were merely being assholes, trying to make political hay with delusional Trump supporters under the verifiably false impression that the election was somehow “stolen” from Trump.
In fact, more Americans had voted for Biden than had ever voted for any other U.S. presidential candidate. Biden won both the popular vote and the Electoral vote in landslides.
Despite this, groups of white supremacists and their enablers who were outraged that Republican attempts to gerrymander their districts and suppress the votes of urban people (and especially urban people of color) didn’t work, attempted a coup. They not only broke into the Capitol Building but destroyed property, stole things, and threatened the staff and members of Congress. Some of them were armed with guns, Molotov cocktails, and pipe bombs.
No members of Congress were harmed. They either sheltered in place in their offices or evacuated through tunnels that run under the building. The Capitol Police did shoot and kill one woman who forced her way into the building. In all, 5-7 deaths are attributed to this riot.
January 5, 1971: Geraldine Liston, the wife of professional boxer Sonny Liston, arrives at the couple’s home in Las Vegas upon returning from a 2-week trip. She finds her husband’s dead body upstairs in their bedroom beside a broken bench, slumped over the bed. She initially believes he may have tripped on the bench and fallen, giving himself a fatal a head wound. However, his official cause of death is listed as lung congestion and heart failure. Liston was known to have complained of chest pains in December 1970. Yet the Las Vegas publicly stated that Liston’s death was from heroin overdose.
A small amount of heroin is found in the house, but no needles or other drug paraphernalia indicate that Liston used heroin before his death. The death remains somewhat mysterious due to the police comments and the fact that Liston is thought to have died approximately six days before his body is discovered, leaving the body too decomposed to do much conclusive testing.
January 5, 1988: Retired NBA player “Pistol Pete” Maravich collapses and dies at the age of 40 after playing in a church pickup basketball game in Pasadena, California, where the other players include Evangelical Christian author/Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. Maravich’s autopsy reveals a rare congenital heart defect that had gone undetected until his sudden death.
January 5, 1998: Former musician and then-politician Sonny Bono dies following an accident in which he skies into a tree.
January 5, 2002: 15-year-old high school student Charles J. Bishop steals a Cessna 172 while his flight instruction is performing a routine inspection on the exterior of the aircraft. Bishop flies the plane into a 42-story Bank of America building without any apparent attempt to stop. Bishop is killed; no one else is injured.
January 5, 2015: Danish martial artist/model/actor Khan Bonfils is rehearsing for a London stage production of Dante’s Inferno when he collapses suddenly. Paramedics are unable to revive him, and the 42-year-old is pronounced dead at the scene.
January 5, 2022: 29-year-old Thomas Anthony Mansfield dies after mis-measuring and consuming caffeine powder equivalent to the caffeine in 200 cups of coffee. He calls paramedics because of an irregular heartbeat, but they’re unable to save him.
Dante Alighieri's portrait by Sandro Botticelli. Public domain.
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French Republican Calendar Day Name (15 Nivôse): Rabbit (Note: I'm using the year 1794, or Year II on the Republican Calendar, for conversions from the Republican to Julian Calendar. Year II was the first Revolutionary year that had a January in it.)
Bummer January 4th
January 4, 1904: Thomas Edison has Topsy the elephant electrocuted in an attempt to convince the public that his alternating current electricity is safer than Nikola Tesla’s direct current electricity. The film of this event may be the first death ever recorded on film. Topsy had killed a trainer who, in her defense, had burned her with cigarettes.
January 4, 1998: 35 Americans die as a result of an ice storm that strikes the northeastern United States.
Thomas Edison with an early phonograph, 1888, public domain.
January 3, 1967: Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer Jack Ruby dies in prison at age 55. Ruby, suffering from lung cancer, dies of a pulmonary embolism.
Jack Ruby. Image is in the public domain.
January 3, 1984: 48-year-old Dolly Young is decapitated by the Matterhorn Bobsled ride at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Her seatbelt is unbuckled (either deliberately or due to a malfunction), she is thrown from the ride, and she is then struck by another bobsled.
January 3, 2014: Islamist extremists burn the Christian books of Al-Saʼe Library in Tripoli, Lebanon.
January 2, 2001: 30-year-old Frances Frost is attacked and killed by a mountain lion while skiing in Banff National Forest in Alberta, Canada.
January 2, 2006: Thirteen miners are trapped underground by a methane gas explosion at Sago Mine in Sago, West Virginia. When the miners are reached on January 4th, only 26-year-old Randal L. McCloy, Jr. has survived. McCloy suffers from severe carbon monoxide poisoning and physical trauma and requires months of physical therapy before he can talk and feed himself. He suffers permanent eyesight and hearing damage.
What was Diane Meyer grateful for on January 2, 2024?
Hope. cousins old memories long conversations listening peace of mind laughter, even in grief Christmas lights (still up) in January genuine love happy childhood New Year's resolutions forgiveness...*
Today's Observance: New Year's Day Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: J. Edgar Hoover
And Now: The collection is complete! Now you can go back and read the entire updated, revised, and consolidated "Bummer" collection of history posts for each month of the year.
Happy new year! I hope your 2026 isn't a bummer. And now, because I still haven't published this in book form and you won't find these anywhere else online, here are my sources.
Physical Books
1959: The Year Everything Changed by Fred Kaplan. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009.
Our Dreaming Mind: A Sweeping Exploration of the Role That Dreams Have Played in Politics, Art, Religion, and Psychology, from Ancient Civilizations to the Present Day by Robert L. Van de Castle, Ph.D., Ballantine Books, 1994.
