Almanac for October 24th

Torrington (WY) Telegram, Oct. 21, 1926

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 24th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-24-Shaved-Fish-Z8Z3150ASR

October 24, 1975: Apple Records releases Shaved Fish, a compilation album by John Lennon with the Plastic Ono Band, in the U.S. 

Bummer October 24th

October 24, 1960: The Soviet Union tests its R-16 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Scientists and technicians worked on pre-launch testing and, due to scheduling pressures, began launch preparations at the same time. A short circuit causes the missile’s second-stage engine to fire prematurely, igniting the first-stage fuel tanks, resulting in a tremendously powerful explosion. 

The Soviet Union would not permit any information about the disaster to reach the public until 1989. The number of people killed and injured in the accident is estimated to be between 54 and 300 people. Mitrofan Ivanovich Nedelin, the head of the USSR’s R-16 program, was among those killed.

October 24, 1963: 30-year-old actor Beverly Wills, smoking in bed, accidentally sets her home on fire, killing herself, her grandmother, and her 4- and 7-year-old sons.

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 24, 2013: 20-year-old Brooke Greenberg dies of bronchomalacia, a condition of weakened cartilage in the bronchial tubes usually seen in newborn babies. Although Brooke is 20 years old, she appears to be a toddler due to an extremely rare condition, now called neotenic complex syndrome. Her body had ceased to grow after age five, she still had her baby teeth, couldn’t speak, and she is estimated to have a mental age of nine months to one year old. 

October 24, 2018: The Secret Service intercepts an explosive device mailed to the home of former U.S. President Barack Obama. On the same day, two suspicious packages are mailed to U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat who is African-American like the former president. One package is intercepted by the Capitol Police; the other causes the evacuation of a Los Angeles postal center. Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr. is later convicted of the terroristic threats.

Almanac for October 23

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 23: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-23-The-Scottish-Play-O4O2150A1J

Bummer October 23

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 Beowulf is recorded, is among those damaged.

October 23, 1951: 34-year-old Filipino actor and film director Fernando Poe Sr. dies of rabies. He had let a puppy lick his wound, due to a folk belief that doing so would allow the wound to heal faster, apparently without knowing that the dog was infected with rabies.

October 23, 1983: During the Lebanese Civil War, a truck bomb kills 241 U.S. military personnel; a similar bombing kills 58 French Army troops. 

Almanac for October 22nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 22nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-22-Im-the-Shrew-H2H715094Z

The Producers News (Plentywood, Montana), Oct. 22, 1926. Notice how they're using "Halloween Night" to mean the night before Halloween, after sundown on the 30th.

French Republican Calendar day name (1 Brumaire) - Apple

Deborah Griscom Passmore, 1840-1911, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bummer October 22nd

October 22, 1877: At least 207 miners are killed by an explosion at the Blantyre Colliery. The youngest victim is an 11-year-old boy. The flammable chemicals in the mine are probably ignited by an open flame, possibly by one of the workers lighting a tobacco pipe.

October 22, 1953: Milligan College (Tennessee) student Calvin Dougherty dies of internal injuries sustained as part of a class hazing. Ordered to race by upperclass students, Dougherty inadvertently runs into the cable of a tennis net, rupturing his pancreas and injuring his spleen.

October 22, 1986: Musician, comedian, and traffic reporter Jane Dornacker dies in an ambulance a short time after the helicopter from which she has been delivering a traffic report for WNBC radio crashes into New York City’s Hudson River. The pilot survives.

October 22, 2005: Bellview Airlines Flight 210 crashes shortly after takeoff from Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria. All six crew members and 111 passengers are killed. The cause of the crash is unknown, although weather and excessive wear on the aircraft have been posited as possible factors. Sadly, the high speed of the crash and looting in the aftermath made it difficult for authorities to identify the victims.

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.

Almanac for October 21st

Excuse me, the Spokane Woman of October 21, 1926? What kind of faces are we calling "Character Masks?" Folks, the 1920s were hella racist.

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 21st: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-21-Carrie-Fisher-W7W514YDF0

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Bummer October 21st

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 21, 1969: Jack Kerouac dies of internal abdominal hemorrhage caused by his heavy alcohol use. He is 47 years old.

October 21, 2021: Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins is accidentally shot and killed by actor Alec Baldwin on the film set where the two are working. The Pietta .45 Colt revolver Baldwin was using as a prop shouldn’t have been loaded with live ammunition. 

Almanac for October 20th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 20th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-20-Rimbaud-A0A314YCC0

Bummer October 20th

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.

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 19th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 19th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-19-Z8Z014YAK3

Bummer October 19th

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.

Almanac for October 18th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 18th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-18-B0B114VTQK

Bummer October 18th

October 18, 1984: 26-year-old actor Jon-Erik Hexum dies six days after an accident on the set of a TV show called Cover-Up. He accidentally shoots himself in the head with a gun filled with blanks, and the wadding of one of the blanks severely injures him.

October 18, 2015: Death metal bass player Frank Watkins, who played in the bands Obituary and Gorgoroth, dies at age 47 of cancer.