Almanac for July 14

Almanac for July 14: https://ko-fi.com/Post/June-4-Poltergeist-O4O31G1GD6

Bummer July 14

July 14, 1908: According to his grave marker, an unknown man in Goldfield, Nevada, died from eating library paste (flour, alum, and water) on this date. It’s not entirely clear whether this is an actual historical incident or a local prank.

July 14, 2017: Stunt performer John Bernecker dies from injuries he sustained the previous day. While filming stunt footage for the TV show The Walking Dead, Bernecker had fallen 20 feet off a balcony onto a concrete floor.

Almanac for July 13

Almanac for July 13: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-13-I-Married-My-Best-Friend-E1E11HQD8B

Happy anniversary, Tit Elingtin!

Bummer July 13

July 13, 1793: 24-year-old royalist Charlotte Corday assassinates radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat in his bathtub with a knife she has concealed in her corset.

July 13, 1990: An earthquake and avalanche at Lenin Peak in the Trans-Alay mountains on the border of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (still part of the USSR in 1990) kill 43 mountaineers.

Jacques-Louis David, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Almanac for July 12

Almanac for July 12: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-12-Serpent-Mound-U7U71HQD2L

Artist Birthday: Henry David Thoreau

99 cents at Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/civil-disobedience-68?sId=4528426b-43a6-4592-941c-610fe6ed1226&ssId=pl1MMVd2lG_MxicsX0ZsR&cPos=1

Civil Disobedience at Everand (Scribd): https://www.everand.com/audiobook/625856267/Walden-and-On-the-Duty-of-Civil-Disobedience

Bummer July 12 

July 12, 1979: Singer Minnie Riperton dies of breast cancer. She’s 31 years old.

Riperton's daughter Maya Rudolph was six years old when Riperton passed away. In addition to her successful tv and film career, Rudolph is also a singer. Her band Princess is a tribute band in honor of Prince Rogers Nelson. 

July 12, 1996: Multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Melvoin, at the time touring with the Smashing Pumpkins as a keyboardist, dies of a heroin overdose. He’s 34 years old.

This song is about him:

July 12, 2007: In an incident caught on video, U.S. military forces in Iraq kill at least 12 civilians and wound two children. Military personal can be seen on the video laughing about the deaths and wishing for excuses to kill more people. The video is leaked to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning in 2010. Manning is arrested for leaking military property and imprisoned until her sentence is commuted in 2017.

Almanac for July 11

Almanac for July 11: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-11-Seven-and-Jerry-W7W01HQCVL

Bummer July 11

July 11, 1906: Pregnant, 20-year-old Grace Brown, a worker in the Gillette Skirt Factory, is intentionally drowned and murdered by her boyfriend Chester Gillette, nephew of the factory owner. Gillette is subsequently executed in the electric chair.

The murder inspires Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, which in turn inspires the 1951 film A Place In the Sun. The character based on Brown is played by Shelley Winters.

July 11, 1937: George Gershwin, age 38, dies of a brain tumor.

But if you don't want George Gershwin to die, you can listen to this fictional audiobook in which he doesn't.

Almanac for July 10th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 10th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-10-Tea-Time-O5O61HQCPI

Artist Birthday: Giorgio de Chirico

Bummer July 10th

July 10, 1861: After asking for a cup of coffee, Frances “Fanny” Appleton Longfellow dies of burn injuries she sustained the day before. Fanny’s dress caught on fire when either a spark or hot wax made contact with her dress as she melted sealing wax to seal an envelope containing locks of her children’s hair. 

Her husband, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, is napping when he hears her screams and attempts to smother the flames with a rug. Longfellow also sustains burns to his arms and face to the extent that he is too injured to attend Fanny’s funeral. He wears a beard for the rest of his life to conceal his facial scars.

July 10, 1873: French poet Paul Verlaine shoots his inappropriately younger lover/fellow poet Arthur Rimbaud in the wrist, wounding him, although the injury is not serious. 

July 10, 1985: Aeroflot Flight 7425 crashes near Uchkuduk, Uzbekistan, at the time part of the USSR. All nine crew members and 191 passengers are killed. A fatigued crew and pilot error contribute to the accident. 

***

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Almanac for July 9th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 9th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-9-Radcliffe-B0B21HQCGE

Bummer July 9th

July 9, 1850: The 12th U.S. president, Zachary Taylor, dies of acute gastroenteritis while in office. Several other members of his cabinet also become ill with gastrointestinal symptoms. Taylor is the second U.S. president to die in office after William Henry Harrison, both of natural causes.

July 9, 1937: Artist David Hockney is born in the West Riding of Yorkshire, U.K. He just passed away on June 11, 2026.

The same day Hockney is born, a fire at a warehouse in Little Ferry, New Jersey, destroys the silent film archives of the Fox Film Corporation and other studios.

July 9, 1942: 13-year-old Anne Frank and her family are forced to go into hiding to avoid Nazi persecution.

Almanac for July 8th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 8th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-8-Mona-Lisa-W7W21HQCA4

Percy Shelley is a contributor. https://amzn.to/3XHzDlM

Bummer July 8th

July 8, 1822: Poet Percy Shelley drowns while out sailing, along with his friend Edward Ellerker Williams. They are each 29 years old.

July 8, 1917: Canadian painter Thomas John Thomson accidentally drowns while canoeing in Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park in Ontario. He is 39 years old.

July 8, 1918: Ernest Hemingway is wounded while serving as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Red Cross during World War I. 

July 8, 1965: Veteran stunt pilot Paul Mantz is killed while filming the movie The Flight of the Phoenix. Mantz’s plane, specially built for the film, struck a small hill, then broke apart and hit the ground as Mantz tried to recover from the error.

July 8, 1974: 18-year-old park employee Deborah Gail Stone is crushed to death between a stationary wall and a rotating wall that are part of the America Sings attraction at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

July 8, 1998: Police find the body of screenwriter Gary DeVore inside DeVore’s Ford Explorer submerged in an aqueduct in Palmdale, California. DeVore had last been seen by his wife a year earlier when he left their home near Santa Barbara, California, to work on a screenplay at his office in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

Police do not believe DeVore’s death could have been an accident, since there were no signs that the Explorer had struck the aqueduct, the vehicle’s lights were switched off, and DeVore’s laptop and gun were missing. Further, the hands of the deceased man were missing. The death is officially unsolved. Some have speculated that something in DeVore’s screenplay was threatening to someone, possibly someone inside the U.S. government, and that he was murdered to stop the screenplay from getting out the public.

Read more about Gary DeVore here.

July 8, 2020: Actor Naya Rivera, age 33, rents a boat on Lake Piru in California and takes it out around 1 p.m. with her 4-year-old son Josey. The pair is expected to return to dock by 4 p.m. When the boat fails to appear by 5 p.m., a search begins. Searchers find Josey asleep on the boat, wearing a life jacket but alone. The boy tells the Sheriff’s Department that he and his mother jumped off the boat and into the lake to swim together, but that his mother had trouble climbing back into the boat and that he saw her go under the water. 

Rivera’s body is found in the lake on July 13th. It appears that she drowned after becoming caught in a rip current, having enough strength to push her son back onto the boat but then not enough strength to lift herself from the current. Rivera was an experienced boater and a strong swimmer, and neither alcohol nor drugs are thought to have been factors in her death.