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Saturday, November 2, 2024

More Unfortunate Happenings of Past Novembers

Read last year's November post here.

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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.

Gable with costars Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift

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. 

Friday, November 1, 2024

All Saints Day: "Never Ever" Reimagined

Happy 1st of November, the Feast of All Saints in Roman Catholicism. Please enjoy this reimagined version of "Never Ever," the biggest U.S. hit for 1990s U.K. pop group All Saints. This is from All Saints member Shaznay Lewis's May 2024 album Pages

May the patron saints of Britpop bless and keep us all.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

"WHO WE GONNA CALL" Poem by Amanda Gorman


What is writing but the preservation of ghosts? - Cameron Awkward-Rich, "Essay on the Appearance of Ghosts"

We rouse ghosts,
Primarily, for answers.
Meaning we seek
Ghosts for their memory
& fear them for it just the same.
Our country, a land of shades.
Yet there are no wraiths but us.
If we are to summon
Anyone or anything,
Let it be our tender selves.


***


Like ghosts, we have too much
To say. We will make do.
Even if in a graveyard.
We, like this place,
Are haunted & hungry. 
The past is where we pull home.
Our forms once again fluent
In all things bright.

Poet's note: The title "Who We Gonna Call" is a reference to the original "Ghostbusters" theme song to the film of the same name by Ray Parker Jr.

Monday, October 28, 2024

Halloween Podcast Episode Recommendations

If you're looking for something seasonal to listen to this Halloween, I have suggestions! I've curated them into this Spotify playlist. 

If you listen to all 24 episodes, you'll treat yourself to 16 1/2 hours of spooky podcast listening!

The "Buried Alive" episode of American Hysteria discusses historical cases of people afraid they were going to be buried alive, but also accounts of so-called burial artists who buried themselves alive on purpose, usually as a publicity stunt. All of the accounts in this episode end relatively well for the burial artist. If you want to read a brief, macabre account of a burial artist whose stunt did not go well, see Bummer Halloween.

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

More Unfortunate Happenings of Past Octobers

Read last year's post here.


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 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 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 9, 1816: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley's half sister, Fanny Imlay, dies by suicide via an overdose of laudanum.


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. 

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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, 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 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.

See also: Bummer Halloween