Almanac for April 4th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 4th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-4-Nineteen-Eighty-Four-P5P11D6X42

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Ancient Egyptian goddess Ma'at

Bummer April 4th

April 4, 1841: The 9th U.S. president, William Henry Harrison, dies in office of what was thought at the time to be pneumonia. He has been inaugurated as president only a month earlier. Harrison is the first U.S. president to die in office.

April 4, 1865: During the American Civil War, Union troops set fire to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Only four buildings survive. Among those destroyed is the university’s 7,000-volume library. The Confederacy surrenders only five days later.

April 4, 1968: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated. (Note: This also happened to be the day American poet Maya Angelou turned 40.)

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What was Diane Meyer grateful for on April 4, 2024?

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the solar eclipse is soon!
getting through the day
stretching
sun
chai tea
pasta salad
"I love you"
happy for myself
love, so much love, for my friends

Almanac for April 3rd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 3rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-3-Rachel-Bloom-Crushes-On-Ray-Bradbury-N4N31D6W4D

Artist Birthday: Washington Irving

Bozeman (MT) Courier, December 4, 1925

Bummer April 3rd

April 3, 1936: Bruno Hauptmann is executed by electric chair at Trenton State Prison in New Jersey for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s toddler son Charles (“Charlie”) Lindbergh, Jr.

April 3, 1974: The outbreak of more than 100 tornados in 13 U.S. states and Ontario, Canada, kills more than 300 people.

April 3, 1996: The FBI arrests Ted Kaczynski, the former UC Berkeley mathematics professor accused and later convicted of being the University and Airport Bomber, or UNABomber, who killed three people with bombs between 1978 and 1995. He'd almost blown up American Airlines Flight 444 on November 15, 1979, but fortunately the bomb malfunctioned and passengers suffered smoke inhalation injuries, but survived.

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The Accomac, VA, Peninsula Enterprise, April 3, 1926

Almanac for April 2nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 2nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-2-Courtly-English-Tea-Y8Y71D6UEY

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Today's Observance: Passover

Beatles Trivia
April 2, 1974: Barbra Streisand wins an Oscar for her song “The Way We Were,” beating out Paul McCartney’s James Bond theme “Live and Let Die.”

Bummer April 2nd 

April 2, 1932: 61-year-old retired rodeo performer Bill Pickett dies, never having recovered from a coma he entered after being kicked in the head by a bronco.

April 2, 1979: Military researchers in Sverdlovsk, Soviet Union (now Yekaterinburg, Russia) accidently release spores of Bacillus anthracis, the bacteria that cause anthrax, from the laboratory thanks to a defect in the ventilation system. At least 66 Russians die as a result.

April 2, 2021: Washington D.C. Capitol Police Officer William Evans is killed and his fellow officer is wounded when a man deliberately rams his car into a barrier outside the U.S. Capitol building. The 25-year-old assailant was known by his family to have had a number of mental health challenges. 

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Almanac for April 1st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 1st: https://ko-fi.com/post/1st-of-April-April-Fools-Day-Q5Q51D6TEJ

Poem: "April" by Linda Pastan

Today's Observance: April Fool's Day, Passover begins at sundown

• Intermountain Jewish News (Denver, CO), February 11, 1926

Bummer April 1st

April 1, 1958: Takarazuka Revue performer Katsuki Hiromi is killed when her clothes catch on the stage lift on which she is riding. According to the website Takarazuka Forever: “She was wearing an underskirt with a metal band about the waist and when her costume became stuck there was no way to free herself. Her feet were dragged into the moving mechanism and the metal band cut into her torso, killing her. Following her death the lifts had safety guards installed, the speed at which they were dropped and raised was slowed, and all metal costume parts were removed and replaced with bamboo.”

April 1, 1984: Motown singer Marvin Gaye, age 44, is shot to death by his father inside his parents’ home in Los Angeles. 

April 1, 2017: A group of middle school children gather for a birthday party at Quality Inn & Suites in Niles, Michigan. They use the hotel’s indoor swimming pool. When hotel staff peer into the swimming pool area a short time later, they notice some of the children lying unconscious on the pool deck. A pool heater has malfunctioned, causing the 12- to 14-year-olds to be poisoned with carbon monoxide. Sadly, 13-year-old Bryan Douglas Watts cannot be revived and is declared dead on arrive at a local hospital. The other 14 poisoned children are treated and released from the hospital. 

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Almanac for March 31st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 31st: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-31-Slaughterhouse-Five-W7W31D6M5F

Bummer March 31st

March 31, 1855: Charlotte Brontë and her unborn child die, most likely due to hyperemesis gravidarum. In modern times, their lives could have been saved by something as simple as an IV injection of fluids and electrolytes.

March 31, 1931: While flying to participate in a movie called The Spirit of Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame head football coach Knute Rockne is killed when his Transcontinental & Western Air airliner crashes near Bazaar, Kansas. Seven other people are killed in the crash. Rockne is 43 years old.

March 31, 1995: Singer/fashion designer Selena (in full, Selena Quintanilla Pérez) is murdered by her hanger-on Yolanda Saldívar when it appears Selena is about to confront Saldívar about financial misdeeds. At a Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi, Texas, Saldívar shoots Pérez once in the right shoulder as Pérez walks away. Pérez is rushed into emergency surgery but is pronounced dead on the operating table.

March 31, 2019: Roman Catholic priests in Gdańsk, Poland, perform a “spring cleaning” that includes burning books and other objects they consider “harmful to our faithful.” These include Harry Potter books, books from the Twilight series, an African-style face mask, and a Hello Kitty umbrella. Exactly how Hello Kitty was thought to be attacking the Catholic faith is unclear.

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Almanac for March 30th

Erin O'Riordan's almanac for March 30th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-30-Van-Gogh-Z8Z81CNLUV

Beatles Trivia

March 30, 1967: The Beatles photograph the album cover photo of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Artists Jann Haworth and Peter Blake have designed the image, which portrays the group in colorful pseudo-military uniforms, surrounded by wax sculptures of themselves and numerous cardboard cutouts of famous people. Among those depicted by the cutouts are Lenny Bruce, William S. Burroughs, Lewis Carroll, Stephen Crane, Bob Dylan, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, Carl Jung, Marilyn Monroe, Edgar Allan Poe, Dylan Thomas, H.G. Wells, Mae West, and Oscar Wilde.

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Vincent Van Gogh

Bummer March 30th

March 30, 1968: Former Disney child actor Bobby Driscoll, who appeared in Song of the South and Treasure Island, is found dead in an abandoned apartment in the East Village of New York City. He is 31 years old. He has died of heart failure related to his use of heroin. 

March 30, 1981: In an assassination attempt, U.S. President Ronald Reagan is shot by an assailant who also wounds Press Secretary James Brady, a Secret Service agent, and a Washington, D.C. police officer in the attack. Brady is severely injured, and when he dies in 2014, his death is classed as a homicide since it is directly related to his injuries. Police officer Thomas Delahanty suffers nerve damage that ends his career. Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, shot in the liver, diaphragm, and lung, makes a full recovery. 

Reagan’s extremely low blood pressure when he reaches the hospital indicates he almost certainly would have died, had he not been rushed into emergency surgery so promptly. Special Agent Jerry Parr most likely saved Reagan’s life by ordering Reagan’s driver to take the president to George Washington University Hospital.

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Almanac for March 29th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 29th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-29-Pembertons-French-Wine-Cola-Q5Q01CMIWO

Today's Observance: Palm Sunday

Beatles Trivia
March 29, 1994, South Bend: I drove my neighbors Jay and Ryan to school this morning. We heard Aerosmith’s “Come Together” on the radio. They knew the Beatles original but had never heard the Aerosmith cover before.

Bummer March 29th

March 29, 1891: Artist Georges Seurat dies of unknown causes at the age of 31, leaving his painting The Circus unfinished.

March 29, 1911: The New York State Library, located inside the State Capitol building in Albany at the time, is badly damaged in a fire at the Capitol building. The fire destroys an estimated 450,000 books and 270,000 manuscripts, including many historical documents relating to early Dutch settlers in New York state.

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