Almanac for October 12th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 12th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-12-Indigenous-Peoples-Day-I3I814B4PD

Today's Observance: Indigenous Peoples Day

Bummer October 12th

I've posted my Columbus Day spiel on this blog before, but it bears repeating during Trump 2.0, when white supremacists are out, about, and showing their asses every day in this damned country.

October 12: Indigenous Peoples Day. According to Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen:

• "When Columbus and his men returned to Haiti in 1493, they demanded food, gold, spun cotton--whatever the Indians had that they wanted, including sex with their women. To ensure cooperation, Columbus used punishment by example. When an Indian committed even a minor offense, the Spanish cut off his ears or nose."

• Quoting a biography written by Columbus' son Ferdinand on the quashing of a rebellion against the Spanish by the Arawak people: "The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike..."

• "Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food." 

• "Haiti under the Spanish is one of the primary instances of genocide in all human history."

• "Columbus not only sent the first [American Indian] slaves across Atlantic, he probably send more slaves--about five thousand--than any other individual." When large numbers of American Indian slaves died of starvation, overwork, suicide and disease, the Spanish simply looked to African slaves to replace them. 

• "A particularly repellent aspect of the slave trade was sexual. As soon as the 1493 expedition got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape. On Haiti, sex slaves were one more perquisite that the Spaniards enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, 'A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.'"

There you have it, in Columbus's own words even. He literally believed that he had the right to do whatever he pleased to people who were non-Catholic. Their refusal to accept the Spaniards' "faith" justified everything, according to the cultural ethos of the time. The sex trafficking of 9- and 10-year-old children didn't bother Columbus. Dismemberment didn't bother him. Murder didn't bother him. Genocide didn't bother him. 

So, fuck Christopher Columbus.

October 12, 1943: Poet Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV, best known as Robert Lowell or Robert Lowell, Jr., is sentenced to a year in prison for draft evasion for being a conscientious objector to service in World War II.

October 12, 1971: Early rock ‘n roll musician Gene Vincent dies at the age of 36 from seizures and a ruptured stomach ulcer brought about by Vincent’s heavy use of alcohol. 

October 12, 1997: American singer John Denver dies when his self-piloted experimental aircraft crashes.

October 12, 2002: While attempting to set a new freediving record, 28-year-old French diver Audrey Mestre drowns in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Dominican Republic. She dives to a then-record depth of 171 meters. Her lift bag, once inflated, should have brought her back to the surface in less than three minutes. It malfunctions and more than eight minutes pass before Mestre’s dive team brings her body to the surface. She is pronounced dead at the hospital.

October 12, 2012: Myriam Ducre-Lemay, age 20, kisses her new boyfriend as they get ready for bed after a party. He has eaten a peanut butter sandwich for a late-night snack and, since they are still a fairly new couple, isn’t aware that Ducre-Lemay has a severe peanut allergy. She asks him to call for paramedics, which he does, but by the time they arrive, her throat has constricted so severely that paramedics are unable to insert a breathing tube. She dies of anaphylaxis that evening when her family removes life support.

Almanac for October 11th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 11th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-11-Grim-Grotto-O5O614B4HW

Artist Birthday: Elmore Leonard

Bummer October 11th

October 11, 1984: Aeroflot Flight 3352 crashes into airport maintenance vehicles while attempting to land at Omsk Airport (now Tsentralny Airport). Poor visibility and an air traffic controller who fell asleep on duty contribute to the crash, which kills 174 people on the plane and four people on the ground. Five people survive.

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If my words are not being censored by the Trump Regime, you may find my books here on Gumroad. https://creativista668.gumroad.com/

Almanac for October 10th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 10th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-10-Giant-M4M714B3QE

https://bannedbooksweek.org/let-freedom-read-day/

Artist Birthday: Dan Stevens
Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Sunflowers

October 10, 1901: 23-year-old David Park Barnit, a poet of the Decadent school of poetry, dies suddenly of what newspapers describe as “an enlarged heart.” Some suspect this may be a cover story and that the young poet may have taken his own life.

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. 

The series Smoke was wild because it was a fictionalized version of Joseph Wambaugh's book about John Orr with the serial numbers filed off. But it had Jurnee Smollett and I loved her as a child in the movie Eve's Bayou and then again when she popped up on True Blood.

Almanac for October 9th

https://bit.ly/soldBR

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 9th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-9-Karen-Lee-Boren-T6T414B3C8

Beatles Trivia: October 9, 1940: John Winston Lennon is born in Liverpool, England, U.K. at Liverpool Maternity Hospital.

October 9, 1971: On her husband’s 31st birthday, Yoko Ono Lennon’s solo art exhibition This Is Not Here opens in New York City. Among the guests who attend opening night is Allen Ginsberg.

Bummer October 9th

October 9, 1740: More than 10,000 civilians of Chinese ethnicity are murdered by the Dutch East Indies Company and its Javanese collaborators in what was then called the city of Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia). The massacre was a retaliation for a revolt of Chinese sugar mill workers who burned mills and killed 50 Dutch soldiers. 

On the 9th of October, Dutch troops entered a Chinese neighborhood and began burning houses. Some people died in their burning houses; others were shot as they fled the fire. If they reached the Besar River, they were shot down by Dutch troops waiting on boats. The killing continued until October 22nd.

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

October 9, 1967: Baylor University student John Clifton dies of cardiac arrest after drinking a mixture of laxatives and garlic while running in place as part of a Baylor Chamber of Commerce hazing ritual. Clifton aspirates the mixture, has difficulty breathing, and collapses. He has a hemorrhage in his lungs before his heart stops.

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And now, for something completely different, an affiliate link to a Gumroad creative product you may enjoy: The Abduction audiobook

If my words are not being censored by the Trump Regime, you may find my books here on Gumroad. https://creativista668.gumroad.com/

Almanac for October 8th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 8th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-8-Goosebumps-Series-Too-Scary-P5P814B28N

French Republican Calendar day name (17 Vendémiaire): Pumpkin
Artist Birthday: Michie Nakatani of Shonen Knife

Bummer October 8th

October 8, 1871: The Great Chicago Fire begins; over the next two days it kills approximately 300 people and destroys most of the city, which consists of mostly wooden buildings.

October 8, 2009: Motivational speaker James Arthur Ray hosts a meditation retreat near Sedona, Arizona. The retreat is held inside a purpose-built “sweat lodge” (although not built according to any traditional Native American practices) with approximately 50 participants. The temperature inside the lodge soon becomes dangerously high. Two men faint from heat exhaustion and are carried outside, where they both pass away from heat stroke. Others have to be treated at the hospital, and on October 17th, a 49-year-old woman who participated in the retreat also dies of heat-related injuries. Ray is subsequently convicted of negligent homicide.

October 8, 2014: Thomas Eric Duncan dies, becoming the first person in the U.S. to die of infection with the Ebola virus. Duncan was from Monrovia, Liberia, where he rode in a taxi with his landlords’ daughter, who subsequently died of Ebola virus disease. Four days later, Duncan visits his girlfriend in Dallas. 

On the fourth day of his visit, Duncan arrives at the emergency department of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. He is misdiagnosed with a sinus infection, given antibiotics, and sent home. By the time he returns to the hospital, Duncan’s condition is critical. He dies in the intensive care unit. 

Two of Duncan’s nurses contract the virus through caring for him. Both of them recover. They are the first two people known to have contracted Ebola virus disease inside the U.S.

Almanac for October 7th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 7th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-7-The-Giving-Tree-H2H0142DY2

https://ala.org/bbooks

October 5, 1925: 

Artist Birthday: Tim Minchin
Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: "We Are the Champions"

Bummer October 7th

October 7, 1849: In Baltimore, Edgar Allan Poe dies. 

October 7, 1914: Julian Carlton, having murdered seven people and drunk hydrochloric acid in an attempt to commit suicide, starves to death due to the injures to his esophagus caused by the acid. He has been receiving medical attention the whole time he is in police custody.

October 7, 1957: Santa Barbara College student Max Caulk drowns during a Delta Tau Delta fraternity hazing ritual in which his fraternity brothers threw him off a pier.

October 7, 1992: The last fluent speaker of the Ubykh language, Tevfik Esenç, dies at the age of 88. The Ubykh people are a subset of the Circassian people, who were the victims of ethnic cleansing by the Russians in the 18th and 19th centuries.

What was Diane Meyer grateful for on October 7, 2024?

https://bottlecap.press/products/ordinarygratitude

smoked salmon and dipping bagels in cream cheese
bought a new antique fork that says bloom!
growth mindset
looking forward to the future
sand
long walks
cold air
country roads
long books
plum muffin
barbecue ribs! risotto! green beans!
girls loving themselves! -- working on it always
roasted vegetables

Almanac for October 6th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 6: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-6-Swedish-Nightengale-X8X2141YBO

https://ala.org/bbooks

Bummer October 6th

October 6, 2017: Travis Maldonado, an employee of Greater Wynewood Exotic Animal Park run by Joe Exotic (Joseph Schreibvogel, who became well-known through the Netflix documentary Tiger King) is known to point guns at other employees of the park. According to Maldonado, the gun is a Luger, which will not fire without a magazine. To prove this point to one of Joe Exotic’s associates, Maldonado places the gun to his head and pulls the trigger. Despite not having a magazine in it, the gun does fire, killing Maldonado. Maldonado is 23 years old.

Photo (c)2007 Derek and Julie Ramsey (Ram-Man) edit by Chris_huh., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

October 6, 2018: Seventeen people board a limousine, headed for a birthday celebration at a brewery near Cooperstown, New York State. Unknown to the passengers, the limo driver should have had his license suspended but hasn’t due to a clerical error. The limo itself had been observed by patrons who’d previously rented it to be in a state of disrepair, with an unusually loud engine.

The limousine, speeding, failed to make a stop at an intersection with a stop sign. It continued on into a parking lot, where it struck a parked car, struck two pedestrians, and came to rest in a gully. The driver, all 17 passengers, and the two pedestrians were killed.