Almanac for October 27th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 27th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-27-Ariel-H2H8150DSM

Bummer October 27th

October 27, 1899: Cornell University student Edward Fairchild Berkeley is sent by the Kappa Alpha Society on an errand intended to keep him busy while the fraternity prepared for his formal initiation. Told to pin a particular piece of paper to either a tree or a bridge (accounts vary), Berkeley fell into a canal and drowned.

October 27, 2013: Lou Reed dies of liver disease after having received a liver transplant in May 2013.

October 27, 2019: The 56-year-old mother of a father-to-be in Knoxville, Iowa, is struck and killed by a fragment of metal at a “gender reveal” party for her son and his pregnant partner. The family had filled a metal umbrella stand with gunpowder with the intention that it would stream pink sparks like a firework, revealing that the unborn child is a girl. Instead, the gunpowder caused the umbrella stand to explode.

Almanac for October 26th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 26th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-26-Happy-Birthday-Ms-Rodham-Clinton-G2G5150CKE

The October 26, 1926 Cordele (GA) Dispatch. 100 years ago, children in Chicago found it a merry Halloween prank to steal their neighbors' gates off the hinges. Notice the typo, "movies are houses cooperating" rather than "movie houses are cooperating."

Bummer October 26th

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, 2001: 25-year-old nursing assistant Chante Jawan Mallard of Fort Worth, Texas, is driving, allegedly under the influence of alcohol, marijuana, and ecstasy. She strikes 37-year-old Gregory Glenn Biggs, a homeless construction worker. The force of the collision propels Biggs through Mallard’s windshield, where his body becomes lodged. Rather than seeking aid for Biggs, Mallard continues driving home, parks her car in her garage, and leaves the injured man inside her garage. Biggs dies of his injuries some time between when Mallard arrived home and October 28th. At this time, Mallard and a male friend left Biggs’s remains in a park and attempted to burn the car in order to destroy evidence. 

Police arrested Mallard after witnesses heard her at a party talking about “hitting a white man.” The medical examiner testified in court that Biggs’s injuries were survivable if he had been taken to a hospital in time. Mallard was convicted of murder and tampering with evidence. The male friend and a cousin who helped him move the body are convicted and imprisoned for evidence tampering.

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.

--

What was Diane Meyer grateful for on October 26, 2024?

https://bottlecap.press/products/ordinarygratitude

acknowledging things that used to scare me
breakfast with friends
minding my own damn business
sunshine
the sweet old lady Uber driver
apple picking
fall air
leaving changing color
thinking about why I'm feeling the way I do
finishing my book
oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips
new opportunities
proud of myself today

Almanac for October 25th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 25th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-25-St-Crispins-Day-O5O5150BN1

Bummer October 25th

October 25, 1958: Six days after his vehicle crashes and catches on fire during the Moroccan Grand Prix, English Formula One racing driver Stuart Lewis-Evans succumbs to his burn injuries.

October 25, 1993: Actor Vincent Price dies of lung cancer.

October 25, 1999: A Learjet flying from Orlando, Florida, to Texas fails to pressurize during flight. As a result, the two crew members and four passengers are all incapacitated by the lack of oxygen. The jet cruises on autopilot until it runs out of fuel, then crashes near Aberdeen, South Dakota. Among the six dead are professional golfer Payne Stewart.

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.