Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
January 29, 1916: During the Great War, Germany uses zeppelins to bomb Paris. The physical damage is minimal, but the aerial bombardment has the effect of psychologically terrorizing Parisians.
January 29, 1933: Poet Sara Teasdale overdoses on sleeping pills, an apparent suicide. She is 48 years old.
January 29, 1964: Actor Alan Ladd, age 50, dies at his home in bed from cerebral edema caused by an overdose of alcohol and prescription medications. His life had been difficult; see July 3rd, November 2nd, and November 29th.
January 29, 2003: A dust explosion caused by highly flammable polyethylene dust at the West Pharmaceutical Plant in Kinston, North Carolina, kills six people, injures 36 workers, and subsequently injures two firefighters who arrive to fight the fire caused by the explosion.
January 28, 1856: Robert and Margaret (called Peggy) Garner and their four children, an enslaved family running for their freedom along the Underground Railroad, shelter at the home of free person of color Joseph Kite on the west side of Cincinnati, Ohio. U.S. Marshalls, required by the cruel Fugitive Slave Act to track down escaping enslaved persons, surround Mr. Kite’s home and demand the surrender of the Garner party. To their horror, Peggy has attempted to kill her two sons and two daughters rather than seeing them returned to slavery in Kentucky. She’s succeeded in killing her second-youngest child, her 2-year-old daughter Mary. She’d intended to kill her children and then herself; the other three children were wounded but survived. After a trial, the surviving Garners were forced back into enslavement. Peggy Garner’s story became the basis of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved.
January 28, 1960: African-American folklorist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston dies from heart disease after suffering a stroke.
January 28, 1986: A tragic cultural touchstone of my young life occurs when the space shuttle Challenger breaks apart shortly after launch. I’m eight years old and, I should note, not watching the live TV broadcast with my third grade class when it happens. We watched some of the coverage of the aftermath on a TV in the school gym after the school principal entered our classroom and told our teacher what had happened, to the best of my recollection.
January 28, 1993: Celina Shribbs becomes the second 2-year-old child to die of kidney failure from the Jack In the Box E. coli O157:H7 contamination incident. Celina didn’t eat the contaminated beef directly but contracted a secondhand infection from contact with another child.
Bummer January 27th January 27, 1967: Aspiring astronauts Roger B. Chaffee, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, and Edward H. White die when fire breaks out in their Apollo 1 space capsule as it sits on the launch pad. The high oxygen content of the air inside the capsule, plus an inefficient escape procedure, virtually guarantee they could not have survived the fire.
January 26, 1946: Two teenage sailors in the U.S. Navy, LeRoy Robert Bragg and Stanford Fluitt, die aboard the SS Frederick Galbraith of saltpeter poisoning after drinking saltpeter mixed with water as part of a tradition for a sailor’s first crossing of the Equator.
January 26, 1966: On Australia Day, the three children of the Beaumont family left their home in the Somerton Park suburb of Adelaide, Australia, and took a bus to Glenelg Beach, about three kilometers away. 9-year-old Jane, 7-year-old Arnna, and 4-year-old Grant didn’t return on the noon bus like their parents expected them to. Their father Jim drove to the beach to look for them. The baker at a local bakery reported selling them a meat pie and some pasties, allegedly for more money than the children were thought to have on them when they left, leading to speculation that a man at the beach had abducted the children, but they were never seen again.
January 26, 1972: JAT Yugoslav Airlines Flight 367 explodes mid-flight over the village of Srbská Kamenice, Czechia (then part of Czechoslovakia). Although no one is ever arrested for the crime, authorities suspect a Croatian separatist group smuggled a suitcase bomb aboard the plane. All 23 passengers and four crew members died in the explosion and subsequent crash.
The fifth crew member, flight attendant Vesna Vulović, survived with a fractured skull, a fractured pelvis, broken legs, broken ribs, and broken vertebrae. Villager Bruno Honke, who had been a medic during World War II, discovered her unconscious body and rendered aid until rescuers arrived to take the flight attendant to the hospital. 22-year-old Vulović fell 33,330 feet from the plane to the ground, believed to be the longest fall a human being without a parachute has ever survived. Vulović lived for almost 45 more years after her fall.
January 26, 2001: Lacrosse coach Diane Whipple is mauled to death by two Presa Canario dogs being cared for by Whipple’s neighbors. The neighbors, married attorneys Marjorie Knoller and Robert Noel, cared for the dogs belonging to their client while their client, a member of a violent white supremacist gang, served time in prison. Knoller was attempting to control both dogs while carrying groceries when the dogs escaped from her control and attacked Whipple.
Whipple dies of her injuries at San Francisco Memorial Hospital. Both dogs are euthanized. Knoller is convicted of second-degree murder. Noel is disbarred and convicted of manslaughter.
January 26, 2005: Juan Manuel Álvarez parks his Jeep on a railroad track north of Los Angeles, later testifying that he was intent on killing himself, but changed his mind at the last moment. The abandoned Jeep is struck by Metrolink commuter train #100, which jackknifes, striking two trains, one on either side of it. Eleven people are killed. Álvarez is ultimately sentenced to eleven consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for their deaths.
January 26, 2010: Boa Sr, an approximately 65-year-old woman of the Bo people on her mother’s side and the Jeru people on her father’s side, dies. She was the last fluent native speaker of the Aka-Bo language of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, part of India.
***
And now, for something completely different, an affiliate link to a Gumroad creative product you may enjoy: To Sway a Soul
January 25, 1960: Actor Diana Barrymore, aunt of actor Drew Barrymore, dies at the age of 38. Her death is initially thought to have been caused by an accidental drug overdose, but no evidence of drug overdose is found during her autopsy. The cause of her death remains undetermined.
Drew Barrymore at the Lucky You film premiere on May 1, 2007. Public domain.
January 25, 1979: Robert Nicholas Williams, working at Ford Motor Company Flat Rock Casting Plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, becomes the first human being known to have been killed by a robot. The 5-story robot, called the Parts Retrieval System, is either retrieving parts incorrectly or not quickly enough. Therefore, Williams attempts to either fix the machine or at least get a closer look. Williams climbs to the third story of the robot and is struck from behind by one of the one-ton transfer vehicles used to move the robotic arms. The vehicle crushes him, killing him instantly.
January 25, 1980: University of South Carolina student Lurie "Barry" Ballou chokes to death on his own vomit after a night of heavy drinking as part of a Sigma Nu fraternity hazing ritual. At the time of death, Ballou’s blood-alcohol level was 0.46. Impairment begins at a blood-alcohol level of 0.08, and anything above 0.40 can cause fatal respiratory failure.
January 25, 2006: Bailiffs arrive to repossess the bedsit flat occupied by Joyce Carol Vincent in Wood Green, North London. Vincent owes £2,400 in back rent. Authorities are shocked to discover Vincent’s mostly skeletal, decomposed body lying on her back next to Christmas presents that Vincent had apparently wrapped but never delivered. Food in her refrigerator has expiration dates from 2003, and although the TV is still on and the heat is working, it appears that Vincent had died in December 2003 of natural causes and her body has lain undiscovered until that January day.
With no sign of foul play, her cause of death is suspected to be either an asthma attack or complications from a peptic ulcer, both of which she’s documented to have suffered from. Vincent had a sister, but apparently had distanced herself from her family and they didn’t try to contact her during the more than two years that her body lay undiscovered in her flat.
January 24, 1925: 28-year-old Swedish ice hockey player Ejnar Olsson, who competed in the 1924 Olympics, drowns when an unusually warm Swedish winter causes him to fall through the ice into the lake on which he’s playing hockey.
January 24, 1939: The worst earthquake in the history of Chile strikes at approximately 11:30 p.m., devastating the regional capital city of Chillán. The 8.3 surface wave magnitude earthquake kills an estimated 28,000 people. In addition to the collapse of about half of the buildings in Chillán and almost all the buildings in the city of Concepción, the massive earthquake causes numerous fires and renders the local water supply undrinkable.
January 23, 1943: Algonquin Round Table wit Alexander Woollcott, who regularly performed on the radio, appeared in a panel discussion about Adolph Hitler on CBS Radio. Listeners notice he is uncharacteristically quiet during the discussion. In fact, Woollcott is having a heart attack. He writes “I am sick” on a pad to paper to let the other participants know he needs medical attention. He dies in the hospital a few hours later.
January 23, 1978: 31-year-old Terry Kath, a founding member of the musical group Chicago, places a gun he believes is unloaded to his head and pulls the trigger. The gun has a round in the chamber, killing Kath instantly.
January 23, 1989: Spanish artist Salvador Dalí dies of cardiac arrest. He is 84 and suffering from heart failure.
January 23, 2008: A Pennsylvania woman dies in the hospital after suffering electrical shock in her home; she and her husband had been using homemade nipple clamps, allegedly as a sexual stimulant. Her husband, who had a prior conviction for domestic violence, was charged with involuntarily manslaughter for his role. He was convicted in May 2009 and sentenced to 20-40 years in prison. Jurors seemed to be skeptical of the man’s claim that the electrical shock was part of the couple’s sexual activity and tended toward the theory that it was, instead, torture.
.jpg)
