Almanac for October 29th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 29th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-29-Winona-Ryder-M4M5150FEQ

Bummer October 29th

October 29, 1901: Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.

October 29, 1994: Francisco Martin Duran of New Mexico stood outside the fence surrounding the White House and fired 29 rounds from an SKS rifle at a group of men on the grounds. None of the men were injured, and Duran was tackled by three civilians. 

Duran is eventually sentenced to 40 years in prison for attempting to assassinate President William J. Clinton. Clinton is inside the White House watching a football (American football) game when the incident occurs. 

October 29, 1998: An arson fire at a Halloween disco celebration in Gothenburg, Sweden. Four teenagers were found guilty of starting the fire, allegedly because they hadn’t been allowed to enter the disco for free. The fire killed 63 people, many of them also teenagers.

October 29, 2003: A dust explosion at the Hayes Lemmerz aluminum wheel manufacturing plant in Huntington, Indiana, injures three workers, one of whom subsequently dies from his severe burns.

Almanac for October 28th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 28th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-28-Gullivers-Travels-U7U2150E79

Bummer October 28th

October 28, 1905: Kenyon College (Gambier, Ohio) student Stuart Lathrop Pierson is hit by an unscheduled train and killed during a Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity initiation.

October 28, 1991: The commercial fishing boat Andrea Gail is lost amid the so-called Perfect Storm weather event that began with Hurricane Grace, formed on October 26th. The boat sinks with six crew members aboard near Sable Island, Canada. Their bodies are never recovered. In all, the Perfect Storm claims 13 lives.

October 28, 1995: During the evening rush hour on the Metro subway system in Baku, Azerbaijan, passengers aboard a subway car smell smoke. An electrical fault has sparked a fire. The train stops short of the station. Its tunnel quickly fills with smoke and carbon monoxide. Passengers aboard one car are forced to climb into another car to escape when the doors become stuck. A crowd crush follows, resulting in almost 300 injuries and the deaths of 286 passengers and three rescue workers.

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.