Almanac for July 23rd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 23rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-23-Middlemarch-P5P51HQFLD

Bummer July 23rd

July 23, 1846: Henry David Thoreau is put in jail for refusing to pay a $1 poll tax. He’s protesting the poll tax on the grounds that it supports slavery. 

July 23, 1982: Actor Vic Morrow (age 53) and child actors Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen are killed in a helicopter accident during the filming of the Twilight Zone movie. The filming was illegal, with director John Landis violating child labor laws and failing to obtain the required permits for the helicopter stunt filmed in Valencia, California.

Landis called for the Bell UH-1B Iroquois helicopter to hover over Morrow while he carried the two children. During filming, an explosion effect damaged the tail rotor of the helicopter. The helicopter spun out of control. The falling helicopter crushed Renee Shin-Yi Chen and decapitated Myca Dinh Le and Vic Morrow.

July 23, 2005: Thoroughbred horse racing jockey Emanuel Jose Sanchez dies of dehydration and extreme food restriction at age 22 at Richmond (Virginia) Community Hospital. The previous day, he’d been found unconscious in the shower after riding a horse in an afternoon race at Colonial Downs.

July 23, 2011: English jazz singer Amy Winehouse passes away, having recently completed rehabilitation for a severe alcohol addiction. 

Almanac for July 22nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 22nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-22-Hale-Bopp-B0B21HQFGJ

Artist Birthday: Albert Brooks
Albert Brooks movie Modern Romance article by Movies of the 80s

Bummer July 22nd

July 22, 1934: Criminal John Dillinger is shot dead by FBI agent Melvin Purvis outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago. 

Almanac for July 21st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 21st: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-21-Lady-Chatterlys-Lover-F1F71HQFBW

Artist Birthday: Ernest Hemingway
Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Ernest Hemingway's birthday

Bummer July 21st

July 21, 1796: The poet Robert Burns dies at the age of 37, leaving behind his wife and five children.

July 21, 2023: Vegan influencer Zhanna Samsonova, who posted nutrition content on social media accounts including Instagram and TikTok under the name Zhanna D’Art, dies at age 39 of an apparent infection at a hospital in Phuket, Malaysia. Samsonova’s “raw food” diet included only uncooked plants, leaving her with a very thin body type that may have contributed to her body’s inability to fight off infection.

Almanac for July 20th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 20th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-20-Cedar-Lake-R6R61HQF77

Bummer July 20th

July 20, 1948: Herpetologist Grace Olive Wiley, the first person to successfully breed rattlesnakes in captivity, dies after being bitten by a venomous Indian cobra. Wiley had been posing for a photo with the snake when the camera’s flash startles the animal and it strikes Wiley while she attempts to restrain it. She dies less than three hours later at the hospital, having accidentally broken her only vial of antivenom.

July 20, 1973: 32-year-old Bruce Lee, who has been suffering from cerebral edema since May of that year, takes the painkiller and muscle relaxant Equagesic. He lies down to take a nap and can’t be revived, apparently having had an allergic reaction to the medicine. Lee is declared dead on arrival at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

July 20, 1981: All six crews members and 44 passengers are killed when Somali Airlines Flight 40 crashes shortly after takeoff into the town of Balad. Thunderstorm conditions and, possibly, human error cause the plane to spiral dive and the crew are unable to recover from the dive.

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Almanac for July 19

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 19: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-19-Indiana-Fever-P5P61HQEV9

Bummer July 19

July 19, 1374: Tuscan poet Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) dies on the eve of his 70th birthday.

July 19, 1850: Journalist Margaret Fuller returns, with her husband and child, from assignment as the New York Tribune’s European correspondent aboard the merchant ship Elizabeth. The vessel’s captain has died of smallpox during the 5-week voyage. The Elizabeth, being piloted by her less-experienced first mate, strikes a sandbar off of Fire Island and is run aground. Many of the crew abandon ship and are able to swim to shore, but Fuller and her husband are never found and are presumed to have drowned. Their son’s body is found washed up on the shore.

July 19, 1977: Heavy rains cause six dams in Conemaugh Valley, Pennsylvania to overflow and fail. 84 people were killed in the flooding.

July 19, 2017: Chanson réaliste singer-songwriter-musicologist Barbara Weldens is electrocuted while performing barefoot when her foot comes in contact with faulty electrical wiring. Welden is 35 years old.

Almanac for July 18th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 18th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-18-My-Brothers-Wedding-I3I11HQEQX

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: William Makepeace Thackaray

Beatles Trivia
July 18, 1995, South Bend: I dropped Mom off at work. When I came home, I turned on the tv to see Yoko Ono and beautiful, 19-year-old Sean Lennon [Ono] on the Today show.

Bummer July 18th

July 18, 1817: Jane Austen dies, aged 41. Her death is speculated to have been from Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

July 18, 1954: 18-year-old Dorothy Poore’s decomposing body is found stuffed inside a dresser drawer inside a room at the Claypool Hotel in downtown Indianapolis. Her killer is apprehended in Missouri and brought back to Indiana, where he is convicted and serves more than 25 years before being released on parole. He claimed to have killed the teenager after failing to recruit her as a sex worker.

July 18, 1966: Rock musician Bobby Fuller, whose band The Bobby Fuller Four has recently scored a hit with “I Fought the Law,” is found dead in his car outside his apartment in Hollywood. Fuller is 23 years old. His body has no signs of injury other than some small spots (indicated broken capillaries under the skin) thought to have been caused by the summer heat. No cause of death is ever determined. Strangely, the boxes for both “accident” and “suicide” are checked on the Los Angeles deputy medical examiner’s report.

July 18, 1969: U.S. Senator Edward (“Ted”) Kennedy leaves a cocktail party in his car with a passenger, Mary Joe Kopechne. The impaired senator drives the vehicle into a lake. He manages to escape, but Kopechne drowns. Kennedy fails to report the deadly accident until the following morning. He later pleads guilty to leaving the scene of an accident.

July 18, 1975: Influential graffiti-style artist Vaughn Bodē, age 33, is found dead of apparent autoerotic asphyxiation.

July 18, 1984: A lone gunman kills 21 people and wounds an additional 19 people at a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro*, California. The gunman is subsequently killed by a police sniper.

In her book Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, Caroline Fraser offers the theory that the perpetrator suffered from severe heavy metal poisoning as a result of exposure to high levels of cadmium at his workplace, where he was a welder. Outbursts of violent behavior are a documented side effect of cadmium poisoning.

July 18, 1988: Christa Päffgen, the model and singer who performed under the mononym Nico, dies in Ibiza at age 49 from a cerebral hemorrhage suffered from a fall off her bicycle.

July 18, 1989: Actress Rebecca Schaeffer, then the star of the popular sitcom My Sister Sam, is shot in the chest at her home by a 19-year-old obsessed fan who has stalked her over the course of three years. He became enraged when she appeared in a film in which her character is seen in bed with a male character. Schaeffer dies at the hospital.

*San Ysidro, in English, is called Saint Isadore, and he's the patron saint of farmers.

Almanac for July 17th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 17th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-17-ShakeScenes-H2H21HQEBJ

Bummer July 17th

July 17, 1793: Charlotte Corday is executed by guillotine for the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat.

July 17, 1918: The royal family of Russia is executed by Communist revolutionaries. Czar Nicholas II, Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, and their children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei are shot and bayonetted to death in the basement of the Ipatiev House, where they have been imprisoned. 

July 17, 1935: Cudjoe Lewis dies. The formerly enslaved man’s story of being kidnapped from his home in what is now Benin is the subject of Zora Neale Hurston’s book Barracoon. 

July 17, 1944: Munitions (including bombs, mines, and small arms ammunition) being loaded aboard the SS E.A. Bryan in Port Chicago, California, explode. None of the enlisted personnel loading the munitions had been formally trained in safely handling these materials. In the explosion, the E.A. Bryan is destroyed, the Quinault Victory is blown out of the water and torn in half, and a Coast Guard fire boat is blown up the river, where it sinks. The blast and subsequent fires kill all 320 military personnel loading the E.A. Bryan, including all five Coast Guard personnel aboard the fire boat. 

202 of the dead are African-American. Widespread discrimination in the military forced many enlisted men of color in the most dangerous jobs with little hope of advancement and no Black officers in leadership positions to advocate for them.

July 17, 1959: At 3:10 a.m., Billie Holiday passes away under arrest in her hospital bed. Her death comes from heart failure and fluid in her lungs brought about by a failing liver. She’s 44 years old. 

Billie Holiday at Dorothy Surrenders

July 17, 1967: 40-year-old jazz saxophonist John Coltrane dies of liver cancer. Although he has been sober for the last 10 years of his life, earlier struggles with heroin and alcohol use may have contributed to his cancer.

July 17, 1981: The skywalk inside the Hyatt Regency Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri, collapses onto a dance happening below. More than 200 people are injured and 114 die. Some of the victims drown when they become trapped under the rubble and unable to escape from water leaking from a broken pipe.

July 17, 1997: 10-year-old Mark Miedema gets ahead of his family while on a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. He’s attacked and killed by a female mountain lion.