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.
November 14, 1916: Masterful British short story writer H.H. Munro, who published under the pen name Saki, is killed by a German sniper while serving in the First World War. His last words are reportedly, “Put that bloody cigarette out!”
November 14, 1928: Dr. Sabin Arnold von Sochocky, the inventor of radium dial paint used to make wristwatches that glow in the dark, dies of aplastic anemia caused by his exposure to radium. His death helps make the legal case for the so-called “radium girls,” workers in the watch factories who became sick and often died from the same exposure to radioactivity, who sued their employer for the unsafe conditions in the factories.
November 13, 1829: Sam Patch, the first famous American daredevil, attempts to leap over the Genesee River in Rochester, New York, a feat he’d accomplished one week previously. This Friday the 13th, however, he miscalculates his jump and falls into the river, failing to resurface. His frozen body is found four months later, six miles down the river. Patch’s exact date of birth is unknown, but he was believed to be about 30 at the time of his unfortunate death.
November 13, 1909: In what becomes known as the Cherry Mine Disaster, about 500 men and boys (as young as 11), many of them immigrants from Italy, and about 36 mules work in a coal mine in Cherry, Illinois, that supplies coal to St. Paul, Minnesota, and to Chicago and Detroit. Around noon, a kerosene wall lantern sets fire to a cart full of hay for the mules. Workers try to use a fan to smother the fire, but this only spreads it and burns one of the wooden ladders that miners could have used for escape. They then close the mine’s two shafts in an attempt to smother the flame, but this allows “black damp” (carbon dioxide and nitrogen) to build up.
About 200 workers are able to escape from the mine. Others are rescued using the mine’s hoisting cages. The final trip of the hoisting cage fails, however, when the operator misunderstands the would-be rescuer’s signals and raises the cage too late, finding the workers in the hoisting cage burned to death. A group of 21 survivors is rescued eight days after the fire; one of these so-called Eight Day Men later dies of his injuries. In all, 259 men and boys are thought to have died.
November 13, 1974: 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr. shoots to death the other members of his Amityville, Long Island family: his father Ronald DeFeo Sr., mother Louise, sisters Dawn and Allison, and brothers Marc and John. John, the youngest, was nine years old. The house in which the familicide occurs will later become infamous as the focus of the Amityville Horror book and films.
November 13, 1985: The Nevado del Ruiz volcano in the Andes Mountains near Tolima, Colombia, erupts. The resulting landslides destroy Armero, a town of approximately 29,000 residents. Only about 9,000 of them survive. Attempts to rescue injured victims are hindered by the thick mud.
November 13, 2015: Islamist terrorists launch coordinate attacks in Paris and the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis. A football (soccer) match, restaurants, and cafes were some of the targets. Also targeted was the Bataclan Theatre while the Eagles Of Death Metal (an American band) performed in concert. The theatre attack killed 90 people, and 40 others were killed in the coordinated attacks. The Bataclan Theatre was targeted specifically because its owners, brothers Pascal and Joël Laloux, are Jewish.
November 12, 1956: Israeli troops massacre approximately 100 Palestinian civilian men in Rafah, Gaza Strip, supposedly because they mistake the men for soldiers.
November 12, 1961: 40-year-old optometrist Arthur Duperrault is taking his family on a cruise from the Florida Keys to the Bahamas aboard the chartered yacht Bluebelle. The vessel, captained by 44-year-old Julian Harvey, set sail on the 8th. Julian’s wife Mary Dene Harvey came aboard as the ship’s cook.
Apparently intent upon collecting an insurance policy by claiming his wife had been lost at sea, Julian Harvey kills Arthur Duperrault, Arthur’s wife Jean, their 14-year-old son Brian Duperrault, their 7-year-old daughter Rene Duperrault, and Mary Dene. Besides Julian, the other survivor is 11-year-old Terry Jo Duperrault, who witnesses the crime in progress and jumps off the yacht with a cork flotation device, then swims away. Julian is found in the dinghy on November 13 by the crew of the oil tanker Gulf Lion, with Rene’s body aboard. Rene is found to have died by drowning. He claims a sudden squall scuttled the Bluebelle, that he was unable to save anyone, and that he found Rene floating in the water and attempted to revive her.
Terry Jo is rescued by the merchant freighter Captain Theo on November 16. Rushed to a Miami hospital in critical condition, Terry Jo gradually recovers from dehydration, sunburn, and exposure to the elements, then tells authorities what Julian Harvey has done. Once Harvey learns that Terry Jo survived and contradicts his story of a terrible accident, Harvey dies by suicide in a motel bathroom.
November 12, 1974: Monmouth College (New Jersey) student William Flowers dies of suffocation during a Zeta Beta Tau fraternity hazing ritual. The Zeta Beta Taus make him lie in a hole they’ve dug in the sand; the walls of the hole collapse on Flowers.
November 12, 1981: Popular 1950s actor William Holden dies after slipping on a rug in his bedroom, striking his forehead on the bedside table, and bleeding to death while apparently too intoxicated to help himself in Santa Monica, California.
Suzanne Vega reads the account of Holden’s death in the newspaper while sitting in a diner and memorializes this diner trip in her song “Tom’s Diner.” She was a frequent patron at Tom’s Restaurant, on the corner of Broadway and 112th St. in New York, while she attended Barnard College.
Vega performs the song “Tom’s Diner” a capella on her 1987 album Solitude Standing. In 1990, English music producers Nick Batt and Neal Slateford, working under the artist name DNA, add an instrumental background to Vega’s track. The collaborative version was certified gold in the U.S. and was a #1 hit in four European countries.
The lyrics include:
“I open
Up the paper
There's a story
Of an actor
Who had died
While he was drinking
It was no one
I had heard of
And I'm turning
To the horoscope
And looking
For the funnies”
The day Vega describes must have been Nov. 18, 1981, when the New York Post carried the story about the discovery of Holden’s body. We know Vega read the story in the Post because it was the only one of New York’s then-daily newspapers that had “funnies,” or comic strips.
November 12, 2018: Ohio University student Collin Wiant dies of asphyxia after inhaling whipped cream chargers filled with nitrous oxide as part of a Sigma Pi fraternity hazing ritual.
November 11, 1994: Pedro Pablo Zamora, an AIDS educator who appeared on the MTV program The Real World: San Francisco, dies of AIDS-related illness at the age of 22.
November 11, 1995: Kenule (Ken) Beeson Saro-Wiwa, who belonged to the Ogoni people of Nigeria, became a well-known playwright and environmental activist in response to the degraded environment of his native Ogoniland region caused by irresponsible petroleum waste disposal. He was assassinated by hanging under the false charge that he’d been involved in the murder of four Ogoni chiefs. Eight other activists were similarly falsely accused and executed by Nigeria’s military dictatorship.
November 11, 2000: One hundred sixty skiers ride the ascending train of the funicular railway to Kitzsteinhorn Glaciers near Kaprun, Austria. The last car of the train, with no passengers in it, overheats when a heating unit malfunctions. Fire breaks out, melting the pipes carrying hydraulic fluid to the braking system. The loss of pressure to the system made the doors inoperable, and the electrical system also went out. Twelve passengers toward the rear broke out the acrylic window of their train car and escaped downward toward the bottom of the train tunnel.
The conductor manages to open a door manually, and the remaining passengers who are still conscious and have not passed out due to smoke inhalation flee the funicular by walking upwards toward the top of the tunnel. The conductor and all of those passengers who walk upwards pass away due to smoke inhalation. In all, there are 155 fatalities, including German Olympic skier Sandra Schmitt and her parents.
November 11, 2008: 30-year-old Paula Goodspeed, an aspiring singer, is found dead in her car outside the home of singer Paula Abdul in Sherman Oaks, California. She is suspected to have died by suicide using an overdose of prescription drugs. Abdul had been one of the judges on the episode of American Idol on which Goodspeed appeared as a contestant, singing a rendition of "Proud Mary" in the style of Ike & Tina Turner.
Goodspeed, whose given first name at birth was Sandra, changed her name to Paula. She has been characterized in the media as stalking Paula Abdul, although members of Goodspeed's family have disputed this characterization. Officials who responded to the discovery of Goodspeed's body found a photo of Abdul hanging from Goodspeed's car's rearview mirror.
November 10, 1898: In the Wilmington insurrection, white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina drove the duly-elected government of the city from office, successfully staging a coup against them for the perceived offence of including African-Americans in the city’s governance. White supremacists engaged in an organized campaign of vilifying Blacks in newspapers and in speeches.
They attempted to physically block Black North Carolinians from voting in the November 8th election. When their intimidation failed to result in the all-white government they desired, white people in Wilmington took to openly rioting, physically attacking African-Americans and burning Black-owned homes and businesses. An estimated 2,000 Black residents of Wilmington were displaced, and an unknown number of people were killed.
November 10, 1975: The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks to the bottom of Lake Michigan in an autumn snow squall, taking all 29 hands down with her.
November 10, 2010: Hollywood publicist Veronica “Ronni” Chasen, age 64, is killed in a random robbery attempt while driving home from a screening of the film Burlesque. After she is shot, she crashes her car into a street light. Police find her at the wheel, bleeding and semi-conscious; she dies at the hospital a short time later. When the suspect is confronted by police, he pulls out a gun and shoots himself in the head.
November 9, 1872: The Great Boston Fire of 1872 destroys 776 buildings, many of them in the financial district. An estimated 30 people, including 12 firefighters, die in the blaze.
November 9, 2004: Journalist Iris Chang dies by suicide with a handgun. She has been suffering from severe depression, for which she was prescribed mood stabilizer medications.
Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Bram Stoker
Bummer November 8th
November 8, 1965: 52-year-old journalist Dorothy Kilgallen dies at home of an apparently accidental overdose of alcohol and barbiturates.
November 8, 1996: Anna Grace Gimmestad, who is 16 months old, dies of kidney failure. She became sick with severe food poisoning after drinking Odwalla brand unpasteurized apple juice contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. Before this incident, which sickened an additional 70 people in the U.S. and Canada, the company had purchased apples that had fallen off of the apple trees, where they likely became contaminated with fecal waste from farm animals. Odwalla executives pled guilty to 16 counts of distributing an adulterated food product; the company was fined $1.5 million dollars (more than $2.9 million in 2023 dollars, adjusted for inflation) and began flash-pasteurizing its products.
November 8, 2020: Beloved Canadian-American game show host Alex Trebek dies of pancreatic cancer.
