Almanac for August 28th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 28th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-28-Celebration-of-Life-V7V412BMDC

Bummer August 28th

August 28, 1943: A housekeeper enters Room 729 of the Claypool Hotel in downtown Indianapolis and discovers the body of 28-year-old Cpl. Maoma L. Ridings of the Women’s Army Corps (WACs). Partially dressed in her WAC uniform, Ridings appears to have been beaten with the half-empty whiskey bottle found in her room. The case is never solved.

August 28, 1976: Actor (Mary) Anissa Jones, who starred as the character Buffy on the sitcom Family Affair from 1966 to 1971, dies at age 18 from multiple drug intoxication. Jones is found unresponsive in bed at the home of a teenage friend with whom she’d attended a party the previous night. An autopsy finds the street drugs cocaine and PCP in her system, along with the prescription drugs Seconal and Quaalude, both sedatives.

August 28, 1988: More than 300 people are injured and 75 are killed when three aircraft collide at an air show in Ramstein, Germany.

August 28, 2003: 46-year-old pizza delivery driver Brian Wells dies in Erie, Pennsylvania, after robbing a PNC Bank branch. His cause of death is by an explosive collar around his neck rigged to explode. Four people are charged with conspiring to commit the crime; Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong receives a life sentence for being the mastermind behind the strange crime. Investigators suspect Wells may have been a willing participant in the robbery, possibly under the impression that the bomb wasn’t real, although Wells’s family disputes this accusation.

August 28, 2004: 23-year-old Francis Brohm has been drinking and watching NASCAR in a bar with his friend John Hutcherson. Hutcherson drives them home in his truck. On the ride home, Brohm feels nauseated and sticks his head out the window. His head strikes a telephone pole support wire, decapitating and killing him instantly. Hutcherson continues to drive 12 miles home and goes to bed with Brohm’s headless body in his truck. 

Brohm’s death is reported to police the next morning when one of Hutcherson’s neighbors, out for a walk with his one-year-old daughter, sees it inside the truck. Police arrive at Hutcherson’s home to find him in bed, still intoxicated and apparently unaware of what’s happened the night before.

August 28, 2020: 43-year-old actor Chadwick Boseman passes away from colon cancer. 

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 27th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-27-Z8Z61282UV

Artist Birthday: Theodore Dreiser

January 24, 1926. From the East St. Louis Daily Journal by Gerald Miller

Bummer August 27

August 27, 1883: Mount Krakatau (Anglicized as Krakatoa), which had begun to erupt on the 20th of May, intensifies in seismic activity with an eruption that destroys more than two-thirds of its island. The eruption is one of the loudest sounds ever heard by human ears, with the explosion being heard 4,800 miles away from the Indonesian site of the volcano. Pyroclastic flows, ash expelled into the atmosphere, and resulting tsunamis are estimated to have killed more than 36,400 people. Only the 1815 Mount Tambora explosion is thought to have been deadlier.

August 27, 1971: Lillian “Lil” Hardin Armstrong suffers a heart attack while playing the piano during a televised concert performed as a tribute to her late husband Louis Armstrong. She dies in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. She had been working on her autobiography in the months before her death; sadly, the manuscript has been lost.

August 27, 1990: Blues-rock musician Stevie Ray Vaughan takes a helicopter to get from Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Michigan. The helicopter crashes into a ski hill shortly after takeoff, killing Vaughan, pilot Jeff Brown, tour manager Colin Smythe, agent Bobby Brooks, and bodyguard Nigel Browne.

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Here's the video I uploaded on August 27, 2025:

Almanac for August 26th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 26th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-26-Shes-a-Rebel-P5P51282OE

French Republican Calendar day name (9 Fructidor): Liquorice

Beatles Trivia
August 26, 1968: The Beatles release their single “Hey Jude” in the United States. The B-side track is “Revolution.” Between September and November 1968, it will be the #1 single in the U.S. for nine straight weeks. 

Bummer August 26th

August 26, 1981: Three-year-old Los Angeles resident Kelly Lynn Keen is attacked and killed by a wild coyote in the driveway of her family’s home. This is the only documented fatal attack on a human being by a coyote. Coyote attacks on humans rarely result in serious injuries.

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Almanac for August 25th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 25th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-25-S6S71281RX

Bummer August 25th

August 25, 1823: Fur trapper Hugh Glass is mauled by a bear in what is now South Dakota and left for dead by his fellow trappers. Not dead, Glass sets his own broken leg and journeys more than 200 miles to reach the nearest European settlement on the Missouri River. 

Leonardo DiCaprio played Glass in the 2016 movie The Revenant and won his first Oscar for doing so.

August 25, 1914: During World War I, German troops occupying Leuven, Belgium, set fire to the city and destroying almost half of it. 300 civilians die. Included in the burning and destruction is the library of the Catholic University of Leuven, which loses approximately 230,000 materials, including priceless medieval manuscripts.

August 25, 1945: OSS (the forerunner to the CIA) agent John Birch is killed by Communists in China.

August 25, 1959: Miles Davis performs at the Birdland jazz club on Broadway and 52nd St. in New York City. Pausing for a cigarette break between sets, Davis is told to “Move along” by a police officer on patrol. Davis points out that he’s headlining the club and the two exchange words. Another officer, Donald Rolker approaches and hits Davis repeatedly with his blackjack before the two officers place Davis under arrest. Later cleared of all charges, Davis nonetheless needs five stitches for his head injury and remembers the incident bitterly.

August 25, 1984: Truman Capote dies of liver disease.

August 25, 1992: The National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina is destroyed by Serbian bombing during the Siege of Sarajevo.

August 25, 2001: Aaliyah Haughton, who sang and acted under the mononym Aaliyah, and eight others are killed when their Cessna 402 aircraft crashes and catches fire shortly after takeoff from Marsh Airport Harbour in the Bahamas. The artist and her crew had finished filming a music video for her song “Rock the Boat,” and the plane was loaded with video equipment. Smaller than the Cessna 404 they had originally planned to fly back to the U.S. on, the plane couldn’t handle the extra weight. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined the overloaded aircraft to be 700 pounds too heavy for a safe flight.

August 25, 2014: 39-year-old Charles Vacca is accidentally shot and killed in White Hills, Arizona, while teaching a nine-year-old girl in how to shoot a Mini-Uzi submachine gun. The gun recoils and the child loses control of the gun, causing the barrel to be aimed at Vacca. Vacca suffers a gunshot wound to the head. Although airlifted to a hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada, he dies of his injury.

August 25, 2026: Sadly, I must report that this is the day on which the USA's beloved Dolly Parton passed away at the age of 80. 

Almanac for August 24

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 24th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-24-Gather-Ye-Rosebuds-B0B61280OQ

Artist Birthday: John Green

                             

Bummer August 24th

August 24, 1814: During the War of 1812, British troops set fire to the White House, the U.S. Capitol, and other buildings in Washington, D.C.

August 24, 1943: Philosopher Simone Weil dies of malnutrition. The exact cause of her malnutrition while hospitalized is unclear; she may have been unable to eat due to illness, fasting due to religious reasons, or fasting in solidarity with French people living under Nazi occupation.

Almanac for August 23

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 23rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-23-Peepacheek-T6T0120VVQ

August 23, 2025: Tim Miller writes the "To the Reader" afterward of Time & The River From Columbine to the Invention of Fire: Poems by Tim Miller in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

Bummer August 23

August 23, 1926: Early Hollywood sex symbol Rudolph Valentino dies at the age of 31 in New York City. Eight days earlier, he’d collapsed from severe gastric ulcers mimicking the symptoms of appendicitis. He developed peritonitis and the tissue surrounding his left lung became inflamed, making it difficult for him to breathe. His infection develops into septicemia and he lapses into a coma and dies.

August 23, 1981: East German comedic actor Rolf Herricht suffers a heart attack and dies while performing in Kiss Me Kate at Berlin’s Metropol theatre.

Almanac for August 22nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 22nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-22-Split-the-Lark-X8X411YCOT

Artist Birthday: Ray Bradbury

Bummer August 22nd

August 22, 1770: Captain James Cook claims the Torres Strait island of Bedanug on behalf of Britain, wresting control of the island from its rightful owners and native inhabitants, the Kaurareg people. The Colonial name for the island is Possession Island. 

August 22, 1849: History’s first recorded air raid occurs when Austria launches unpiloted balloons at Venice. 

August 22, 1902: The Kashgar Earthquake near the border between China and Kyrgyzstan kills an estimated 6,000 people. Building collapses and landslides were the primary causes of most deaths.

August 22, 1944: Nazis massacre the villagers of nine Amari Valley villages on the island of Crete. The massacre kills 164 people. Large-scale looting, razing of buildings, pillaging of livestock, and destruction of crops are also reported. These attacks are meant to deter local guerilla forces from resisting the Nazis.

August 22, 2004: Edvard Munch’s paintings The Scream and Madonna are stolen at gunpoint from an Oslo art museum.