Almanac for February 25th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 25th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-25-Welcome-to-The-Jungle-K3K4J0SDL

Artist Birthday: W. Somerset Maugham
Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Anthony Burgess

Bummer February 25th

February 25, 1899: Edwin Sewell, age 31, becomes the first motor vehicle driver in Great Britain to be killed in a roadway accident when his Daimler automobile strikes a brick wall. His passenger dies in the hospital on February 28th.

February 25, 1983: Playwright Tennessee Williams dies of an apparently accidental overdose of the barbiturate medication Seconal.

Almanac for February 24th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 24th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-24-G2G3J0KAQ

Artist Birthday: Wilhelm Grimm

Bummer February 24th

February 24, 1809: London’s Drury Lane Theatre burns down. No one is injured, but the loss of the building is a financial disaster for its owner, Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

February 24, 2004: Swiss air traffic controller Peter Nielsen is stabbed to death at his home in Kloten. His killer is Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian architect whose wife and two daughters both died when BAL Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937 collided in mid-air with a DHL cargo plane on July 1, 2002. Nielsen was the sole air traffic controller on duty when the collision occurred. 

Kaloyev is originally sentenced to eight years in prison for manslaughter by a Swiss court, but later has his sentence reduced to less then four years since he experienced diminished mental capacity at the time of the stabbing due to his grief and trauma. Kaloyev is considered something of a folk hero in his hometown of Ufa, where many other parents of the deceased child passengers from Flight 2937 live.

February 24, 2010: Animal trainer Dawn Brancheau is pulled underwater and drowned by an orca during an animal show at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida.

February 24, 2012: 14-year-old Gabriela Yukari Nichimura dies at a nearby hospital after falling 20 meters (about 66 feet) from her seat on the La Tour Eiffel drop-tower ride at Hopi Hari amusement park in São Paulo, Brazil. The ride has no seat belts, but the chairs have locks; Nichimura’s lock opened while the ride was in operation, causing her to fall.

Almanac for February 23rd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 23rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-23-D1D2IZEN1

Bummer February 23rd

February 23, 2000: Singer Ofra Haza dies of AIDS-related pneumonia in Ramat Gan, Israel. She’s believed to have contracted the virus when she needed a blood transfusion following a pregnancy loss.

Almanac for February 22nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 22nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-22-George-Washington-N4N1IY87Y

• The Chapel Hill Weekly (N.C.), February 19, 1926

Artist Birthday: Atsuko Yamano of Shonen Knife

Bummer February 22nd

February 22, 1976: 32-year-old Florence Ballard, an original member of The Supremes, dies in a Detroit hospital of a blood clot in a coronary artery. She’d entered the hospital the previous day with numbness in her fingers and toes.

February 22, 1984: David Vetter, the subject of Paul Simon’s song “The Boy in the Bubble,” dies of Burkitt lymphoma at age 12. Vetter was born with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), a condition that makes common illnesses unusually severe. He had to live in a specialized sterile environment until he could receive a bone marrow transplant. Vetter did receive a successful transplant in 1984, but unfortunately it did not prevent his cancer.

February 22, 1987: Pop artist Andy Warhol dies of a heart condition while in the hospital recovering from gall bladder surgery. He has never fully recovered from being shot by Valerie Solanas in 1968.

Almanac for February 21st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 21st: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-21-Feralia-P5P31B6UFT

Bummer February 21st

February 21, 1868: Italian painter Giuseppe Abbati dies of rabies after being bitten by his rabid pet dog.

February 21, 1965: Malcolm X is assassinated by a member of the Nation of Islam, an organization he had left. 

February 21, 1974: Ontarian hockey legend Tim Horton, intoxicated, loses control of his De Tomaso Pantera near St. Catharines, Ontario. The sports car crosses the highway median and flips several times, throwing Horton from the vehicle. He is pronounced dead at the hospital in St. Catharines. Horton is not wearing a seatbelt and a half-empty vodka bottle is found in the wreckage.

February 21, 2022: The 28-year-old father-to-be and his 27-year-old brother are killed by an improvised exploding device they’re attempting to build as part of the planning of an unborn baby’s gender reveal party in Liberty, New York State.

Almanac for February 20th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 20th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-20-Sic-Transit-Gloria-Mundi-P5P51B6UDC

Beatles Trivia

February 20, 1994, South Bend: My brother and I went to the Main Library. I checked out some books I needed for a research project, and also some Beatles CDs. 

Bummer February 20th

February 20, 1894: A cook named Henrietta Jackson is suffocated by chlorine gas routed into a Cornell University dining hall, an intended prank by students who’d been trying to disrupt a banquet for first-year students.

February 20, 1945: U.S. Navy sailor Jack P. Jarosz dies of electrocution when a hazing ritual designed to give him a mild electrical shock malfunctions.

February 20, 1993: Riley Detwiler, a 17-month-old child, dies of kidney failure caused by infection with E. coli O157:H7. He contracts the infection from another child at his daycare center; both of the other child’s parents work at Jack In the Box, the fast food restaurant whose contaminated beef had already killed three children in December 1992 and January 1993. The parents of the second child didn’t disclose to daycare workers that their child was experiencing bloody diarrhea, fearing that they wouldn’t be able to get child care if the workers knew their toddler was ill.

February 20, 2003: One hundred patrons of the Station night club in West Warwick, Rhode Island, are killed when a pyrotechnics display during a rock concert causes the venue to catch fire. Guitarist Ty Longley is among those who lose their lives.

On the same day in Corbin, Kentucky, a dust explosion at the CTA Acoustics plant kills seven workers. Dust from a resin used in automotive mats ignited from the heat of an industrial oven.

February 20, 2014: Camera assistant Sarah Jones is struck and killed by a train while filming a scene for Midnight Rider: The Gregg Allman Story. The movie is left unfinished and never released.

Almanac for February 19th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 19th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-19-Queenie-Z8Z41AZGDD

Bummer February 19th

February 19, 1942: U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signs on order for the internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps. Many of the adults and families forced to live in the so-called “relocation camps” had to forfeit their homes, businesses, and property. The camps did not have adequate heating and cooling, food, or plumbing. Detainees weren’t released until 1945.

February 19, 1945: Phi Beta Pi pledge Robert Perry dies of burns one day after a fraternity hazing ritual at Saint Louis University. Perry’s classmates coat Perry’s naked body in carbon black and collodion (a nitrocellulose, ether, and alcohol gel used in early photography and stage makeup) and shock him with electrical currents. A short circuit causes the highly flammable collodion to catch on fire, severely burning Perry.

February 19, 1972: Trumpeter Lee Morgan is performing with his band at Slugs' Saloon, a jazz club in New York City. In between sets, he gets into an argument with his wife Helen and she shoots him. An ambulance is called, but has trouble reaching Morgan due to snowy weather conditions. Morgan bleeds to death.

February 19, 1994: Gloria Cecilia Ramirez, a 31-year-old woman with end-stage cervical cancer, arrives at the emergency room of a hospital in Riverside, California, suffering from heart palpitations and difficulty breathing. Sadly, Ramirez passes away from kidney failure caused by her disease. Strangely, 23 members of the medical team who treat Ramirez during her final visit themselves came down with symptoms of an undiagnosed illness or illnesses.

Upon arrival, Ramirez was noted to have an “oily” sheen to her skin. When a nurse draws blood from Ramirez’s arm, a medical resident notices particles the color of a manila envelope appear to be floating in the blood. Others notice a fruity, garlicky, and/or ammonia-type odor around Ramirez. At this point, the nurse fainted and had to be removed from the examination room. The medical resident then reported feeling nauseated, left the room, and subsequently fainted in a nearby hallway. A third health care worker, a respiratory therapist, also fainted.

The medical resident had the most severe effects following this incident: hepatitis, necrosis (bone death) in her knee, and a breathing problem that required her to be hospitalized for two months. Others suffered muscle spasms or shortness of breath. Explanations of what could possibly have caused these symptoms range from mass psychogenic illness (real physical illness caused by psychological factors) to Ramirez’s use of an unapproved substance as a painkiller. Ramirez’s family denies that she used any kind of unusual painkiller.

February 19, 2013: The body of Canadian student and tourist Elisa Lam is discovered in the water tower atop the Stay on Main hotel in Los Angeles, California. Lam is believed to have entered the tank of her own volition and accidentally drowned, possibly while experiencing the effects of withdrawal from her psychiatric medications.

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Everand/Scribd: https://www.everand.com/audiobook/990587984/The-Little-Book-of-Satanic-Prayers

Kobo/Walmart: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/little-book-of-satanic-prayers-the?sId=a3046462-4bef-4573-a279-ab8a1eb9a62c&ssId=BjQSKSGhIeiFYULl7tqB4&cPos=1