Almanac for September 30

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 30th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-30-Carlos-Fuentes-O5O013Q71H

Artist Birthday: Upton Sinclair

The Sept. 5, 1926 Chicago Daily Worker

Artist Birthday: Truman Capote

Bummer September 30th

September 30, 1928: University of Texas at Austin student Nolte McElroy is electrocuted during a Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity hazing. McElroy is forced to wear wet clothes and crawl in between two sets of bedsprings rigged to an electrical current. Before McElroy’s death, this initiation ritual had gone on for 15 years without any serious injuries; it’s unknown why McElroy was electrocuted.

September 30, 1962: Paul Guihard, a journalist for France’s Agence France-Presse, is in the U.S. covering African-American student James Meredith’s attempt to enroll in the whites-only University of Mississippi. White students on the campus start a riot, during which Guihard is shot through the back, piercing his heart. 

His shooting is never solved. Guihard is considered the only journalist to have been killed during the U.S. civil rights movement.

September 30, 1982: 31-year-old Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Illinois dies of cyanide poisoning after taking tampered-with Tylenol capsules. 

September 30, 1997: Post-modern writer Kathy Acker, age 50, dies of breast cancer while undergoing alternative treatment in Tijuana.

affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3HWNgtd

September 30, 1999: While working at Japan Nuclear Fuel Conversion Company, 35-year-old Hisashi Ouchi was exposed to more radiation than any other living human being had ever been exposed to. His accidental exposure came about when he and two co-workers attempted to enrich uranium using a non-standard process in the interest of saving time. The radiation killed nearly all the white blood cells in Ouchi’s body. 

Despite this and the painful burns covering his body, Ouchi’s family insisted that University of Tokyo Hospital use extraordinary measures to keep him alive. Ouchi lived for 83 days in this horrifying condition, finally dying of multiple organ failure on December 21st. 

Almanac for September 29

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 29th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-29-Michaelmas-Y8Y613Q6N4

September 29, 1925

Bummer September 29th

September 29, 1902: French writer Émile Zola dies of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a blocked chimney flue in his home. The manner of his death may have been accident, assassination, or suicide. He’s 62 years old.

September 29, 1975: Singer Jackie Wilson collapses on stage. He’ll remain semi-comatose until his death in January 1984.

September 29, 1976: Entertainer Jerry Lee Lewis is allegedly firing a gun in his bedroom. He fires at a soda bottle, the bullet ricochets, and bass player Butch Owens is struck in the chest. Owens will survive, sue Lewis for damages in federal court, and win a judgement of $125,000.

September 29, 1982: 12-year-old Mary Kellerman, home sick from school in Elk Grove, Illinois, dies of cyanide poisoning after taking a tampered-with Tylenol capsule. The same day, 27-year-old postal worker Adam Janus dies similarly in Arlington Heights. His death isn’t initially connected to cyanide. Tragically, Adam’s 25-year-old brother Stanley and his wife Theresa each take two capsules out of the same bottle. Stanley dies within hours; Theresa will be taken off life support on October 1st.

That afternoon, 27-year-old Lynn (Mary) Reiner, who has just given birth to her fourth child, takes another fatal dose of Tylenol in Winfield, Illinois; she dies the next day. In all, at least seven people die of cyanide poisoning after taking Tylenol they purchased in the Chicago area. The crime remains unsolved, although a suspect is arrested in 2022. (The suspect is innocent until proven guilty.)

September 29, 2010: A 24-year-old man whose family says he suffers from mental illness pours gasoline on himself and sets himself on fire near the statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine. The man is critically injured but survives. Coincidentally, the date the statue was unveiled to the public was also September 29th, in 1888.

Almanac for September 28

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 28th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-28-Michaelmas-Eve-A0A413OBIJ

Bummer September 28th

September 28, 1919: A large group of young white residents of Omaha, Nebraska sets off toward the courthouse, where a Black suspect named Will Brown is being held on a rape charge. The crowd grows in number as it progresses and also manages to convince the police department, initially ordered to disperse the mob, that the mob posed no significant threat. 

Within three hours, however, the white mob begins attacking police officers. Police turn fire hoses on them in an attempt to disperse the mob, but the effort fails and the white mob sets the courthouse on fire. They murder Brown and attempt to hang the mayor, although the mayor survives. The rioting lasts into the early morning hours of September 29th, by which time Brown and two white rioters are dead and numerous police officers and Black civilians are injured. 

September 28, 1991: Musician Miles Davis is taken off life support after suffering a stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage while being treated for pneumonia in a Santa Monica, California hospital. He is 65 years old.

September 28, 2022: Rapper Coolio (Artis Leon Ivey Jr.) is found unresponsive on the bathroom floor of his friend’s house in Los Angeles. Paramedics attempt to revive him but are unsuccessful. His cause of death appears to be cardiac arrest. He is 59 years old.

Almanac for September 27th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 27th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-27-Rosetta-Stone-V7V713OABL

Beatles Trivia: September 27, 1967: George Martin oversees the recording of the orchestral score of The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus.” The Mike Sammes Singers record their backing vocals for the track.

https://amzn.to/4yXSKZv

Bummer September 27th

September 27, 1986: Metallica bassist Clifford (Cliff) Burton dies in a tour bus accident in Sweden. The bus skids off the road while members of the band are sleeping in their bunks. Burton is thrown out of his bunk and through the window; the bus falls on top of him.

September 27, 2010: Sally Menke, a film editor who often collaborated with Quentin Tarantino, dies of a heat-related illness while walking her dog in 113 °F weather in Los Angeles. Menke is 56 years old. Her body is found the next day with the dog, unharmed, sitting beside it.

Tarantino (with Diane Kruger) in 2010. Public domain image by Sgt. Michael Connors

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Sept. 27, 2025: I upload this video about Sandy Allen, an Indiana native who was once the tallest woman in the world.

Almanac for September 26th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 26th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-26-County-Fair-Y8Y813NUVX

Artist Birthday: George Gershwin

The Gershwin Brothers' first big hit musical, from the January 12, 1926 San Antonio (TX) Light

French Republican Calendar day name (5 Vendémiaire): Horse

Beatles Trivia
September 26, 1969: The Beatles release Abbey Road.

Bummer September 26th

September 26, 1687: The Greek Parthenon is partially destroyed when munitions stored there by Turkish forces occupying Athens are ignited by a missile fired by Venetian troops.

September 26, 1937: Blues musician Bessie Smith dies of traumatic injuries she suffers in a car accident. She was the passenger in a car driven by her boyfriend Richard Morgan. Morgan, driving along U.S. Route 61 toward Clarksdale, Mississippi, misjudges the speed of a truck he’s coming up on and swerves at the last moment to avoid rear-ending the truck but sideswipes it instead. Since Smith is in the passenger seat and possibly has her hand and/or forearm sticking out of the passenger-side window, she sustains severe crush injuries to the right side of her body and a partially amputated arm. Surgeons at Clarksdale’s African-American hospital surgically amputate Smith’s arm. She never regains consciousness following surgery.

September 26, 1957: One day after being bitten by a boomslang snake at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, herpetologist Karl Patterson Schmidt dies of the effects of the venom. Schmidt is offered medical treatment, but refuses because he wants to document the effects of the venom on the human body before he dies.

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Sept. 26, 2025: I upload this video:

Almanac for September 25

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 25th: 

https://ko-fi.com/post/September-25-Publick-Occurences-Both-Forreign-and-M4M513NU46

Today's Observance: St. Finbar's Feast Day

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: One Hit Wonders
Artist Birthday: Shel Silverstein

Bummer September 25th

September 25, 1978: Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) Flight 182 collides in mid-air with a private Cessna 172 over San Diego. The crash kills all 135 people on both planes and seven people on the ground. The jet shears the vertical stabilizer off the Cessna and the Cessna damages the right wing of the jet so badly that the jet banks uncontrollably, crashing nose-first into a North San Diego driveway.

September 25, 2016: Miami Marlins pitcher José Delfín Fernández Gómez dies at the age of 24 in a boating accident. Fernández is intoxicated with cocaine and alcohol when he pilots a boat at a high rate of speed into a jetty off Miami Beach, Florida, killing himself and two male passengers instantly. 

Almanac for September 24th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 24th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-24th-F1F7Z4U1I

Artist Birthday: Horace Walpole

Beatles Trivia
September 24, 1941: Linda McCartney is born, as Linda Eastman, in Scarsdale, New York. Her Jewish family’s name is Epstein before her father Anglicizes it to Eastman, but she’s not related to Beatles manager Brian Epstein. It’s entirely coincidental that the eventual Sir Paul marries this beautiful, talented photographer who happens to be an Epstein. She was the first woman to shoot the cover photograph for Rolling Stone magazine. 

Bummer September 24th

September 24, 1919: Colgate University first-year student Frank McCullough drowns as part of a class hazing ritual, having been left on a island by second-year students. McCullough and the other first-years are told to swim back to shore.

September 24, 2007: Camera operator Conway Wickliffe is killed while filming stunts for the movie The Dark Knight. He is the passenger in a pickup truck driving parallel to a stunt car; the driver misses a turn and the truck crashes into a tree.