Almanac for September 8

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 8th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-8-International-Literacy-Day-E1E812SM6D

French Republican Calendar day name (22 Fructidor): Noisette (hazelnut)

Bummer September 8

September 8, 1965: Cleveland-born actress/dancer Dorothy Dandridge, the first Black woman to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, dies at the age of 42, either from an accidental overdose of the tricyclic antidepressant imipramine or a fat embolism that broke free and entered her bloodstream due to a fractured bone in her foot, an injury she’d sustained in a fall a few days before.

September 8, 1985: Cuban-American ecofeminist installation artist Ana Mendieta falls from the window of her apartment on the 34th floor of a building in Greenwich Village. Mendieta’s husband, sculptor Carl Andre, insists that her death was accident. Andre was acquitted of any legal responsibility in Mendieta’s death, but witnesses heard them arguing just prior to her fall from the window, and Andre had scratches on his face. Andre’s exhibitions are frequently protested by Mendieta’s fellow feminist artists.

September 8, 2016: 59-year-old performer The Lady Chablis, who’s featured prominently in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt and played herself in the 1997 film based on it, dies of pneumonia at Candler Hospital in Savannah, Georgia.

September 8, 2017: Kenneka Jenkins, age 19, attends a party at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare hotel. The next day her body is found inside a latched freezer belonging to the hotel’s kitchen; she appears to have frozen to death after entering the freezer for an unknown reason. 

Footage from the hotel’s cameras show her wandering the halls with a small injury on one foot. Authorities speculate her unusual behavior may have resulted from the combination of alcohol and a migraine medication, possibly not prescribed to Jenkins (sources vary), found in her system; this combination may have also hastened the effects of hypothermia.

Almanac for September 7th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 7th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-7-Z8Z612SF86

Today's Observance: Labor Day (U.S.)

"Mac Miller on the set of The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, rehearsing his song that HuffPost said 'totally destroys Donald Trump'" on March 9, 2016. Public domain.

Bummer September 7th

September 7, 1936: The last-known Thylacinus cynocephalus, the Tasmanian tiger or thylacine, dies in a zoo in Tasmania.

September 7, 2010: Actor Glenn Shadix, known for playing Otho in Tim Burton’s film Beetlejuice and providing the voice of the Mayor of Halloween Town in The Nightmare Before Christmas, uses a wheelchair while recovering from surgery to repair a broken ankle. While using the chair in the kitchen of his condominium, Shadix suffers a fall, strikes his head, and dies at age 58 from blunt force trauma.

September 7, 2018: Rapper Mac Miller, aged 26, dies of an overdose of alcohol, cocaine, and fentanyl.

-- 

And now, for something completely different, an affiliate link to a Gumroad creative product you may enjoy: Climbing the Date Palm, a labor rights love story

If my words are not being censored by the Trump Regime, you may find my books here on Gumroad.

Almanac for September 6

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 6th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-6-ArtBeat-D1D612SF0X

Bummer September 6th

September 6, 1901: Anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies eight days later.

September 6, 1926:

September 6, 1951: Joan Vollmer is shot and killed in an American-owned bar in Mexico City by her husband, William S. Burroughs. Both were intoxicated. Vollmer is alleged to have placed a glass on top of her head, and Burroughs was supposedly trying to shoot the glass off her head with a pistol. Instead he shot Vollmer in the head and killed her instantly.

This is portrayed in the film Beat (2000). Vollmer is played by Courtney Love and Burroughs by Canadian actor Kiefer Sutherland. 

Almanac for September 5

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for Sept. 5th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-5th-Freddie-T6T312SDNJ

The Sept. 5, 1926 Washington (D.C.) Evening Star

Bummer September 5th

September 5, 1970: German race car driver Jochen Rindt is killed when his Lotus 72 crashes during practice for the Italian Grand Prix. As Rindt goes to brake, the car's right front inboard brake shaft fails, propelling him into the guard rail. The improperly installed guard rail gives way, and the Lotus crashes head-on into a stanchion. Rindt’s 5-point seatbelt, with only four of the five restraints engaged, allows his body to slip forward. As he does, the belt slits his throat. Rindt dies on the way to the hospital. 

Jochan Rindt. This is an image from the Nationaal Archief, the Dutch National Archives, and Spaarnestad Photo, donated in the context of a partnership program.

September 5, 1983: Canadian stunt performer Ken Carter is killed when the rocket car he’s using to jump over an Ontario pond overshoots the landing ramp, flips, and lands on its roof. 

Almanac for September 4th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-4-Richard-Wright-F1F112P4WX

Bummer September 4th

September 4, 2006: Wildlife expert, zookeeper, and filmmaker Steve Irwin is filming a dive in shallow water near the Great Barrier Reef. He is struck in the chest by a stingray’s tale. The barb of the tale pierces his heart, killing him. He's 44 years old.

September 4, 2014: Comedian Joan Rivers dies of complications from a minor surgical procedure days after she stopped breathing during the surgery. She's 81 years old. Rivers' only child, her daughter Melissa, sues her mother's doctors for medical malpractice; they settle out of court with the doctors admitting responsibility for Rivers' death.

Almanac for September 3rd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 3rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-3rd-Goodnight-Zoo-U7U512P406

Happy 1-year book anniversary to The Deep Space Scrolls audiobook:

Bummer September 3rd

September 3, 1991: Fire breaks out inside the Imperial Food Products chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina. Some workers are unable to escape due to locked doors, including one door labeled as a fire exit. The building had no sprinkler system or fire alarm. Of the 90 workers in the plant at the time of the fire, 25 died and an additional 54 were injured. Plant owner Emmett Roe pleads guilty to manslaughter and serves nearly four years in prison. 

September 3, 2009: Hulda Clark, a Canadian naturopath who claimed that all cancers are caused by infection with flatworms and sold people an electric device she claimed would “zap” the cancer out of them without the need for surgery or medicine, dies of cancer. The woman who peddled a “100% effective” quack cure to other cancer patients died of multiple myeloma. 

Almanac for September 2

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 2nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-2nd-Pac-Man-Fever-A0A112P3B5

The 1900 Galveston Hurricane with Disaster Area Podcast

Bummer September 2nd

September 2, 1666: The Great Fire of London begins. It kills 16 people and destroys 13,000 homes.

September 2, 1791: Virtuoso violinist Frantisek Kotzwara dies of apparent erotic asphyxiation after having intercourse with sex worker Susannah Hill in London. Hill, who was initially charged with Kotzwara’s murder but acquitted, testifies that Kotzwara asked her to cut off his testicles, and when she refused, settled instead for having intercourse with her while wearing a ligature tightened around his own neck with the other end fastened to the doorknob.

September 2, 1885: Chinese-American mine workers in Rock Springs, Wyoming, are beaten and killed by white miners. The race riot kills 28 people and destroys dozens of buildings. Hundreds of Chinese-American workers flee the town out of fear for their lives.

September 2, 1900: A tropical hurricane formed over the Atlantic Ocean makes landfall in the Dominican Republic. This storm is among the deadliest in U.S. history, with a large number of fatalities coming from Galveston, Texas. Meteorologists of the time, and in particular Isaac Cline, didn’t believe that a significant hurricane was possible in Galveston, and so rejected requests from the townspeople that the city should build a sea wall. As many as 8,000 people in the Caribbean, the U.S., and the Maritime Provinces of Canada are thought to have lost their lives in this storm, including Cline’s wife and some of his children.

September 2, 2004: A fire at the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany, destroys 12,500 irreplaceable books and damages an additional 62,000 materials, including Friedrich Schiller's death mask and 35 oil paintings of historical significance.

September 2, 2018: An air conditioner short circuits, causing a catastrophic fire at the National Museum of Brazil. The museum loses an estimated 92.5% of its collection.

* ~ * ~ *

Sept. 2, 2025: I uploaded this video: