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.
March 9, 1911: The DuPont blasting powder plants explodes, destroying much of the town of Point Prairie, Wisconsin. Since the plant was closed at the time of the explosion, only three DuPont employees are killed. A fourth person, named Alice Finch, is said to have “dropped dead of fright.” Hundreds of Point Prairie residents are injured, including one man who loses an eye from flying glass and another whose ear is severed by flying glass.
March 9, 1989: 42-year-old photographer Robert Mapplethorpe dies of AIDS-related illness at a Boston hospital.
March 9, 1997: Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G., is murdered while sitting in a truck leaving a party in Los Angeles. Struck by four bullets, including one that hits his heart, the 24-year-old rapper dies at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
March 8, 1941: American author Sherwood Anderson dies of peritonitis in Colón, Panama. He and his wife Eleanor, who were frequent travelers, had been taking a cruise to South America when Anderson began having abdominal discomfort. An autopsy revealed internal injuries caused by swallowing a toothpick.
March 8, 1944: Swedish tenor Aroldo Lindi dies during a performance of Pagliacci at San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House, during the aria “Vesti la Giubba.”
March 8, 1989: Iran breaks diplomatic ties with the U.K. since the U.K. will not denounce Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses.
In an unrelated incident on the same day, in Columbia, South Carolina, death row inmate Michael Godwin, age 28, accidentally electrocutes himself while sitting on his prison cell’s metal toilet. He bites into the wiring of a pair of earphones, which shock him until he dies. Had his death sentence been carried out, he would have been executed by electrocution.
March 8, 1994: Radio dj Jack Spector suffers a heart attack and collapses while on the air. His co-workers notice a long silence after the song “I’m In the Mood for Love” by Louis Prima ends, rush into the dj booth, and find Spector unresponsive. He is pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
March 8, 2004: Character actor Robert Pastorelli, age 49, is found dead in his Hollywood home of a morphine overdose. It’s unclear whether the manner of death was accident or suicide. Pastorelli had recently learned he could be criminally charged related to the death of his girlfriend Charemon Jonovich, who died of a gunshot wound at the actor’s home in 1999.
On the same day, in Patchogue, New York, members of Freemason unofficial subgroup Fellowcrafts Club accidentally shoot and kill initiate William James during a hazing ritual. They sat James in a chair and lined up cans on his head. One man was supposed to shoot blanks out of a gun while another man knocked the cans off James’s head, tricking him into thinking they were shooting the cans. Somehow, the shooter confuses the gun with blanks for a gun with real bullets in it.
March 7, 1965: Civil rights protestors marching in a peaceful protest from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama are brutally beaten and tear gassed by Alabama state troopers and members of the county posse in what becomes known as Bloody Sunday. Amelia Boynton, one of the organizers of the peaceful protest, was beaten unconscious. 14-year-old Lynda Blackmon Lowery required 35 stitches for injuries to her head. Future U.S. Representative John Lewis was hit in the back of the head with a billy club and suffered a skull fracture.
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March 6, 2003: Air Algérie Flight 6289 crashes shortly after takeoff from Aguenar – Hadj Bey Akhamok Airport in Tamanrasset, Algeria. The cause of the crash was engine failure, followed by the failure of the crew to react appropriately to the emergency. 102 of the 103 people aboard are killed. The sole survivor, a 28-year-old Algerian man, is not wearing his seatbelt at the time of the crash and is ejected from the plane. He suffers non-life-threatening injuries.
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March 5, 1963: The Beatles record “From Me to You” at Abbey Road.
Sunday, March 5, 1995, South Bend: Having read The Plague, I turned to a library book titled The Worst Rock and Roll Records Ever Made: A Fan's Guide to the Stuff You Love to Hate by Jimmy Guterman and Owen O’Donnell [ISBN 0806512318 9780806512310].
Here’s a list of some of the songs and bands Guterman and O’Donnell love to hate: 1. “Dancing in the Street” by Mick Jagger and David Bowie 2. “Eve of Destruction” 3. “American Pie” 4. The Doors 5. Mick Jagger’s brother Chris 6. The U2 album The Unforgettable Fire (which includes “Pride (In the Name of Love);” see April 4) 7. Ringo Starr’s albums Stop and Smell the Roses and Old Wave 8. Really anything done by Ringo Starr and (especially) Paul McCartney after the Beatles 9. The 1981 live Rolling Stones album Still Life 10. Duran Duran
Bummer March 5th
March 5, 1963: Musicians Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, and Hawkshaw Hawkins perish when their Piper PA-24 Comanche aircraft crashes in a forest in Tennessee during stormy weather. The pilot is also killed. Cline’s epitaph reads, “Death Cannot Kill What Never Dies: Love.”
March 5, 1977: In an unfortunate accident at the South African Grand Prix, English driver Tom Pryce struck and killed 19-year-old race marshal Frederik "Frikkie" Jansen van Vuuren, whom he couldn’t have seen in time. Jansen van Vuuren had run across the track with a fire extinguisher to rescue Italian driver Renzo Zorzi. Zorzi was trapped in his burning car while trying to remove the oxygen pipe from his helmet.
The 40-pound fire extinguisher struck Pryce’s car and came through his windshield, striking Pryce in the head, forcing his helmet upward at a sharp angle, causing severe head and neck injuries that killed him instantly. Pryce’s car struck Jacques-Henri Laffite’s car and both vehicles struck the barrier and came to a stop.
Zorzi was not injured. The eventual winner of the 1977 South African Grand Prix was Austrian driver Niki Lauda, who had almost burned to death in the 1976 German Grand Prix.
March 5, 1982: Albanian-American comedian John Belushi dies of a drug overdose.
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March 4, 1874: Stage actor Ada Clare dies of rabies at the age of 39 after being bitten by a rabid dog in her theatrical agent’s office.
March 4, 1908: An elementary school in Collinwood, Ohio, catches fire for an undetermined reason. The school’s masonry exterior and almost entirely wooden interior without fire breaks cause the entire building to act like a chimney. Two teachers, one rescuer, and 172 students–almost half of the students in the building--are killed.
March 4, 2019: 52-year-old actor Luke Perry dies from complications of two ischemic strokes at a hospital in Burbank, California.
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March 3, 1991: 25-year-old Rodney King is pulled over by the Los Angeles Police Department on suspicion of drunk driving and for speeding in a residential area. Although witnesses say King did not appear to resist arrest, King was struck with a Taser weapon and then beaten by four of the police officers present at his traffic stop. King’s multiple injuries included broken teeth, a fractured skull, a broken ankle, and kidney damage.
The beating was captured by an amateur video camera by George Holliday. Holliday takes the footage to local TV station KTLA. The four officers were charged with assault and excessive force. When the jury acquitted the officers on April 29, 1992, rioting broke out in Los Angeles. The six days of rioting killed 63 people before the California National Guard, U.S. Army, and U.S. Marines intervened to end the social chaos.
The U.S. Department of Justice later found two of the officers guilty of violating King’s civil rights and sentenced them to prison. The other two were acquitted. King sued the City of Los Angeles. A civil court awarded King $3.8 million in damages as well as $1.7 million in attorneys’ fees.
New links for Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, the audiobook:
