Almanac for June 8th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 8th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/June-8-P5P21GMJ5L

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: John Everett Millais
Artist Birthday: Science fiction author Robert F. Young

Bummer June 8th

June 8, 1913: Emily Wilding Davison dies of her injuries, including a skull fracture, four days after being knocked down by Anmer, a horse owned by King George V of England, during the 1913 Derby at Epsom Downs. Davison attended the Derby to protest in favor of voting rights for English women, carrying the purple, white, and green flag used at the time by the women’s suffrage movement. She climbed around a guard rail and onto the track as Anmer passed by, traveling approximately 35 miles per hour. As she reached for the animal’s reins, the horse knocked her down. 

Since Davison hadn’t discussed her plans for the protest with anyone who knew her, her exact intentions are unclear. She may have been trying to attach the suffrage movement flag to Anmer’s bridle.

June 8, 1971: J.I. Rodale, an early advocate of sustainable and organic farming and founder of Rodale Press, appears as a guest on a pre-taped episode of The Dick Cavett Show. In his interview for the show, Rodale states that he’s never felt better and intends to live to be 100 years old. Unfortunately, he suffers a fatal heart attack at the age of 72 that evening, as he’s sitting in a chair on the Cavett Show set listening to another guest being interviewed. Rodale is pronounced dead on arrival at a local hospital; the episode is never aired.

June 8, 1982: Jaren Elizabeth Gunn Pate, who married rock ‘n roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis in 1971, is staying with a friend while in the process of divorcing Lewis. The two were scheduled to meet in divorce court on the 21st of June. Less than two weeks prior to the court date, Pate drowns in the friend’s swimming pool.

June 8, 1997: Chemistry professor Karen Wetterhahn is taken off life support and dies from acute mercury poisoning. On August 14, 1996, she had been working with the highly toxic chemical dimethylmercury when several drops of the substance fell onto her latex glove-covered hand. The chemical permeated her glove and was absorbed by her skin; she began having neurological symptoms of heavy metal poisoning within three months.

June 8, 2018: Chef Anthony Bourdain, age 61, dies of suicide by hanging.

Almanac for June 7th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 7th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-7-J3J61GMJ6G

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: The ancient Roman goddess Vesta

Bummer June 7th

June 7, 1937: 26-year-old actress Jean Harlow dies of kidney failure. Her illness may have been a complication from a case of scarlet fever she contracted as a teen.

June 7, 1984: On or around this date, the Indian Army burns the Sikh Reference Library building in Punjab, India, to the ground. The library held approximately 20,000 materials, including irreplaceable handwritten manuscripts. The status of these materials is unknown and considered classified by the Indian government; they may have been destroyed, sold off into private collections, or held in an undisclosed archive somewhere.

June 7, 1993: NBA player Dražen Petrović is killed in a road accident while riding on the German Autobahn highway system in Bavaria. Petrović is not wearing a safety belt and is ejected from the vehicle, which is driven by his girlfriend.

June 7, 2016: Recent college graduate Colin Scott, age 23, goes to see his sister Sable. The two visit Yellowstone National Park together. Near the Norris Geyser Basin, Sable and Colin veer off the boardwalk where visitors are encouraged to walk. Colin falls into a natural hot spring, where he dies by some combination of drowning and burns from the scalding-hot water. Colin’s body cannot be recovered, having largely been dissolved in the hot, acidic water. 

Almanac for June 6th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 6th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/June-6-S6S21GMJ82

Bummer June 6th

June 6, 1867: Archduchess Mathilde Marie Adelgunde Alexandra of Austria, who is smoking a cigarette, attempts to hide the cigarette from her father, Archduke Albert, Duke of Teschen, by concealing it behind her back. She accidentally sets her delicate gauze dress on fire and very shortly afterward dies of her second- and third-degree burn injuries.

June 6, 1892: Yale University student Wilkins Rustin dies of peritonitis. He’d participated in a Delta Kappa Epsilon hazing in which he’d been led through the street toward Moriarty’s Café while blindfolded. Rustin walks directly into a carriage pole, rupturing his intestine.

June 6, 1968: U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy (Sr.) is assassinated by gunshot in Los Angeles.

June 6, 1971: A mid-air collision between a U.S. military plane that had deviated from its flight plan and commercial Hughes Airwest flight 706 kills 50 people. Only 1st Lt. Christopher E. Schiess, the radar intercept officer aboard the F-4B fighter jet, survives the collision that occurs over Duarte, California. Schiess, 24 years old at the time, is able to eject himself from the jet and parachute to safety.

June 6, 2006: American artist Luis Alfonso Jiménez Jr. dies in his Hondo, New Mexico, studio while working on his 32-foot-tall sculpture titled Blue Mustang, which is now at the Denver International Airport. A large piece of the sculpture came loose from a hoist, fell on him, and severed an artery in his leg.

This is a completely different blue Mustang.

Almanac for June 5th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 5th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-5-Love-and-Friendship-J3J41G1GUR

Artist Birthday: Federico Garcia Lorca

Bummer June 5th

June 5, 1981: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issues its first report on a cluster of medical cases in what will soon become known as the AIDS epidemic. This report described an unusual cluster of Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) in people who otherwise appeared to be healthy; this opportunistic infection had previously been seen only in people who were known to have compromised immune systems. The human immunodeficiency virus would be identified some time between 1984 and 1986.

Almanac for June 4th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 4th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-19-Queenie-Z8Z41AZGDD

Beatles Trivia
June 4, 1969: The Beatles release “The Ballad of John and Yoko” in the U.S. In the U.K. it came out on May 30th. 

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: National Cognac Day

Bummer June 4th

June 4, 1923: Jockey Frank Hayes, age 22, has a sudden fatal heart attack in the middle of a horse race. His horse, Sweet Kiss, is the first to cross the finish line, still carrying Hayes’s body. Hayes’s heart attack may have been related to his crash dieting, since jockeys are required to weigh as little as possible.

June 4, 1978: A search party discovers the body of Ted Weiher, age 32, inside a remote camping shelter in Plumas National Forest in northern California. Weiher died of starvation and dehydration and has severe frostbite on both feet. He and his four close friends (all of whom had intellectual disabilities and/or mental health challenges) had last been seen by their families on February 24th of that year, when they attended a basketball game together. The bones of three of the others were discovered in the woods nearby, apparently dispersed by scavenging animals. They’re thought to have died of hypothermia. No trace of the fifth man has ever been found. 

June 4, 2004: A 52-year-old man in Granby, Colorado, goes on a spree during which he uses a steel- and concrete-reinforced bulldozer to destroy several buildings, including Granby’s mayor’s house and the town hall. The man had modified the vehicle over the course of a year and a half, plotting his revenge against the town based on a grievance stemming from a bill he owed for illegally dumping sewage from his business rather than properly connecting the business to the town’s sewage system. In the process of destroying the local hardware store, the bulldozer falls into the building’s basement and the engine stops working. The man, armed with several firearms inside of and protruding from the armored bulldozer, then dies by suicide. No one else is harmed.

Almanac for June 3rd

Today's Observance: Feast Day of St. Kevin of Glendalough
Artist Birthday: Josephine Baker

https://www.everand.com/audiobook/919398501/Josephine-Baker-in-Berlin

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 3rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-3rd-Thermos-H-Christ-N4N21G1G66

Bummer June 3rd

June 3, 1943: In the so-called Zoot Suit Riots, white servicemen stationed in Los Angeles go on a racist rampage, beating young men of Mexican, Black, and Filipino backgrounds. The military members are allegedly outraged that largely Latino members of the “pachuco” subculture wear the flashy style of suit that requires a large amount of fabric, which is supposed to be rationed during wartime. More than 150 people are severely beaten, and police arrest over 500 people. Young men of color, not their Caucasian attackers, make up the bulk of those arrested.

June 3, 1991: Mount Unzen on the island of Kyushu in Japan erupts. The eruption kills 43 people, include married vulcanologists Maurice and Katia Krafft. 

June 3, 1998: A high-speed train in Germany derails and crashes into a bridge, killing 101 people.

June 3, 2009: Actor David Carradine dies at the age of 72 of apparent autoerotic asphyxiation in Bangkok, Thailand, at what was then the Swissôtel Nai Lert Park Hotel (as of 2022, Mövenpick Bangkok Dusit Medical Services Wellness Resort).

Almanac for June 2nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 2nd: https://ko-fi.com/Post/June-2nd-The-Greatest-Show-on-Earth-Y8Y21G1G3Z

Bummer June 2nd

June 2, 1919: Anarchists simultaneously set off mail bombs containing dynamite and sulfuric acid in eight U.S. cities. Night watchman William Boehner and anarchist publisher Carlo Valdinoci are killed. 

June 2, 1937: Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral organist Louis Vierne plays a farewell concert for an audience of 3,000 people. The 66-year-old finishes his performance, then turns to his assistant and says, “I’m going to be sick.” Vierne suffers a fatal heart attack at his organ, holding down one final, continuous note.

June 2, 1941: Heinrich Ludwig “Lou” Gehrig dies of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at age 37.

Goudey Gum Company, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

June 2, 1990: Twelve people are killed in the Lower Ohio Valley tornado outbreak that affects Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois.

June 2, 2013: Grizelda Kristiņa dies at the age of 103. She was the last fluent native speaker of Livonian, a Uralic language closely related to Estonian.