Almanac for August 22nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 22nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-22-Split-the-Lark-X8X411YCOT

Artist Birthday: Ray Bradbury

Bummer August 22nd

August 22, 1770: Captain James Cook claims the Torres Strait island of Bedanug on behalf of Britain, wresting control of the island from its rightful owners and native inhabitants, the Kaurareg people. The Colonial name for the island is Possession Island. 

August 22, 1849: History’s first recorded air raid occurs when Austria launches unpiloted balloons at Venice. 

August 22, 1902: The Kashgar Earthquake near the border between China and Kyrgyzstan kills an estimated 6,000 people. Building collapses and landslides were the primary causes of most deaths.

August 22, 1944: Nazis massacre the villagers of nine Amari Valley villages on the island of Crete. The massacre kills 164 people. Large-scale looting, razing of buildings, pillaging of livestock, and destruction of crops are also reported. These attacks are meant to deter local guerilla forces from resisting the Nazis.

August 22, 2004: Edvard Munch’s paintings The Scream and Madonna are stolen at gunpoint from an Oslo art museum.

Almanac for August 21

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 21st: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-21-Balzac-C0C211YC75

Support Indies Tote Bag

Bummer August 21st

August 21, 1986: A naturally-occurring limnic eruption of Lake Nyos in Cameroon releases poisonous carbon dioxide into the air, killing 1,746 people. 

August 21, 1994: 32-year-old Younes Khayati deliberately crashes Royal Air Maroc Flight 630 into the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, killing himself, the other three members of the flight crew, and all 40 passengers onboard.  

Almanac for August 20th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 20th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-20-Paradise-Lost-Q5Q711YB7V

One year ago, I published my audiobook version of Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Artist Birthday: Misha Collins

Bummer August 20th 

August 20, 1910: The so-called Great Fire of 1910 breaks out, burning through the forests of the northwestern United States. An estimated 87 people die in this series of forest fires that stretch from Montana to Washington State.

August 20, 1966: The bodies of electricians Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana are discovered lying on a hill in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Each man wore a suit, was partially covered in grass, and had a lead mask over his eyes. An empty water bottle lay beside them, and a cryptic set of instructions found in a notebook nearby referred to “swallowing capsules.” The men’s bodies could not be tested for toxins, according to the medical examiner, supposedly because their organs were too badly decomposed. 

According to a friend of the men, they may have been spiritual seekers of some kind, attempting to contact extraterrestrials or spirit beings, possibly by ingesting psychedelic drugs. Their cause of death is unknown, but authorities did not suspect foul play.

August 20, 1994: Abusive elephant trainer Allen Campbell is trampled to death by male elephant Tyke, who had been known to exhibit a fear of Campbell. Tyke broke free of his enclosure while performing at a circus in Honolulu.

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August 20, 2025: I upload this video:

Almanac for August 19

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 19: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-19-B0B711PZ48

Artist Birthday: Veronica Roth

Bummer August 19

August 19, 1929: Aviator Marvel Crosson dies at the age of 29 in an airplane crash. She is competing in the Women’s Air Derby when her aircraft apparently has trouble over the Arizona desert. When her body is found, it appears that her parachute has been released, but not deployed, perhaps meaning that she attempted to jump from the plane while too low to the ground for the parachute to help her.

August 19, 1936: According to LitHub, “Federico García Lorca—the Spanish avant-garde poet, playwright, and ardent socialist—was shot and killed by Nationalist militia before being buried in an unmarked mass grave somewhere outside Granada, where he remains to this day.”

Lorca had predicted his manner of death in his 1929 poem “The Fable And Round of the Three Friends:”

“Then I realized I had been murdered.
They looked for me in cafes, cemeteries and churches
…. but they did not find me.
They never found me?
No. They never found me.”

Almanac for August 18

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 18: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-18-J3J611MUWI

Bummer August 18

August 18, 1992: On or around this date, 24-year-old adventurer Christopher McCandless dies of apparent starvation in the Alaskan wilderness. The story of his nomadic, short life is the basis of the book and film Into the Wild. 

Almanac for August 17

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 17th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-17-Jonathan-Franzen-B0B8NXCEW

Artist Birthday: Geneva "Gene" Stratton-Porter

The July 5, 1926 South Bend (IN) News-Times

Bummer August 17th

August 17, 1896: Bridget Driscoll, the 45-year-old mother of a teenage daughter, has the dubious distinction of being the first person in Great Britain known to have been killed in a automobile-pedestrian collision. Driscoll, walking near the Crystal Palace in London, was struck by Arthur James Edsall, who was taking the vehicle for a test drive.

August 17, 1920: Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman dies of his injuries after having been hit the previous day by a baseball pitched by New York Yankee Carl Mays. The Indians go on to win the 1920 World Series.

August 17, 1966: English race car driver Ken Miles is killed when the Ford Mk IV he is test-driving crashes at over 200 miles per hour.

August 17, 1997: Antony Wheeler, playing Judas in a Greek production of Jesus Christ Superstar, accidentally dies by hanging during the scene in which his character is supposed to hang himself. 

August 17, 2007: Former NBA basketball player Eddie Griffin, intoxicated, drives his car through a railroad warning barrier and collides with a moving train, killing him instantly. Griffin is 25 years old.

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Aug. 17, 2025: I uploaded this video to YouTube:

Almanac for August 16

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 16: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-16-A-Separate-Peace-F1F411MU4J

Public domain

Artist Birthday: Madonna Louise Ciccone

Bummer August 16

August 16, 1920: New York Yankees pitcher Carl Mays throws a fastball at Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians during a baseball game. The pitch strikes Chapman. He dies the following day, becoming the second person in major league baseball history to die from injuries sustained during a Major League game.

August 16, 1948: George Herman “Babe” Ruth dies of a cancerous tumor in his neck near the base of his skull. It’s unclear whether Ruth is ever told that he has cancer. He undergoes chemotherapy, which is still experimental at the time, but his tumor is inoperable, and he dies peacefully in his sleep. 

August 16, 1949: Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell dies in the hospital of injuries she sustained on August 11th. As she and her husband are on their way to see a film version of The Canterbury Tales, Mitchell is struck by a speeding car with an intoxicated driver. The driver is convicted of involuntary manslaughter and serves 11 months in jail.

August 16, 1987: Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes shortly after taking off from Detroit Metropolitan Airport. A power interruption causes a stall warning to go unannounced, so the plane isn’t configured properly for takeoff, which in turn causes its rate of climb to be too slow. The plane’s wing strikes a light pole in the parking lot of car rental business, causing the wing to catch fire and disintegrate. The disabled plane then strikes the roof of an airport building, inverts, and falls onto the road, where it strikes a car and breaks apart.

All six crew members, 148 of the 149 passengers, and two people inside the car crushed by the plane are killed. The sole survivor is a 4-year-old girl who is severely injured. Among the dead are Phoenix Suns center Nick Vanos, age 24, and Vanos’s fiancee.

Saturday, August 16, 2003: Doug McKay has recently taken over ownership of Paradise Amusements park in Idaho. The park had a small roller coaster called the Super Loop 2, and its track needed lubrication. Doug decided to climb onto the ride and lubricate the track, unfortunately, while the ride was still in operation. Some part of his body, possibly his hair, became entangled with a passenger car, which dragged him approximately 40 feet before he dropped from the ride. His body hit the ride, then landed on a metal fence. Doug’s grisly sudden death was witnessed by visitors to the park, many of them children. 

On the same day in Las Vegas, Nevada, 39-year-old Becky Longhoffer is electrocuted while crossing Las Vegas Boulevard. Walking across a traffic island, Longhoffer stepped in a puddle. The puddle was hiding a cast iron plate that was part of the traffic signal box. Frayed wiring in the box, the rain water from the puddle, and Longhoffer's open-toed shoes combined to create the electrical tragedy that took her life as she crossed the street while talking to her brother on her cell phone.