Almanac for August 25th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 25th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-25-S6S71281RX

Bummer August 25th

August 25, 1823: Fur trapper Hugh Glass is mauled by a bear in what is now South Dakota and left for dead by his fellow trappers. Not dead, Glass sets his own broken leg and journeys more than 200 miles to reach the nearest European settlement on the Missouri River. 

Leonardo DiCaprio played Glass in the 2016 movie The Revenant and won his first Oscar for doing so.

August 25, 1914: During World War I, German troops occupying Leuven, Belgium, set fire to the city and destroying almost half of it. 300 civilians die. Included in the burning and destruction is the library of the Catholic University of Leuven, which loses approximately 230,000 materials, including priceless medieval manuscripts.

August 25, 1945: OSS (the forerunner to the CIA) agent John Birch is killed by Communists in China.

August 25, 1959: Miles Davis performs at the Birdland jazz club on Broadway and 52nd St. in New York City. Pausing for a cigarette break between sets, Davis is told to “Move along” by a police officer on patrol. Davis points out that he’s headlining the club and the two exchange words. Another officer, Donald Rolker approaches and hits Davis repeatedly with his blackjack before the two officers place Davis under arrest. Later cleared of all charges, Davis nonetheless needs five stitches for his head injury and remembers the incident bitterly.

August 25, 1984: Truman Capote dies of liver disease.

August 25, 1992: The National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina is destroyed by Serbian bombing during the Siege of Sarajevo.

August 25, 2001: Aaliyah Haughton, who sang and acted under the mononym Aaliyah, and eight others are killed when their Cessna 402 aircraft crashes and catches fire shortly after takeoff from Marsh Airport Harbour in the Bahamas. The artist and her crew had finished filming a music video for her song “Rock the Boat,” and the plane was loaded with video equipment. Smaller than the Cessna 404 they had originally planned to fly back to the U.S. on, the plane couldn’t handle the extra weight. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined the overloaded aircraft to be 700 pounds too heavy for a safe flight.

August 25, 2014: 39-year-old Charles Vacca is accidentally shot and killed in White Hills, Arizona, while teaching a nine-year-old girl in how to shoot a Mini-Uzi submachine gun. The gun recoils and the child loses control of the gun, causing the barrel to be aimed at Vacca. Vacca suffers a gunshot wound to the head. Although airlifted to a hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada, he dies of his injury.

August 25, 2026: Sadly, I must report that this is the day on which the USA's beloved Dolly Parton passed away at the age of 80. 

Almanac for August 24

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 24th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-24-Gather-Ye-Rosebuds-B0B61280OQ

Artist Birthday: John Green

                             

Bummer August 24th

August 24, 1814: During the War of 1812, British troops set fire to the White House, the U.S. Capitol, and other buildings in Washington, D.C.

August 24, 1943: Philosopher Simone Weil dies of malnutrition. The exact cause of her malnutrition while hospitalized is unclear; she may have been unable to eat due to illness, fasting due to religious reasons, or fasting in solidarity with French people living under Nazi occupation.

Almanac for August 23

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 23rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-23-Peepacheek-T6T0120VVQ

August 23, 2025: Tim Miller writes the "To the Reader" afterward of Time & The River From Columbine to the Invention of Fire: Poems by Tim Miller in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

Bummer August 23

August 23, 1926: Early Hollywood sex symbol Rudolph Valentino dies at the age of 31 in New York City. Eight days earlier, he’d collapsed from severe gastric ulcers mimicking the symptoms of appendicitis. He developed peritonitis and the tissue surrounding his left lung became inflamed, making it difficult for him to breathe. His infection develops into septicemia and he lapses into a coma and dies.

August 23, 1981: East German comedic actor Rolf Herricht suffers a heart attack and dies while performing in Kiss Me Kate at Berlin’s Metropol theatre.

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.”