Almanac for February 20th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 20th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-20-Sic-Transit-Gloria-Mundi-P5P51B6UDC

Beatles Trivia

February 20, 1994, South Bend: My brother and I went to the Main Library. I checked out some books I needed for a research project, and also some Beatles CDs. 

Bummer February 20th

February 20, 1894: A cook named Henrietta Jackson is suffocated by chlorine gas routed into a Cornell University dining hall, an intended prank by students who’d been trying to disrupt a banquet for first-year students.

February 20, 1945: U.S. Navy sailor Jack P. Jarosz dies of electrocution when a hazing ritual designed to give him a mild electrical shock malfunctions.

February 20, 1993: Riley Detwiler, a 17-month-old child, dies of kidney failure caused by infection with E. coli O157:H7. He contracts the infection from another child at his daycare center; both of the other child’s parents work at Jack In the Box, the fast food restaurant whose contaminated beef had already killed three children in December 1992 and January 1993. The parents of the second child didn’t disclose to daycare workers that their child was experiencing bloody diarrhea, fearing that they wouldn’t be able to get child care if the workers knew their toddler was ill.

February 20, 2003: One hundred patrons of the Station night club in West Warwick, Rhode Island, are killed when a pyrotechnics display during a rock concert causes the venue to catch fire. Guitarist Ty Longley is among those who lose their lives.

On the same day in Corbin, Kentucky, a dust explosion at the CTA Acoustics plant kills seven workers. Dust from a resin used in automotive mats ignited from the heat of an industrial oven.

February 20, 2014: Camera assistant Sarah Jones is struck and killed by a train while filming a scene for Midnight Rider: The Gregg Allman Story. The movie is left unfinished and never released.

Almanac for February 19th

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

Bummer February 19th

February 19, 1942: U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signs on order for the internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps. Many of the adults and families forced to live in the so-called “relocation camps” had to forfeit their homes, businesses, and property. The camps did not have adequate heating and cooling, food, or plumbing. Detainees weren’t released until 1945.

February 19, 1945: Phi Beta Pi pledge Robert Perry dies of burns one day after a fraternity hazing ritual at Saint Louis University. Perry’s classmates coat Perry’s naked body in carbon black and collodion (a nitrocellulose, ether, and alcohol gel used in early photography and stage makeup) and shock him with electrical currents. A short circuit causes the highly flammable collodion to catch on fire, severely burning Perry.

February 19, 1972: Trumpeter Lee Morgan is performing with his band at Slugs' Saloon, a jazz club in New York City. In between sets, he gets into an argument with his wife Helen and she shoots him. An ambulance is called, but has trouble reaching Morgan due to snowy weather conditions. Morgan bleeds to death.

February 19, 1994: Gloria Cecilia Ramirez, a 31-year-old woman with end-stage cervical cancer, arrives at the emergency room of a hospital in Riverside, California, suffering from heart palpitations and difficulty breathing. Sadly, Ramirez passes away from kidney failure caused by her disease. Strangely, 23 members of the medical team who treat Ramirez during her final visit themselves came down with symptoms of an undiagnosed illness or illnesses.

Upon arrival, Ramirez was noted to have an “oily” sheen to her skin. When a nurse draws blood from Ramirez’s arm, a medical resident notices particles the color of a manila envelope appear to be floating in the blood. Others notice a fruity, garlicky, and/or ammonia-type odor around Ramirez. At this point, the nurse fainted and had to be removed from the examination room. The medical resident then reported feeling nauseated, left the room, and subsequently fainted in a nearby hallway. A third health care worker, a respiratory therapist, also fainted.

The medical resident had the most severe effects following this incident: hepatitis, necrosis (bone death) in her knee, and a breathing problem that required her to be hospitalized for two months. Others suffered muscle spasms or shortness of breath. Explanations of what could possibly have caused these symptoms range from mass psychogenic illness (real physical illness caused by psychological factors) to Ramirez’s use of an unapproved substance as a painkiller. Ramirez’s family denies that she used any kind of unusual painkiller.

February 19, 2013: The body of Canadian student and tourist Elisa Lam is discovered in the water tower atop the Stay on Main hotel in Los Angeles, California. Lam is believed to have entered the tank of her own volition and accidentally drowned, possibly while experiencing the effects of withdrawal from her psychiatric medications.

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Everand/Scribd: https://www.everand.com/audiobook/990587984/The-Little-Book-of-Satanic-Prayers

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Almanac for February 18th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 18th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-18-Birthday-of-Three-Amazing-Women-Artis-B0B21AZFBT

Today's Observance: Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot links:

Everand (Scribd): https://www.everand.com/audiobook/982040492/Ash-Wednesday

Kobo, Walmart: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/ash-wednesday-25

Spotify: 

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Bloody Mary

Beatles Trivia

February 18, 1933: Yoko Ono is born.

“I saw nothing was permanent. You don’t want to possess anything that is dear to you because you might lose it.” - Yoko Ono

February 18, 1971: For her 38th birthday, John Lennon Ono gifts his wife a snow-white Steinway piano.

Bummer February 18th

February 18, 1718: French-born English writer Peter Anthony Motteux dies of apparent autoerotic asphyxiation inside a brothel, although the circumstances of his death were considered suspicious at the time. This may be the oldest recorded case of autoerotic asphyxiation.

February 18, 1967: J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist who witnessed the detonation of the world’s first nuclear weapon near Socorro, New Mexico, dies of throat cancer. He has undergone surgery and chemotherapy, neither of which has been successful.

February 18, 2001: On the final turn of the final lap of the Daytona 500, NASCAR driver Dale Earnhart’s car makes contact with Sterling Marlin’s car. Earnhart loses control, contacting Ken Schrader’s car while trying to right himself. After crossing in front of Schrader’s vehicle, Earnhart’s car collided head-on with the retaining wall at approximately 160 miles per hour.

Although attempts were made to revive him at the hospital, Earnhart died upon impact. He suffered massive blunt force trauma injuries, including a basilar skull fracture. Basilar skull fractures aren’t necessarily fatal, but they are very often fatal in severe cases. 

February 18, 2010: 53-year-old Andrew Joseph Stack III, a software engineering consultant, deliberately flies his Piper PA-28 Cherokee light aircraft into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and IRS manager Vernon Hunter. Stack, who had filed for bankruptcy and was under investigation by the IRS for failing to report income, wrote in a suicide note that he wanted to extract his “pound of flesh” from the IRS.

Almanac for February 17th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 17th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-17-Michael-Jordan-S6S71AOSGI

Today's Observance: Mardi Gras/Lunar New Year. Happy year of the Fire Horse!

Bummer February 17th

February 17, 1600: The Roman Catholic Church burns philosopher Giordano Bruno at the stake for heresy for his insistence that each star is the sun of its own galaxy and that the Earth is not the center of the universe, which has no center.

February 17, 1673: French playwright Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, who wrote under the pen name Molière, suffers a tuberculosis-induced pulmonary embolism while performing in his own play The Invalid. He finished out the show, but was carried immediately home afterward, where he died.

February 17, 2003: At the E2 Night Club in Chicago, Illinois, a fight breaks out, and a security guard uses pepper spray in the attempt to break up the fight. A stampede to exit the club follows, and 21 people are killed in the crowd crush.

February 17, 2010: Three Tesla Motors employees are killed when their Cessna 310 aircraft crashes into a residential neighborhood in East Palo Alto, California. They had taken off from Palo Alto Airport and were headed for the Tesla design studio in Hawthorne, California. Foggy weather is thought to have been a factor.

***

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Almanac for February 16

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 16th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-16-Happy-Anniversary-Mom-and-Dad-B0B41AOK5C

Today's Observance: President's Day

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Geordi La Forge (who will be born on this day in 2335)

Bummer February 16th

February 16, 1962: Floods in West Germany kill 315 people and leave approximately 60,000 people homeless.

February 16, 1990: 31-year-old artist Keith Haring dies of complications of AIDS.

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February 16, 2020: Voice actor Jason Davis dies at the age of 35 from an accidental fentanyl overdose.

Out today:

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Almanac for February 15th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 15th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/February-15-Lupercalia-M4M71AOJIF

Today's Observance: Lupercalia
Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Lupercalia

Bummer February 15th 

February 15, 1933: Anarchist Guiseppe Zangara attempts to assassinate president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt as Roosevelt delivers a speech in Miami. Armed with a revolver and standing on a folding chair, Zangara misses Roosevelt and shoots Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago. Cermak tells Roosevelt, “I’m glad it was me instead of you” and dies in the hospital 19 days later. Zangara is tried, convicted, and executed by electric chair.

May the memory of Anton Cermak be a blessing. Photo by Stephen Hogan from Chicago, United States. Creative Commons licensing. This is Stephen's Chicago crime scene blog.

February 15, 1965: Nat King Cole, age 45, dies of lung cancer.

February 15, 1998: 89-year-old war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, struggling with ovarian and liver cancer and failing eyesight, chooses to end her own life by swallowing cyanide.

February 15, 2014: 42-year-old Pentecostal pastor Jamie Coots, who had been featured in tv programs for his handling of poisonous snakes during religious services, dies after being bitten on the hand by a rattlesnake during services in Middlesboro, Kentucky. Although paramedics arrived in time to treat him, Coots’s family refused the treatment, saying that it was against his religion.

Almanac for February 14th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 14th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-14-Valentine-I2I61AOJG5

The Milwaukee Leader, February 14, 1926

Today's Observance: Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day at Once Upon a Screen blog

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Bummer February 14th

February 14, 1779: Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief of Hawaii, stabs Captain James Cook to death while Cook attempts to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu and hold him for ransom. In the ensuing struggle, an unrecorded number of Hawaiians and four of Cook’s men are also killed.

February 14, 1929: In what becomes known as the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, Al Capone’s gangsters line up seven members of Bugs Moran’s rival gang and machine gun them to death. Police arrive in time to find one survivor, Frank Gusenberg, suffering from 14 bullet wounds. They ask Gusenberg to name his killer, but Gusenberg refuses before he succumbs to his injuries.

February 14, 1981: A fire at the Stardust Disco in Dublin, Ireland, kills 48 people.

February 14, 1988: A fire that begins in the newspaper room of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad destroys an estimated 300,000 books.

February 14, 1989: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issues a pronouncement urging faithful Muslims to assassinate Salman Rushdie. Rushdie’s magical realist novel The Satanic Verses depicts a fictional version of the Prophet Mohammad as a character, which the Ayatollah considers blasphemous.

February 14, 1994: Southeast Missouri State University student Michael Davis dies of bleeding on the brain after a brutal beating that served as an initiation ritual for the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.