Almanac for October 5th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 5th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-5-Mr-Toads-Wild-Ride-W7W0140YQR

Bookshop.org affiliate link

Bummer October 5th

October 5, 1995: 50-year-old voice actor Linda Gary, who provided an impressive number of cartoon characters with their voices in American animation of the ‘70s and ‘80s, dies of brain cancer.

October 5, 2001: Robert Stevens, a photographer for the tabloid newspaper Sun in Boca Raton, Florida, dies of pulmonary anthrax. His death is the first in a series of anthrax terror attacks that killed Stevens and four other people and sickened 17 others. 

Microbiologist Bruce Ivins is the lead suspect in the FBI investigation into the anthrax attacks. He dies by suicide before he can be arrested and charged.

October 5, 2003: Environmentalists Timothy Treadwell (nicknamed “Grizzly Man”) and Amie Huguenard are attacked, killed, and partially eaten by a brown bear while camping and setting up film equipment in Katmai National Park, Alaska. 

Their video camera, apparently with the lens cap on (or otherwise unable to capture any light), recorded six minutes of audio of the attack. Film director Werner Herzog, who made the documentary Grizzly Man about the attack, listened to the audio, but deemed it too horrifying to use in the documentary. 

Almanac for October 4th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 4: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-4-Mutts-W7W2140XWR

Bummer October 4th

October 4, 1951: Henrietta Lacks passes away from complications of cervical cancer. She had been treated with radiation therapy at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. As a result of her cancer and/or the radiation, her organs failed. 

After her death and without her knowledge or consent, Lacks’ cancerous cells will be collected and used to start an “immortal” cell line that will be used in most of the major medical research of the 20th century.

October 4, 1969: Diane Linkletter, the youngest of the five children of Canadian-American early television pioneer Art Linkletter and his wife Lois Foerster, jumps out of the 6th floor kitchen window of her apartment in the Shoreham Towers in West Hollywood, dying by suicide. She’s 20 years old. 

Art Linkletter says in a public statement that he believed Diane was experiencing an LSD flashback at the time of her death, even though investigators found no drugs in her system.

October 4, 1970: Her road manager finds 27-year-old singer Janis Joplin dead on the floor of her motel room in Los Angeles. She has apparently died of a heroin overdose.

October 4, 1974: Poet Anne Sexton has lunch with poet Maxine Kumin.

Later that day, Sexton dies by suicide in her car, locked inside her garage, by carbon monoxide poisoning. She is 45 years old. Kumin, who died in 2014, is believed to be the last person to see Sexton alive.

October 4, 1989: Monty Python actor Graham Chapman dies at the age of 48 from what started as a malignant tumor on one of his tonsils. The cancer spread to his spine and became inoperable.

October 4, 1992: El Al Flight 1862, a cargo plane, crashes into two apartment buildings in Amsterdam’s Bijlmermeer neighborhood. All four people on the plane and 39 people on the ground are killed. The cause of the crash is thought to have been metal fatigue caused by consistently overloading the aircraft. 

October 4, 2001: 25-year-old NASCAR driver Blaise Alexander Jr. dies of head injuries in a crash at the ARCA EasyCare 100 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina. 

On Lap 63 of the 100, Alexander caught up to Kerry Earnhart (Dale Earnhart’s oldest son). The two cars made contact. Earnhart’s car flipped over onto its roof, but Earnhart was not significantly injured and was able to exit his car without assistance. Alexander’s car crashed head-on into a wall. He was pronounced dead by health care workers at the speedway’s infield care center.

Almanac for October 3rd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 3rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-3-Black-Hawk-Down-U7U2140XLK

From the October 2, 1925 Milford (DE) Chronicle

Bummer October 3rd

October 3, 1849: On this election day, Edgar Allan Poe is given alcohol and marched from polling place to polling place in an illegal voting scam that was popular at the time. It may have contributed to his death four days later.

October 3, 1967: 55-year-old folk singer Woody Guthrie dies of complications of Huntington’s disease, a hereditary condition that is still incurable.

October 3, 1993: 18 members of the U.S. Special Forces and the Army Rangers are killed in a mission to capture one faction of warlords in the Somali Civil War. Two American Black Hawk helicopters are shot down. One American soldier is captured, and some of the bodies of the dead are dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, and desecrated.

October 3, 2003: During a stage show in Las Vegas, 59-year-old Roy Horn of the magician duo Siegfried and Roy is bitten, knocked down, and dragged offstage by 7-year-old white tiger Mantacore. Horn suffers spinal injuries and severe blood loss, contributing to a stroke either during or after the incident. His verbal and motor skills are permanently impaired. 

The tiger is not harmed after the incident and lives to be 17, dying after an illness in 2014.

Almanac for October 2nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 2nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-2nd-Dracula-Y8Y413Q8QI

Read the book first: Verity by Colleen Hoover (affiliate link)

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: The Twilight Zone

Bummer October 2nd

October 2, 1985: Hollywood actor Rock Hudson dies of AIDS-related illness at his home in Beverly Hills, California. He is 59 years old.

October 2, 2017: Tom Petty dies at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, California, after being found unresponsive in his home. His death is caused by an overdose of multiple drugs, including fentanyl and prescription medications. He’d been recovering from a fractured hip. Petty is 66 years old.

October 2, 2018: Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi, who resides in the U.S., is murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Khashoggi’s writings were critical of the Saudi government, and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is suspected of being involved in the assassination.

October 2, 2019: Guitarist Kim Shattuck, who played for groups including The Pixies, the Muffs, and The Pandoras, dies of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at the age of 56.

Almanac for October 1st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 1st: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-1st-H2H513Q86K

Bummer October 1st
Bummer October Reading List at Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/lists/bummer-october-reading-list

October 1, 1941: 52-year-old Aline Murray Kilmer, herself a poet and also the widow of Joyce Kilmer, a poet killed in World War One, dies following three years of an unknown, but excruciatingly painful, illness.

October 1, 1951: Journalist Pauline Pfeiffer dies at age 56 of acute shock. She had a rare pheochromocytoma tumor on one of her adrenal glands. It appears that when Pauline’s transgender daughter Gloria was arrested for using a women’s bathroom and Gloria’s father Ernest Hemingway called his ex-wife Pauline to tell her, the news of Gloria’s arrest caused Pauline’s adrenal tumor to produce the hormones that caused the fatal state of physical shock.

Almanac for September 30

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 30th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-30-Carlos-Fuentes-O5O013Q71H

Artist Birthday: Upton Sinclair

The Sept. 5, 1926 Chicago Daily Worker

Artist Birthday: Truman Capote

Bummer September 30th

September 30, 1928: University of Texas at Austin student Nolte McElroy is electrocuted during a Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity hazing. McElroy is forced to wear wet clothes and crawl in between two sets of bedsprings rigged to an electrical current. Before McElroy’s death, this initiation ritual had gone on for 15 years without any serious injuries; it’s unknown why McElroy was electrocuted.

September 30, 1962: Paul Guihard, a journalist for France’s Agence France-Presse, is in the U.S. covering African-American student James Meredith’s attempt to enroll in the whites-only University of Mississippi. White students on the campus start a riot, during which Guihard is shot through the back, piercing his heart. 

His shooting is never solved. Guihard is considered the only journalist to have been killed during the U.S. civil rights movement.

September 30, 1982: 31-year-old Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Illinois dies of cyanide poisoning after taking tampered-with Tylenol capsules. 

September 30, 1997: Post-modern writer Kathy Acker, age 50, dies of breast cancer while undergoing alternative treatment in Tijuana.

affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3HWNgtd

September 30, 1999: While working at Japan Nuclear Fuel Conversion Company, 35-year-old Hisashi Ouchi was exposed to more radiation than any other living human being had ever been exposed to. His accidental exposure came about when he and two co-workers attempted to enrich uranium using a non-standard process in the interest of saving time. The radiation killed nearly all the white blood cells in Ouchi’s body. 

Despite this and the painful burns covering his body, Ouchi’s family insisted that University of Tokyo Hospital use extraordinary measures to keep him alive. Ouchi lived for 83 days in this horrifying condition, finally dying of multiple organ failure on December 21st. 

Almanac for September 29

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 29th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-29-Michaelmas-Y8Y613Q6N4

September 29, 1925

Bummer September 29th

September 29, 1902: French writer Émile Zola dies of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a blocked chimney flue in his home. The manner of his death may have been accident, assassination, or suicide. He’s 62 years old.

September 29, 1975: Singer Jackie Wilson collapses on stage. He’ll remain semi-comatose until his death in January 1984.

September 29, 1976: Entertainer Jerry Lee Lewis is allegedly firing a gun in his bedroom. He fires at a soda bottle, the bullet ricochets, and bass player Butch Owens is struck in the chest. Owens will survive, sue Lewis for damages in federal court, and win a judgement of $125,000.

September 29, 1982: 12-year-old Mary Kellerman, home sick from school in Elk Grove, Illinois, dies of cyanide poisoning after taking a tampered-with Tylenol capsule. The same day, 27-year-old postal worker Adam Janus dies similarly in Arlington Heights. His death isn’t initially connected to cyanide. Tragically, Adam’s 25-year-old brother Stanley and his wife Theresa each take two capsules out of the same bottle. Stanley dies within hours; Theresa will be taken off life support on October 1st.

That afternoon, 27-year-old Lynn (Mary) Reiner, who has just given birth to her fourth child, takes another fatal dose of Tylenol in Winfield, Illinois; she dies the next day. In all, at least seven people die of cyanide poisoning after taking Tylenol they purchased in the Chicago area. The crime remains unsolved, although a suspect is arrested in 2022. (The suspect is innocent until proven guilty.)

September 29, 2010: A 24-year-old man whose family says he suffers from mental illness pours gasoline on himself and sets himself on fire near the statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine. The man is critically injured but survives. Coincidentally, the date the statue was unveiled to the public was also September 29th, in 1888.