Almanac for September 23rd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 23rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-23rd-L3L8Z4U3F

Artist Birthday: Bruce Springsteen

Bummer September 23rd

September 23, 965: Al-Mutanabbi, a courtly poet of the Abbasid Caliphate who wrote in Arabic, dies in what is now Iraq. His birth date is not known, but he was thought to be about 50 years old at the time of his death. He died in a fight with a group of assailants who were insulted by one of his poems.

September 23, 1939: Sigmund Freud dies of cancer of the jaw. He had been diagnosed with epithelioma of the mouth in 1923, and although the tumor had been surgically removed, the surgery was incomplete. By 1939, the cancer that had spread to his jawbone was so painful, and also inoperable, that Freud asked his personal physician to give him a life-ending dose of morphine. 

September 23, 1973: Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and is in his fifth day of hospitalization. He calls his wife to let her know he isn’t feeling well and dies a few hours later, officially of heart failure. 

Some have speculated that Neruda may have been poisoned in the hours before his death. Chile’s coup d’etat that ended the term of democratically-elected socialist President Salvador Allende had happened on September 11th. Neruda had been Allende’s ambassador to France and his home had already been searched by the military forces of coup leader General Augusto Pinochet. Neruda famously told Pinochet’s troops that the only dangerous thing they would find was poetry.

September 23, 1994: Psycho writer Robert Bloch dies of cancer of the esophagus and kidneys at the age of 77.

Almanac for September 22nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 22nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-22nd-K3K6Z4U51

Today's Observance: First day of autumn (Northern Hemisphere)

Spooky season be upon ye. Affiliate Link

Bummer September 22nd

September 22, 1692: Eight people found guilty of witchcraft in the Massachusetts Bay Colony are executed by hanging.

September 22, 1776: American Revolutionary spy Nathan Hale is executed by hanging by the British after being caught in the act of spying on British troop movements on Long Island.

September 22, 1796: 31-year-old Mary Lamb, a seamstress, shouts at her apprentice (a child) and is reprimanded by her (Mary's) disabled mother Elizabeth. Mentally ill and suffering from the strain of being a full-time caregiver and also the family breadwinner, Mary stabs her mother in the chest with a kitchen knife, killing her. Mary will be confined to a hospital for mental health treatment until her health improves. Although she continues to experience relapses of her illness from time to time, Mary goes on to write, with her brother Charles, the popular book Tales From Shakespeare.

September 22, 1978: Stunt performer A.J. Bakunas dies from his injuries after a failed stunt fall from Lexington, Kentucky’s Kincaid Towers the previous day. Bakunas lands on the air bag as planned, which splits, allowing his body to hit the ground at approximately 115 miles per hour.

Read more about the incident here.

September 22, 2014: Clemson University student Tucker Hipps dies from a fall off a bridge into shallow water sustained while taking part in a Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity hazing ritual.

Almanac for September 21st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 21st: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-21st-M4M4Z4U81

Artist Birthday: Stephen King

Bummer September 21st

September 21, 1921: Ammonium nitrate fertilizer stored in a building owned by the BASF company in Oppau, Germany (now part of the city of Ludwigshafen am Rhein), explodes, killing an estimated 500 to 600 people, destroying about 80% of Oppau, and leaving 6,500 people homeless. The blast was felt 19 miles/30 km away in Heidelberg, where it derailed a tram.

September 21, 1989: 19 junior high and high school students from Alton, Texas, drown when a Dr. Pepper bottling truck collides with their school bus. The bus goes off the road and into a rock quarry filled with rainwater. Two more students will die of injures related to being submerged in water by September 29th. The victims were all between 12 and 19 years old.

September 21, 1998: Gold medal-winning Olympic track and field champion Florence Griffith Joyner, age 38, dies in her sleep of a severe epileptic seizure caused, in part, by an undetected cavernous hemangioma, a malformation of a vein that makes a person susceptible to epilepsy.

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Sept. 21, 2025: I upload this video:

Almanac for September 20th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 20th: https://ko-fi.com/post/Sept-20-Cat-on-a-Hot-Tin-Roof-C0C2F5L5R

Today's Observation: Yom Kippur (begins at sundown)

Beatles Trivia
September 20, 1974: David Bowie and John Lennon meet for the first time at Dean Martin’s 21st birthday party for Martin’s son Ricci. Ringo Starr, Elton John, and Elizabeth Taylor are also there.

Artist Birthday: Jon Bernthal

Bummer September 20th

September 20, 1973: Musician Jim Croce and five others die when their aircraft crashes into a tree shortly after takeoff from Natchitoches, Louisiana. Croce is 30 years old.

September 20, 1989: The last fluent speaker of the Kamassian language, Klavdiya Zakharovna Plotnikova-Andzhighatova, an approximately 105-year-old woman, dies. Kamassian is one of the Samoyed languages of the Ural Mountains. In fact, it was the last of the Samoyed languages to go extinct.

September 20, 1997: Musician Nick Traina, the son of author Danielle Steel, passes away from an overdose of the prescription medication lithium. He is 19 years old.

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Almanac for September 19th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for Sept. 19th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-19th-Y8Y1Z4UC0

One year ago, I published Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters by H. Addington Bruce.

Bummer September 19th

September 19, 1692: Massachusetts Bay Colonist Giles Corey, having been accused of witchcraft but refusing to plead either guilty or not guilty in court, is subjected to a form of torture in which his body is crushed with increasingly heavy stone weights in an attempt to force him to plead. Corey refuses and is crushed to death, with his last words reportedly being, “More weight!”

September 19, 1881: U.S. President James Garfield dies of septic infection. He had been shot by his assassin, Charles Guiteau, on July 2, 1881.

September 19, 1902: One hundred fifteen members of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, are killed in a stampede after one of them called out “Fight!” and this was misheard as “Fire!”

September 19, 1913: Purdue University student Francis Obenchain dies of a broken neck after taking part in a large-scale fight between first- and second-year students intended as a class hazing ritual.

September 19, 1973: Singer-songwriter Gram Parsons dies of an accidental overdose of alcohol and morphine at the age of 26. He dies peacefully in his sleep inside a room at the Joshua Tree Inn in California. 

His stepfather Bob Parsons insists the singer’s body be flown to New Orleans for burial, but friends of Gram Parsons steal the body from Los Angeles International Airport and attempt to carry out what they insisted were Parsons’s final wishes, to be created in Joshua Tree National Monument (now Joshua Tree National Park). They pour gasoline into the coffin and light it with a match, causing a tremendous fireball, and are charged a fine of $750. What remains of Parsons’s body is buried in Louisiana.

Almanac for September 18th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 18th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-18th-V7V6Z4UDN

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Royal Opera House

Bummer September 18th

September 18, 1961: United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others die when their Transair Sweden DC-6 aircraft crashes in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Hammarskjöld had been traveling to Katanga, a disputed state that broke off from the Congo after Congo gained its independence from Belgian colonial rule. The cause of the crash is disputed. It may have been caused by pilot error, although some have speculated that it was shot down to assassinate Hammarskjöld.

September 18, 1970: 27-year-old Jimi Hendrix dies of asphyxiation at St. Mary Abbots Hospital in London. He appears to have aspirated vomit after taking an overdose of barbiturates, presumably his girlfriend’s sleeping pills.

September 18, 1988: Poet/filmmaker Kathleen Collins dies of breast cancer at the age of 46.

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What was Diane Meyer grateful for on September 18, 2024?

https://bottlecap.press/products/ordinarygratitude

banana bread
all of my friends
art history class
speaking up!
calling mom
walks
letting myself enjoy sweet coffee

Almanac for September 17th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 17th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-17th-C0C3Z4UF9

Happy 1-year book anniversary to Morality Without God.

Bummer September 17th

September 17, 1925: Frida Kahlo, a medical student at the time, is seriously injured in a bus accident. Her injuries leave her disabled and in chronic pain for the rest of her life. After the accident, she switches her career from medicine to art.

September 17, 1959: University of Southern California student Richard Swanson dies a few hours after choking on a piece of raw liver as part of a Kappa Sigma fraternity hazing ritual. When paramedics arrive, the other Kappa Sigma don’t tell them about the choking incident, and instead pretend that Swanson has had a seizure.

September 17, 1963: 58 agricultural workers in the Salinas Valley in California board a truck to return to the migrant camp where they’re temporarily staying during the harvest season. The truck approached an unmarked railroad crossing, where it was struck by a freight train traveling over 60 miles per hour. Of the 32 workers who are killed, nine die on the way to the hospital; the rest are pronounced dead at the scene. The driver and everyone aboard the train are uninjured.