Almanac for April 26th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 26th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-26-F2F51EMNVT

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Beatles Trivia
Sunday, April 26, 1998, St. Mary’s College: I spent most of the day writing papers and working on a Sculpture project. In the evening I saw the 200th Simpsons episode, “Trash of the Titans” (production code 5F09). Bart and Homer crashed a U2 concert; best guest voices ever. The episode was dedicated to another previous guest voice, Linda McCartney.

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Ludwig Wittgenstein

Bummer April 26th

April 26, 1865: John Wilkes Booth dies of a gunshot wound inflicted in the attempt to capture him.

April 26, 1909: Major League baseball catcher Michael “Doc” Powers dies of peritonitis. On April 12th he’d collided with the wall in Shibe Park in Philadelphia, sustaining internal injuries. His peritonitis resulted from one of three surgeries he endured in attempts to repair his injuries.

April 26, 1937: Spanish dictator Francisco Franco coordinates with Adolph Hitler to have the Luftwaffe bomb the Basque town of Guernica. Franco knew Guernica to be a stronghold of his political opponents the Republicans. Between 400 and 1,600 civilians are killed in the bombing.

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April 26, 1942: An estimated 1,500 miners lose their lives in the Benxihu (Honkeiko) Colliery in Liaoning province, China, when coal dust ignites. The Japanese, who operated the mine at the time, are believed to have sealed the mine before it was completely evacuated, needlessly adding to the death toll. Only 31 of the dead were Japanese. Most of the those killed didn’t die from the explosion, but from carbon monoxide poisoning after the Japanese shut off the ventilation system.

April 26, 1986: Lucille Ball dies of an aortic rupture at the age of 77. 

On the same day, the Chernobyl Power Plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, experiences a nuclear meltdown that leads to a massive fire throughout the plant. The radioactive fallout in the 19-mile radius around the plant is expected to remain too contaminated for human habitation for 20,000 years.

April 26, 2006: A van carrying nine students and a staff member from Evangelical Christian school Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, is traveling along I-69 when it collides with a tractor trailer. Five people inside the van died at the scene. A survivor of the crash is initially identified as Laura van Ryn. 

Unable to communicate and suffering from head trauma, the young woman is cared for in the hospital by Laura van Ryn’s family. Five weeks after the crash, the survivor was able to identify herself as Whitney Cerak. Laura van Ryn had been among those killed in the crash and was given a burial by Cerak’s family and buried under Cerak’s name. 

Almanac for April 25th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 25th - https://ko-fi.com/post/April-25-St-Marks-Day-D1D41EHK3H

Today's Observances: St. Mark's Day, Independent Bookstore Day

Artist Birthday: Ella Fitzgerald

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Walter de la Mare

Bummer April 25th

April 25, 1995: Actress, dancer, and singer Ginger Rogers dies at age 83 of natural causes in Rancho Mirage in the Coachella Valley in California.

April 25, 2002: Rapper Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes is driving an SUV in La Cieba, Honduras, where she’s filming a documentary while on a spiritual retreat with her two siblings. She swerves to avoid an oncoming vehicle, only to swerve into the path of another vehicle, causing her to swerve sharply to the left. She strikes two trees, throwing her and three passengers from the SUV. Lopes, who is only 30 years old, dies instantly of severe head trauma. Her passengers are injured, but survive.

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Almanac for April 24th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 24th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-24-Barbra-M4M61E8X0V

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Halley's Comet

Artist Birthday: Barbra Streisand
Yentl post by Movies of the 80s
Barbra Streisand at Dorothy Surrenders

Bummer April 24th

April 24, 1915: About 250 Armenian intellectuals and political leaders are arrested in then-Constantinople, Turkey, in the beginning of what will become known as the Armenian Genocide. Those arrested on this day are deported to Ankara, where they’re eventually killed. The Armenian Genocide will last nine years.

April 24, 1954: French Formula One driver Guy Mairesse is killed during practice when his vehicle collides with a wall.

April 24, 1967: Soviet test pilot Vladimir Komarov is killed when Soyuz 1 crashes into the Earth upon reentry, its parachute having failed to deploy. Komarov’s death is the first fatality due to space flight.

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Almanac for April 23rd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 23rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-23-St-Georges-Day-World-Book-Day-A0A21E8VQE

Today's Observance: St. George's Day/Diada di Sant Jordi
Artist Birthday: William Shakespeare
French Republican Calendar day name (4 Floréal): hawthorn

Bummer April 23rd

April 23, 1902: Mount Pelée on the Caribbean island of Martinique begins erupting. By the 5th of May, the erupting volcano has triggered a mudslide that buries about 150 people who work in a sugar mill. On the 8th of May, the town of Saint-Pierre is destroyed, killing an estimated 28,000 people.

April 23, 1940: More than 200 people perish at the Rhythm Night Club when it catches fire in Natchez, Mississippi. The night club, which was originally built as a blacksmith’s shop, had only one exit and most of its windows were nailed shut.

April 23, 1974: 59-year-old Carl Barnett conducts Bach’s Come, Sweet Death at Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and dies of heart attack during the performance.

April 23, 2017: A U.S. Border Patrol agent fires a bullet at a target containing the explosive Tannerite as part of a gender reveal party in Arizona. (The unborn child was a boy.) The explosion sparks a fire, and although the agent immediately calls authorities, firefighters are unable to contain the blaze. It grows to become known as the Sawmill Fire, which burns 46,991 acres of Arizona and costs more than $8 million. The Border Patrol agent is fined $220,000 and sentenced to five years of probation for starting a fire without a permit.

Almanac for April 22nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 22nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-22-Happy-Earth-Day-to-You-B0B31E8UU2

Today's Observance: Earth Day

Bummer April 22nd

April 22, 1915: 27-year-old poet Rupert Brooks dies of sepsis due to wounds he received fighting for the British Royal Navy during the First World War.

April 22, 1987: 52-year-old Ruthie Mae McCoy, who lives in the Grace Abbott Homes public housing project in Chicago, called the police to report that, “...some people next door are totally tearing this down, you know–” When the dispatcher pressed her for clarification, McCoy said, “Yeah, they throwed the cabinet down...I’m in the projects, I’m on the other side. You can reach—can reach my bathroom, they want to come through the bathroom.” 

What the dispatcher didn’t know was that in the Grace Abbott Homes, the contractors who built the building had left the apartments’ back-to-back bathrooms connected by a narrow tunnel, which had made access easier for the plumbers. Neighborhood residents intent on burglary had discovered that by removing the bathroom mirror of one apartment, they could crawl through the narrow tunnel and reach the bathroom of the apartment on the opposite side.

This is what happened to McCoy: would-be burglars came through the space where her bathroom mirror had been and shot her to death. A second 911 call from a neighbor reported the sound of gunshots coming from McCoy’s apartment. Police knocked on McCoy’s door that night, but when they received no answer, they left without entering the apartment. Apparently they were unwilling to break down the door due to the prospect of being sued. 

McCoy’s lifeless body is found the next day; she has been shot four times. The tragic story of urban neglect and the intruders who entered the apartment through a bathroom mirror inspired the movie Candyman. 

April 22, 1992: An estimated 252 to 1,000 people die in a series of explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico. Gasoline fumes enter the sewer and water systems, but the city’s mayor declines to evacuate the affected area under the mistaken belief that the chances of explosion are low.

April 22, 2012: Brazilian actor Tiago Klimeck is taken off life support and dies. He has been in a coma since accidentally hanging himself while performing as Judas Iscariot in an Easter passion play in Itarare, Brazil. Klimeck is 27 years old. He may have accidentally gotten some of his clothes tangled in the safety harness meant to give him the illusion of hanging by his neck.

April 22, 2000: Playing Judas in an Easter play in Rome, Renato Di Paolo dies by accidental hanging. His death is caught on film by a member of the audience.

April 22, 2021: 57-year-old Gregory Jacobs, the musician who rapped under the name Shock G and other aliases, dies of an apparently accidental overdose of fentanyl, alcohol, and methamphetamine. 

Almanac for April 21st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 21st: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-21-Charlotte-Bronte-P5P41E8UA7

Artist Birthday: Charlotte Brontë

Oh, Toby Stephens as Mr. Rochester, you rascal.

Bummer April 21st

April 21, 1910: Mark Twain dies in Redding, Connecticut, as Jill Badonsky writes in The Awe-manac, “just one day after Halley’s Comet’s perihelion.” The author born Samuel Langhorne Clemens is quoted as having said, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year and I expect to go out with it.”

April 21, 1978: English folk-rock singer Sandy (Alexandria) Denny dies at age 31 from head injuries sustained from a fall down some stairs at her home. Denny, who had bipolar disorder, was known to use falls as a form of self-harm and had sustained a previous head injury from another fall down the stairs. Denny was being treated for headaches with a medication known to mix poorly with alcohol, so it’s unclear if Denny’s ultimate fall was an act of self-harm or an accident precipitated by mixing her medication with alcohol. 

April 21, 2016: The musician who performs as Prince (Prince Rogers Nelson) is found dead in an elevator inside his home. He has apparently passed away from taking pills of the opioid medication hydrocodone, to which he was addicted, which were counterfeit and laced with fentanyl. He is 57 years old.

On the same day, true crime writer Michelle McNamara dies in her sleep of an accidental overdose of street drugs and prescription medication. McNamara’s husband, actor Patton Oswalt, has acknowledged that McNamara was addicted to opioids. Her health condition was caused, in part, by her harrowing research on her book I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer. The book tells the story of a serial rapist and murderer who was not caught until 2018, two years after McNamara’s death.

Almanac for April 20th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 20th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-20-2002-A0A71E8OZ6

Bummer April 20th

April 20, 2010: Eleven workers are killed and a large-scale environmental disaster unfolds when the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform explodes. On September 4, 2014, the BP corporation who contracted the work on the rig was found to be legally negligent in the incident.

April 20, 2013: Virginia State University students Marvell Edmondson and Jauwan Holmes drown in the Appomattox River while taking part in a fraternity hazing event held by the Men of Honor, a local, unsanctioned fraternity. Five others are rescued from the river. Fraternity members plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter and hazing.

April 20, 2016: The first of an eventual 33 deaths resulting from the intentional poisoning of laddu, a baked sweet, occurs in the Layyah District of Punjab, Pakistan. The laddu was purchased at a shop belonging to a pair of brothers. The brothers had an argument, and one added the pesticide chlorfenapyr to the sweets mixture to spite his brother. Celebrants at a party for a baby born on April 17th ate the laddu and 33 of them died, including the baby’s father and five children.

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