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.

Almanac for September 28

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 28th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-28-Michaelmas-Eve-A0A413OBIJ

Bummer September 28th

September 28, 1919: A large group of young white residents of Omaha, Nebraska sets off toward the courthouse, where a Black suspect named Will Brown is being held on a rape charge. The crowd grows in number as it progresses and also manages to convince the police department, initially ordered to disperse the mob, that the mob posed no significant threat. 

Within three hours, however, the white mob begins attacking police officers. Police turn fire hoses on them in an attempt to disperse the mob, but the effort fails and the white mob sets the courthouse on fire. They murder Brown and attempt to hang the mayor, although the mayor survives. The rioting lasts into the early morning hours of September 29th, by which time Brown and two white rioters are dead and numerous police officers and Black civilians are injured. 

September 28, 1991: Musician Miles Davis is taken off life support after suffering a stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage while being treated for pneumonia in a Santa Monica, California hospital. He is 65 years old.

September 28, 2022: Rapper Coolio (Artis Leon Ivey Jr.) is found unresponsive on the bathroom floor of his friend’s house in Los Angeles. Paramedics attempt to revive him but are unsuccessful. His cause of death appears to be cardiac arrest. He is 59 years old.

Almanac for September 27th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 27th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-27-Rosetta-Stone-V7V713OABL

Beatles Trivia: September 27, 1967: George Martin oversees the recording of the orchestral score of The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus.” The Mike Sammes Singers record their backing vocals for the track.

https://amzn.to/4yXSKZv

Bummer September 27th

September 27, 1986: Metallica bassist Clifford (Cliff) Burton dies in a tour bus accident in Sweden. The bus skids off the road while members of the band are sleeping in their bunks. Burton is thrown out of his bunk and through the window; the bus falls on top of him.

September 27, 2010: Sally Menke, a film editor who often collaborated with Quentin Tarantino, dies of a heat-related illness while walking her dog in 113 °F weather in Los Angeles. Menke is 56 years old. Her body is found the next day with the dog, unharmed, sitting beside it.

Tarantino (with Diane Kruger) in 2010. Public domain image by Sgt. Michael Connors

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Sept. 27, 2025: I upload this video about Sandy Allen, an Indiana native who was once the tallest woman in the world.

Almanac for September 26th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 26th: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-26-County-Fair-Y8Y813NUVX

Artist Birthday: George Gershwin

The Gershwin Brothers' first big hit musical, from the January 12, 1926 San Antonio (TX) Light

French Republican Calendar day name (5 Vendémiaire): Horse

Beatles Trivia
September 26, 1969: The Beatles release Abbey Road.

Bummer September 26th

September 26, 1687: The Greek Parthenon is partially destroyed when munitions stored there by Turkish forces occupying Athens are ignited by a missile fired by Venetian troops.

September 26, 1937: Blues musician Bessie Smith dies of traumatic injuries she suffers in a car accident. She was the passenger in a car driven by her boyfriend Richard Morgan. Morgan, driving along U.S. Route 61 toward Clarksdale, Mississippi, misjudges the speed of a truck he’s coming up on and swerves at the last moment to avoid rear-ending the truck but sideswipes it instead. Since Smith is in the passenger seat and possibly has her hand and/or forearm sticking out of the passenger-side window, she sustains severe crush injuries to the right side of her body and a partially amputated arm. Surgeons at Clarksdale’s African-American hospital surgically amputate Smith’s arm. She never regains consciousness following surgery.

September 26, 1957: One day after being bitten by a boomslang snake at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, herpetologist Karl Patterson Schmidt dies of the effects of the venom. Schmidt is offered medical treatment, but refuses because he wants to document the effects of the venom on the human body before he dies.

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Sept. 26, 2025: I upload this video: