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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Almanac for April 19th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 19th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-19-The-Story-of-an-Hour-W7W21E0SSE

Beatles Trivia
April 19, 1998, South Bend: Mom, Stephanie, and I saw City of Angels at University Park Mall. I liked it because it was a celebration of why it’s good to be human. Afterward we went to Denny’s and had pie and coffee. Later, sitting in my room reading a People magazine with Tammy Wynette on the cover, I heard on the radio that Linda McCartney had died. She and Paul had been together for the past 30 years. 

Bummer April 19th

April 19, 1824: George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron, dies of malaria while fighting in Greece for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. He is 36 years old.

April 19, 1995: The federal government building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is destroyed by a terrorist truck bomb. White supremacist domestic terrorists destroy the building in retaliation for incidents in which civilians were wrongly killed by the federal government. An estimated 168 people are killed and almost 700 more are injured. Among the dead are six children who were in day care inside the building.

April 19, 2000: Ten-year-old Candace Newmaker dies of suffocation after taking part in a “rebirthing session” initiated by her adoptive mother Jeane. Candace reportedly had behavior problems while adjusting to being removed from the home of her biological parents, entering foster care, and being adopted. A psychologist in her home state of North Carolina referred Jeane Newmaker to unlicensed Colorado therapist Connell Watkins, who worked with co-therapist Julie Ponder.

Watkins and Ponder wrapped Candace in a flannel sheet and covered her with pillows, then told her to free herself to simulate the experience of being born. They hoped Candace would then start to bond with Jeane as a newborn baby would naturally born with its biological birthing parent, based on the theory of reactive attachment disorder. Candace complained that she couldn’t breathe and vomited inside the wrappings, but the therapists did not offer any help in releasing her. After Jeane left the room, Ponder releases Candace, who is not breathing and unresponsive. Candace is taken to a hospital in Denver, where she dies on the 19th without ever regaining consciousness. 

Watkins and Ponder are sentenced to 16 years in prison for child abuse; Jeane pleads guilty to a lesser charge and receives a 4-year suspended sentence, which is later expunged.

Almanac for April 18th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 18th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-18-F1F71E0SHV

French Republican Calendar Day Name (29 Germinal): Blueberry

Bummer April 18th

April 18, 1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake strikes Northern California. About 80% of the city is destroyed. The collapse of so many buildings and subsequent fires are responsible for around 3,000 deaths. Fire chief Dennis T. Sullivan was among the victims of the earthquake, so the interim fire chief requested help from the U.S. military. 

Both psychologist Henry James and writer H.G. Wells (on his first visit to the United States) remarked on the positive attitude and general helpfulness of the survivors in the rebuilding effort.

April 18, 1966: A fire at the Jewish Theological Seminary library in Manhattan destroys 70,000 books. Fortunately, most of these were additional copies of books housed on the ground floor of the library, which was not damaged in the fire. The library’s collection of rare manuscripts is also unharmed.

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Almanac for April 17th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 17th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-17-Hardcover-Bound-2-V7V21E04ML

Bummer April 17th

April 17, 1960: Early rock ‘n roll musician Eddie Cochran dies at the age of 21 from injuries he sustained the previous day in a car accident while touring in England.

April 17, 1987: Comedian Dick Shawn performs a comedy routine at Mandeville Hall on the campus of U.C. San Diego. In the middle of a bit about the end of the world, he collapses face-down on the stage. Audience members assume this is part of the show, even when a stage hand checks on Shawn and asks if a doctor is present. Only when the paramedics arrive does the audience finally realize that Shawn has died on stage.

April 17, 1998: Linda McCartney dies of breast cancer that has spread to her liver. She’s 56 years old.

April 17, 2016: Joan Laurer, the professional wrestler who wrestled under the name Chyna, dies at age 46 of an overdose of prescription medications mixed with alcohol.

April 17, 2018: Engine failure aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 from New York City to Dallas causes explosive depressurization of the cabin. Part of the engine cowl breaks off, damaging the fuselage and causing the loss of a cabin window. A passenger seated near the window, Jennifer Riordan, is partially sucked out the window opening before the other passengers are able to pull her back in. The flight makes an emergency landing in Philadelphia. Despite attempts to perform CPR on Riordan, she is pronounced dead at the hospital.