Almanac for May 2nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for May 2nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/May-2nd-Q5Q41EMSFE

French Republican Calendar day name (13 Floréal): wallflower

Bummer May 2nd

May 2, 1536: Anne Boleyn, Queen of England and second wife of Henry VIII, is arrested and charged with incest, witchcraft, adultery, and treason. She’s taken to the Tower of London. These charges are false: Henry’s real reasons for wanting to be rid of Anne include her failure to provide him with a male heir and his desire to court her lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour. 

May 2, 1957: Censured U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy dies of hepatitis at the age of 48 after struggling with severe alcoholism and morphine addiction. 

May 2, 1981: Antiques dealer Jim Williams shoots 21-year-old Danny Hansford at Williams’s historical home, Mercer House (formerly owned by composer Johnny Mercer) in Savannah, Georgia. The lovers had been in an argument; Williams argued the killing was self-defense. After four trials, Williams was acquitted. The homicide is the basis of John Berendt’s book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. 

What was Diane Meyer grateful for on May 2nd, 2024?

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classical music
pasta and wine
do your best!
finishing a book
seeing mom soon
honesty over everything
peanut butter
life is because of, and meant for, learning experiences,
becoming

***

Mother's Day is coming on Sunday, May 10!

Almanac for May 1st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for May 1st: https://ko-fi.com/post/May-1st-O4O71EMO0Z

Mother's Day is May 10th.
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Today's Observance: Beltane

Bummer May 1st

May 1, 1866: Rioting breaks out in Memphis, Tennessee. The violence begins with a shoot-out between Black veterans of the Union Army and the all-white Memphis police. It escalates to mobs of white civilians, with the support and participation of the police, attacking Black neighborhoods. Over the next three days, 46 Black residents and two white residents of Memphis are killed and more than 91 buildings are burned, including all of the city’s Black churches and schools. 

May 1, 1947: 23-year-old Evelyn McHale jumps to her death from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. She lands on her back on top of the roof of a car, her shoes having fallen off her feet, one gloved hand grasping her pearl necklace. Photography student Robert C. Wiles takes a picture of her body where it lies. The photo is published in Time magazine, later reproduced as a print by Andy Warhol, and then recreated by David Bowie in his “Jump They Say” video.

May 1, 2003: A coach bus filled with trade union delegates travels toward QwaQwa, Free State, South Africa, for May Day celebrations. As the driver becomes disoriented in the dark shortly after passing the town of Bethlehem, he apparently turns down an unlit gravel road, unknowingly headed directly toward Sol Plaatje Dam and driving too fast. The bus drives directly into the water and overturns. By the time police arrive the next day, 51 people have drowned. Only 10 people are able to escape the overturned bus and get to safety. 

May 1, 2017: One day after his 70th birthday, jam band pioneer Bruce Hampton gets on stage for a tribute concert called Hampton 70: A Celebration of Col. Bruce Hampton. Members of R.E.M., Widespread Panic, and other well-known bands participate. During the encore, Hampton collapses on stage, as he often does during his shows. The tribute band onstage continues to play for several minutes before anyone realizes anything is wrong. Hampton is then taken to a nearby hospital, where he dies of a massive heart attack.

Almanac for April 30th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 30th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-30-W7W11EMNZ8

Today's Observance: Walpurgisnacht

Bummer April 30th

April 30, 1987: American astronomer Marc Aaronson is accidentally killed while working at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Aaronson is standing on the ladder leading up the telescope’s rotating dome when the dome’s hatch swings toward him and crushes him.

April 30, 1994: Take Asai, also known as Tahkonanna, dies at age 92. She was the last known fluent native speaker of the Sakhalin Ainu language.

***

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Almanac for April 29th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 29th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-29-X8X01EMNYQ

Today's Observance: Bruno Mars was surprised to see Pete Wentz
Artist Birthday: Uma Thurman
Uma Thurman at Dorothy Surrenders: https://dorothysurrenders.blogspot.com/search/label/Uma%20Thurman

Bummer April 29th

April 29, 1986: A fire at the Los Angeles Public Library’s Central Library destroys 400,000 books and other circulating materials. 

Almanac for April 28th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 28th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-28-K3K61EMNXS

Artist Birthday: Harper Lee

I'm not obsessed with Harper Lee. Shut up.

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Terry Pratchett's birthday

Now available on Spotify: Mathilda, a tragic novella by Mary Shelley

Bummer April 28th

April 28, 1988: Aloha Airlines Flight 243 experiences an explosive decompression during a flight between Hilo and Honolulu International Airports. A section of the left side of the jet’s roof shears off. Flight attendant C.B. Lansing is swept out of the aircraft; her body is never recovered. Eight people are seriously injured, although the aircraft is able to land safely on a runway in Maui. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigates the incident and determines that metal fatigue, exacerbated by the humid, salty Hawaiian climate, is the likely cause.

April 28, 1996: A 25-year-old man in Port Arthur, Tasmania (Lutruwita), Australia, sits down at the Broad Arrow Café. He eats a meal, then points a rifle at the table next to his and kills two tourists from Malaysia. Within the next 15 seconds he has fired 17 shots, killing 12 people and wounding ten. The man then proceeds to a gift shop nearby, where he kills eight more people and wounds two more. He kills seven more people, including a 3-year-old and a 6-year-old, in the parking lot. He then kills four occupants of a car and steals the car. At a service station, he kills a woman and locks her boyfriend inside the trunk of his car. The boyfriend’s body is found the next day, along with the bodies of a husband and wife with whom the perpetrator has had an argument. 

In all 35 people die in Australia’s worst incident of gun violence. Although the citizens of Tasmania are known as generally supportive of gun ownership rights, this appalling incident convinced many Australians to participate in the subsequent voluntary gun buy-back program. Australia also strengthened its gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre. The perpetrator is sentenced to life in prison.

Almanac for April 27th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for April 27th: https://ko-fi.com/post/April-27-E1E81EMNWW

Bummer April 27th

April 27, 1932: Poet Hart Crane, age 32, dies by suicide by drowning in the Gulf of Mexico. He jumps off the steam ship on which he’s traveling from Mexico to New York. Crane is believed to be heavily intoxicated when he jumps and had recently been badly beaten when he made advances on a male crew member. His body is never recovered.

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April 27, 2000: Broadway actress and dance music singer Vicki Sue Robinson dies of cancer at the age of 45.

Almanac for April 26th

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

Free shipping continues through today at Bookshop.org!

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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.