Almanac for March 12th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 12th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-12-Hey-Jack-Kerouac-X8X4JF8B4

Bummer March 12th

March 12, 1928: The St. Francis Dam (approximately 10 miles from modern Santa Clarita, California) catastrophically fails at 11:57 p.m., flooding Los Angeles County’s San Francisquito Canyon. The arch-gravity dam, a new type of design at the time, failed so completely that very little of it was left standing after the flood wave emptied it of its water content. The 120-foot-high flood wave travels 18 miles an hour until it merges with the Santa Clara riverbed, flooding it. The flooded Santa Clara River Valley washes away the town of Castaic Junction. Ultimately it flows into the Pacific Ocean.

More than 450 people are estimated to have been killed in this disaster. Many bodies were never recovered, as they were washed out to sea.

March 12, 1993: 257 people die and about 1,400 people are injured by a series of coordinated bombings in Mumbai, India. 

March 12, 2003: State University of New York at Plattsburgh student Walter Dean Jennings dies of water intoxication after being encouraged to drink pitcher after pitcher of water as part of a Psi Epsilon Chi fraternity hazing. 

March 12, 2015: Author Terry Pratchett dies of Alzheimer’s disease.

Almanac for March 11th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 11th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-11-F1F4JEDC0

March 10, 1926 Milwaukee Leader

Beatles Trivia
March 11, 1997: Paul McCartney becomes Sir Paul McCartney when he is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

Bummer March 11th

March 11, 1888: The Great White Hurricane, or Great Blizzard of 1888, begins on the East Coast of the United States. The storm kills an estimated 400 people.

March 11, 1918: Private Albert Gitchell, stationed in the U.S. Army at Fort Riley, Kansas, is discovered to have the first-recorded case of influenza in what becomes the influenza pandemic of 1918. An estimated 50 million to 100 million people die of influenza during the pandemic worldwide.

March 11, 1931: Film director F.W. Murnau, who directed Nosferatu (1922), dies from injuries he sustained the previous day when he is thrown from a car in which he is a passenger.

March 11, 1978: French singer/songwriter/dancer Claude François succumbs to electrocution injuries in the hospital a short time after he receives a severe shock while trying to change a lightbulb in his bathroom. He’s 39 years old.

March 11, 2004: A series of coordinated bombings of commuter train cars kills 191 people in Madrid, Spain. The terrorism was planned in retaliation for Spain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. 

March 11, 2020: The World Health Organization declares COVID-19 a pandemic. 

Almanac for March 10th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 10th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-10-Harriet-Tubman-Sojourner-Truth-P5P6JD9H1

Bummer March 10th

March 10, 1693: Lydia Dustin dies in prison while awaiting trial, having been accused of witchcraft in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

March 10, 1906: 1,099 miners die in the Courrières mine disaster in Northern France when coal dust in the mine ignites, causing an explosion. Only 14 people survive. 

March 10, 1928: Walter Collins Jr., age nine, goes to the movies and never comes home. His mother, Christine, reports him missing. Los Angeles police try to convince Christine that a boy named Arthur Hutchens, Jr. is Walter, but Christine refuses to accept this, and Hutchens admits he ran away from his home in Chicago and claimed to be Walter because he thought the idea of living near Hollywood seemed exciting. 

Walter is never positively identified, but it’s believed he may have fallen victim to serial killer Gordon Stewart Northcott, the “Wineville Chicken Coop” murderer who kept his young male victims in chicken cages.

March 10, 1948: Zelda Fitzgerald, by then the widow of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, has checked herself into Highland Hospital in what is now Montford Area Historic District in Asheville, North Carolina for treatment of her severe depression. She is awaiting an electroconvulsive therapy treatment in a locked room when a fire breaks out in the hospital kitchen. With no way to escape the locked room, she is killed by the fire.

March 10, 1973: Irene Ryan, the Old Hollywood actress best remembered as “Granny” on The Beverly Hillbillies, performs in the Stephen Schwartz musical Pippin. A heavy smoker, Ryan suffers an apparent stroke on the Broadway stage. She is quickly diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and will die on the 26th of April of that year.

March 10, 2010: Canadian actor Corey Haim, age 38, dies of pulmonary edema and heart disease after suffering from flu-like symptoms for two days. Authorities first suspect he’s died of an overdose of prescription medications. However, his cause of death is ruled to be natural, if perhaps indirectly related to his chronic issues with alcohol and drug abuse. 

Almanac for March 9th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 9th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-9-L3L2JCCD7

Bummer March 9th

March 9, 1911: The DuPont blasting powder plants explodes, destroying much of the town of Point Prairie, Wisconsin. Since the plant was closed at the time of the explosion, only three DuPont employees are killed. A fourth person, named Alice Finch, is said to have “dropped dead of fright.” Hundreds of Point Prairie residents are injured, including one man who loses an eye from flying glass and another whose ear is severed by flying glass.

March 9, 1989: 42-year-old photographer Robert Mapplethorpe dies of AIDS-related illness at a Boston hospital.

March 9, 1997: Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G., is murdered while sitting in a truck leaving a party in Los Angeles. Struck by four bullets, including one that hits his heart, the 24-year-old rapper dies at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Almanac for March 8th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 8th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-8-International-Womens-Day-I2I5JBRLZ

Today's Observance: International Women's Day

Bummer March 8th

March 8, 1941: American author Sherwood Anderson dies of peritonitis in Colón, Panama. He and his wife Eleanor, who were frequent travelers, had been taking a cruise to South America when Anderson began having abdominal discomfort. An autopsy revealed internal injuries caused by swallowing a toothpick.

March 8, 1944: Swedish tenor Aroldo Lindi dies during a performance of Pagliacci at San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House, during the aria “Vesti la Giubba.”

March 8, 1989: Iran breaks diplomatic ties with the U.K. since the U.K. will not denounce Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses.

In an unrelated incident on the same day, in Columbia, South Carolina, death row inmate Michael Godwin, age 28, accidentally electrocutes himself while sitting on his prison cell’s metal toilet. He bites into the wiring of a pair of earphones, which shock him until he dies. Had his death sentence been carried out, he would have been executed by electrocution.

March 8, 1994: Radio dj Jack Spector suffers a heart attack and collapses while on the air. His co-workers notice a long silence after the song “I’m In the Mood for Love” by Louis Prima ends, rush into the dj booth, and find Spector unresponsive. He is pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

March 8, 2004: Character actor Robert Pastorelli, age 49, is found dead in his Hollywood home of a morphine overdose. It’s unclear whether the manner of death was accident or suicide. Pastorelli had recently learned he could be criminally charged related to the death of his girlfriend Charemon Jonovich, who died of a gunshot wound at the actor’s home in 1999.

On the same day, in Patchogue, New York, members of Freemason unofficial subgroup Fellowcrafts Club accidentally shoot and kill initiate William James during a hazing ritual. They sat James in a chair and lined up cans on his head. One man was supposed to shoot blanks out of a gun while another man knocked the cans off James’s head, tricking him into thinking they were shooting the cans. Somehow, the shooter confuses the gun with blanks for a gun with real bullets in it.

Almanac for March 7th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 7th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-7-S6S2JAOV1

Artist Birthday: Amanda Gorman

Bummer March 7th

March 7, 1965: Civil rights protestors marching in a peaceful protest from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama are brutally beaten and tear gassed by Alabama state troopers and members of the county posse in what becomes known as Bloody Sunday. Amelia Boynton, one of the organizers of the peaceful protest, was beaten unconscious. 14-year-old Lynda Blackmon Lowery required 35 stitches for injuries to her head. Future U.S. Representative John Lewis was hit in the back of the head with a billy club and suffered a skull fracture.

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Almanac for March 6th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 6th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-6-The-Dude-Abides-T6T7J9K5M

Bummer March 6th

March 6, 2003: Air Algérie Flight 6289 crashes shortly after takeoff from Aguenar – Hadj Bey Akhamok Airport in Tamanrasset, Algeria. The cause of the crash was engine failure, followed by the failure of the crew to react appropriately to the emergency. 102 of the 103 people aboard are killed. The sole survivor, a 28-year-old Algerian man, is not wearing his seatbelt at the time of the crash and is ejected from the plane. He suffers non-life-threatening injuries.

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