Almanac for February 18th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 18th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-18-Birthday-of-Three-Amazing-Women-Artis-B0B21AZFBT

Today's Observance: Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot links:

Everand (Scribd): https://www.everand.com/audiobook/982040492/Ash-Wednesday

Kobo, Walmart: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/ash-wednesday-25

Spotify: 

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Bloody Mary

Beatles Trivia

February 18, 1933: Yoko Ono is born.

“I saw nothing was permanent. You don’t want to possess anything that is dear to you because you might lose it.” - Yoko Ono

February 18, 1971: For her 38th birthday, John Lennon Ono gifts his wife a snow-white Steinway piano.

Bummer February 18th

February 18, 1718: French-born English writer Peter Anthony Motteux dies of apparent autoerotic asphyxiation inside a brothel, although the circumstances of his death were considered suspicious at the time. This may be the oldest recorded case of autoerotic asphyxiation.

February 18, 1967: J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist who witnessed the detonation of the world’s first nuclear weapon near Socorro, New Mexico, dies of throat cancer. He has undergone surgery and chemotherapy, neither of which has been successful.

February 18, 2001: On the final turn of the final lap of the Daytona 500, NASCAR driver Dale Earnhart’s car makes contact with Sterling Marlin’s car. Earnhart loses control, contacting Ken Schrader’s car while trying to right himself. After crossing in front of Schrader’s vehicle, Earnhart’s car collided head-on with the retaining wall at approximately 160 miles per hour.

Although attempts were made to revive him at the hospital, Earnhart died upon impact. He suffered massive blunt force trauma injuries, including a basilar skull fracture. Basilar skull fractures aren’t necessarily fatal, but they are very often fatal in severe cases. 

February 18, 2010: 53-year-old Andrew Joseph Stack III, a software engineering consultant, deliberately flies his Piper PA-28 Cherokee light aircraft into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and IRS manager Vernon Hunter. Stack, who had filed for bankruptcy and was under investigation by the IRS for failing to report income, wrote in a suicide note that he wanted to extract his “pound of flesh” from the IRS.

Almanac for February 17th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 17th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-17-Michael-Jordan-S6S71AOSGI

Today's Observance: Mardi Gras/Lunar New Year. Happy year of the Fire Horse!

Bummer February 17th

February 17, 1600: The Roman Catholic Church burns philosopher Giordano Bruno at the stake for heresy for his insistence that each star is the sun of its own galaxy and that the Earth is not the center of the universe, which has no center.

February 17, 1673: French playwright Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, who wrote under the pen name Molière, suffers a tuberculosis-induced pulmonary embolism while performing in his own play The Invalid. He finished out the show, but was carried immediately home afterward, where he died.

February 17, 2003: At the E2 Night Club in Chicago, Illinois, a fight breaks out, and a security guard uses pepper spray in the attempt to break up the fight. A stampede to exit the club follows, and 21 people are killed in the crowd crush.

February 17, 2010: Three Tesla Motors employees are killed when their Cessna 310 aircraft crashes into a residential neighborhood in East Palo Alto, California. They had taken off from Palo Alto Airport and were headed for the Tesla design studio in Hawthorne, California. Foggy weather is thought to have been a factor.

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And now, for something completely different, an affiliate link to a Gumroad creative product you may enjoy: The Abduction audiobook

If my words are not being censored by the Trump Regime, you may find my books here on Gumroad. https://creativista668.gumroad.com/

Almanac for February 16

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 16th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-16-Happy-Anniversary-Mom-and-Dad-B0B41AOK5C

Today's Observance: President's Day

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Geordi La Forge (who will be born on this day in 2335)

Bummer February 16th

February 16, 1962: Floods in West Germany kill 315 people and leave approximately 60,000 people homeless.

February 16, 1990: 31-year-old artist Keith Haring dies of complications of AIDS.

This is an affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4iDxCyS

February 16, 2020: Voice actor Jason Davis dies at the age of 35 from an accidental fentanyl overdose.

Out today:

This is an affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4rQFsug

Almanac for February 15th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 15th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/February-15-Lupercalia-M4M71AOJIF

Today's Observance: Lupercalia
Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Lupercalia

Bummer February 15th 

February 15, 1933: Anarchist Guiseppe Zangara attempts to assassinate president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt as Roosevelt delivers a speech in Miami. Armed with a revolver and standing on a folding chair, Zangara misses Roosevelt and shoots Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago. Cermak tells Roosevelt, “I’m glad it was me instead of you” and dies in the hospital 19 days later. Zangara is tried, convicted, and executed by electric chair.

May the memory of Anton Cermak be a blessing. Photo by Stephen Hogan from Chicago, United States. Creative Commons licensing. This is Stephen's Chicago crime scene blog.

February 15, 1965: Nat King Cole, age 45, dies of lung cancer.

February 15, 1998: 89-year-old war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, struggling with ovarian and liver cancer and failing eyesight, chooses to end her own life by swallowing cyanide.

February 15, 2014: 42-year-old Pentecostal pastor Jamie Coots, who had been featured in tv programs for his handling of poisonous snakes during religious services, dies after being bitten on the hand by a rattlesnake during services in Middlesboro, Kentucky. Although paramedics arrived in time to treat him, Coots’s family refused the treatment, saying that it was against his religion.

Almanac for February 14th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 14th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-14-Valentine-I2I61AOJG5

The Milwaukee Leader, February 14, 1926

Today's Observance: Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day at Once Upon a Screen blog

This is an affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3ZAIPJG

Bummer February 14th

February 14, 1779: Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief of Hawaii, stabs Captain James Cook to death while Cook attempts to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu and hold him for ransom. In the ensuing struggle, an unrecorded number of Hawaiians and four of Cook’s men are also killed.

February 14, 1929: In what becomes known as the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, Al Capone’s gangsters line up seven members of Bugs Moran’s rival gang and machine gun them to death. Police arrive in time to find one survivor, Frank Gusenberg, suffering from 14 bullet wounds. They ask Gusenberg to name his killer, but Gusenberg refuses before he succumbs to his injuries.

February 14, 1981: A fire at the Stardust Disco in Dublin, Ireland, kills 48 people.

February 14, 1988: A fire that begins in the newspaper room of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad destroys an estimated 300,000 books.

February 14, 1989: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issues a pronouncement urging faithful Muslims to assassinate Salman Rushdie. Rushdie’s magical realist novel The Satanic Verses depicts a fictional version of the Prophet Mohammad as a character, which the Ayatollah considers blasphemous.

February 14, 1994: Southeast Missouri State University student Michael Davis dies of bleeding on the brain after a brutal beating that served as an initiation ritual for the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.

Almanac for February 13th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 13th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-13-To-morrow-is-Saint-Valentines-day-S6S01AOJBZ

Friday the 13th at Aurora's Gin Joint blog: https://aurorasginjoint.com/2017/01/13/friday-foto-follies-superstitions/

Bummer February 13th

February 13, 1925: On or around this date, cave explorer Floyd Collins dies of exposure after becoming trapped in a narrow cave passage with a 26-pound rock crushing one of his legs. He has entered the cave system in Kentucky, now part of Mammoth Cave National Park, on January 30th. Collins’ brother discovers him trapped in the narrow passage on January 31st. Despite rescue attempts, when rescuers reach Collins on February 16th, he appears to have been dead for one or more days. Collins is 37 years old.

San Antonio (Texas) Light, November 13, 1925
Vernon Dalhart

February 13, 1931: German-American circus acrobat Lillian Leitzel falls to the ground while performing at Valencia Music Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark. The metal brace holding the rigging attached to her harness has snapped and broken away. Leitzel will die of her injuries two days later. 

February 13, 1945: U.S. and U.K. forces drop incendiary bombs on Dresden, Germany, causing fires with the intention of destroying munitions factories in that city. A second round of bombs is dropped in the early hours of February 14th, calculated to hamper the efforts of rescuers on the scene of the first round of bombings and fires. It’s estimated that between 22,000 and 25,000 Germans are killed, almost all of them civilians.

February 13, 1964: 22-year-old Ken Hubbs, who plays second base for the Chicago Cubs in the ‘63 season, is afraid of flying. To help himself get over his fear, he takes flying lessons and earns his pilot’s license in January 1964. The following month, the private plane he’s piloting near Provo, Utah, crashes, killing Hubbs.

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And now, for something completely different, an affiliate link to a Gumroad creative product you may enjoy: The Abandoned Realm audiobook

If my words are not being censored by the Trump Regime, you may find my books here on Gumroad. https://creativista668.gumroad.com/

Almanac for February 12th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 12th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-12-Lincoln-and-Darwin-Share-a-Birthdate-N4N31AOJ8G

Beatles Trivia

February 12, 1964: The Beatles perform a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall.
Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Charles Darwin's birthday

Bummer February 12th

February 12, 1976: Rebel Without a Cause actor Sal Mineo is stabbed to death by an assailant who doesn’t know who he is and chooses him at random in an attempted robbery. The assailant is sentenced to 57 years in prison for the fatal stabbing and for a string of burglaries.

February 12, 1980: Two days after 34-year-old Patricia Frazier of Texas saw a CBS network TV broadcast of the movie The Exorcist, Frazier kills her 4-year-old daughter Khunji and cuts out her heart. According to Dr. Leon Morris, a psychologist who spoke with Frazier after the crime, Frazier believed Khunji was possessed by demons and trying to harm her (Patricia). A jury of her peers finds Patricia Frazier not guilty by reason of insanity.