Almanac for August 19

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 19: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-19-B0B711PZ48

Artist Birthday: Veronica Roth

Bummer August 19

August 19, 1929: Aviator Marvel Crosson dies at the age of 29 in an airplane crash. She is competing in the Women’s Air Derby when her aircraft apparently has trouble over the Arizona desert. When her body is found, it appears that her parachute has been released, but not deployed, perhaps meaning that she attempted to jump from the plane while too low to the ground for the parachute to help her.

August 19, 1936: According to LitHub, “Federico García Lorca—the Spanish avant-garde poet, playwright, and ardent socialist—was shot and killed by Nationalist militia before being buried in an unmarked mass grave somewhere outside Granada, where he remains to this day.”

Lorca had predicted his manner of death in his 1929 poem “The Fable And Round of the Three Friends:”

“Then I realized I had been murdered.
They looked for me in cafes, cemeteries and churches
…. but they did not find me.
They never found me?
No. They never found me.”

Almanac for August 18

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 18: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-18-J3J611MUWI

Bummer August 18

August 18, 1992: On or around this date, 24-year-old adventurer Christopher McCandless dies of apparent starvation in the Alaskan wilderness. The story of his nomadic, short life is the basis of the book and film Into the Wild. 

Almanac for August 17

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 17th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-17-Jonathan-Franzen-B0B8NXCEW

Artist Birthday: Geneva "Gene" Stratton-Porter

The July 5, 1926 South Bend (IN) News-Times

Bummer August 17th

August 17, 1896: Bridget Driscoll, the 45-year-old mother of a teenage daughter, has the dubious distinction of being the first person in Great Britain known to have been killed in a automobile-pedestrian collision. Driscoll, walking near the Crystal Palace in London, was struck by Arthur James Edsall, who was taking the vehicle for a test drive.

August 17, 1920: Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman dies of his injuries after having been hit the previous day by a baseball pitched by New York Yankee Carl Mays. The Indians go on to win the 1920 World Series.

August 17, 1966: English race car driver Ken Miles is killed when the Ford Mk IV he is test-driving crashes at over 200 miles per hour.

August 17, 1997: Antony Wheeler, playing Judas in a Greek production of Jesus Christ Superstar, accidentally dies by hanging during the scene in which his character is supposed to hang himself. 

August 17, 2007: Former NBA basketball player Eddie Griffin, intoxicated, drives his car through a railroad warning barrier and collides with a moving train, killing him instantly. Griffin is 25 years old.

* ~ * ~ *

Aug. 17, 2025: I uploaded this video to YouTube:

Almanac for August 16

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 16: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-16-A-Separate-Peace-F1F411MU4J

Public domain

Artist Birthday: Madonna Louise Ciccone

Bummer August 16

August 16, 1920: New York Yankees pitcher Carl Mays throws a fastball at Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians during a baseball game. The pitch strikes Chapman. He dies the following day, becoming the second person in major league baseball history to die from injuries sustained during a Major League game.

August 16, 1948: George Herman “Babe” Ruth dies of a cancerous tumor in his neck near the base of his skull. It’s unclear whether Ruth is ever told that he has cancer. He undergoes chemotherapy, which is still experimental at the time, but his tumor is inoperable, and he dies peacefully in his sleep. 

August 16, 1949: Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell dies in the hospital of injuries she sustained on August 11th. As she and her husband are on their way to see a film version of The Canterbury Tales, Mitchell is struck by a speeding car with an intoxicated driver. The driver is convicted of involuntary manslaughter and serves 11 months in jail.

August 16, 1987: Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes shortly after taking off from Detroit Metropolitan Airport. A power interruption causes a stall warning to go unannounced, so the plane isn’t configured properly for takeoff, which in turn causes its rate of climb to be too slow. The plane’s wing strikes a light pole in the parking lot of car rental business, causing the wing to catch fire and disintegrate. The disabled plane then strikes the roof of an airport building, inverts, and falls onto the road, where it strikes a car and breaks apart.

All six crew members, 148 of the 149 passengers, and two people inside the car crushed by the plane are killed. The sole survivor is a 4-year-old girl who is severely injured. Among the dead are Phoenix Suns center Nick Vanos, age 24, and Vanos’s fiancee.

Saturday, August 16, 2003: Doug McKay has recently taken over ownership of Paradise Amusements park in Idaho. The park had a small roller coaster called the Super Loop 2, and its track needed lubrication. Doug decided to climb onto the ride and lubricate the track, unfortunately, while the ride was still in operation. Some part of his body, possibly his hair, became entangled with a passenger car, which dragged him approximately 40 feet before he dropped from the ride. His body hit the ride, then landed on a metal fence. Doug’s grisly sudden death was witnessed by visitors to the park, many of them children. 

On the same day in Las Vegas, Nevada, 39-year-old Becky Longhoffer is electrocuted while crossing Las Vegas Boulevard. Walking across a traffic island, Longhoffer stepped in a puddle. The puddle was hiding a cast iron plate that was part of the traffic signal box. Frayed wiring in the box, the rain water from the puddle, and Longhoffer's open-toed shoes combined to create the electrical tragedy that took her life as she crossed the street while talking to her brother on her cell phone.

Almanac for August 15th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 15th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-15-Dr-Sax-X8X811LC4I

Artist Birthday: Edna Ferber

East St. Louis (Illinois) Daily Journal, Oct. 18, 1925

Beatles Trivia

August 15, 1965: The Beatles perform at Shea Stadium, home field of the New York Mets, in front of a crowd of 56,000.

Author Julie K. Howlin post of the day: Napoleon Bonaparte Quotes

Bummer August 15th

August 15, 1868: In what is believed to be a racist and anti-Semitic hate crime probably carried out by the Ku Klux Klan, a group of masked men break into a store belonging to a Jewish man, Samuel A. Bierfield. The men shoot and kill Bierfield and his Black store clerk, Laurence Bowman. No one is ever charged with the crime.

August 15, 1914: Julian Carlton, a servant who worked in the household of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, sets Wright’s Taliesin house in Spring Green, Wisconsin, on fire, then murders seven people inside the house with a hatchet. Wright is not inside the home at the time, but the victims include Wright’s lover Mamah Borthwick Cheney, her two children, gardener David Lindblom, worker Thomas Brunker, draftsman Emil Brodelle, and the son of another worker. Carlton will drink hydrochloric acid in a suicide attempt but, despite severely damaging his esophagus, will live another seven weeks.

August 15, 2021: 30-year-old Ellen Chung, her husband Jonathan Gerrish (age 45), their year-old daughter Aurelia (known as Miju), and the family’s Akita mix dog Oski embark on a day hike in California’s Sierra National Forest. Although they try to reach help via cell phone, service in the mountainous region is spotty. With the temperature reaching 107 to 109 degrees along some parts of the hiking trail, especially in those parts that receive full sunlight with no shade, all four succumb to hyperthermia and dehydration. Their bodies are found on August 17th.

Almanac for August 14

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 14: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-14-Mendoza-y-Pacheco-L4L411LBN5

August 14, 2017: Sequana Joi Harris, a motorcycle racer and stunt performer, dies at the scene of a motorcycle crash in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada while performing as a stunt double for Zazie Beetz on the set of Deadpool 2. Harris’s motorcycle hits a curb; Harris is thrown off the motorcycle and into an exterior wall of Shaw Tower. She was 40 years old.

Almanac for August 13

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 13: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-13-V7V011LB3A

Affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4oIJJyw

Artist Birthday: Alfred Hitchcock

Happy 1-year publishing anniversary to Art and the Bronco by O. Henry and Northern Drinking.

Bummer August 13

August 13, 1521: Hernán Cortés and his small army of Spanish conquistadores conquer the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán after an extended siege that began in 1519. 

August 13, 1944: Lucien Carr, friend of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, stabs and kills his acquaintance David Kammerer. Carr will serve two years in prison for manslaughter, then go on to father children who include novelist Caleb Carr.

Almanac for August 12th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 12th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-12-U7U61126T2

Bummer August 12th

August 12, 1964: Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels and of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, dies of a heart attack.

August 12, 1982: Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes into a mountain after the pilots lose the ability to steer the plane. Of the 509 passengers and 15 crew members, only three passengers and one crew member survive. Rescue operations are delayed due to darkness and mountainous terrain, which means many people who may have initially had non-fatal injuries died of exposure, blood loss, and other conditions. 

August 12, 1988: Haitian-American Neo-Expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is pronounced dead at the hospital after being found unresponsive at his home in Manhattan. His cause of death is heroin overdose. Basquiat is 27 years old.

August 12, 2022: Indian-British author Salman Rushdie is stabbed ten times at an event in Chautauqua, New York, allegedly by a 24-year-old man from New Jersey. Rushdie suffers nerve damage to one arm, one eye, and his liver. The attacker was apparently motivated by a late Iranian religious leader’s description of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses as blasphemous since it depicted the prophet Muhammad as a fictional character. 

Rushdie is an atheist. The attacker had not read The Satanic Verses.

Almanac for August 11

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 11th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-11-J3J81125JX

Happy 1-year anniversary to the publication of this audiobook by Aphra Behn. 

Bummer August 11

August 11, 1956: Painter Jackson Pollock dies in a single-car accident while driving drunk. 

GraceBrown2498, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

August 11, 1978: British medical photographer Janet Parker dies of smallpox, which she’s accidentally been exposed to while working in a hospital. She is the last recorded person to die of smallpox before the disease is declared eradicated.

August 11, 2000: Saudi Arabian musician Talal Maddah collapses and dies suddenly in front of his fans near the start of a concert televised on Saudi TV.

August 11, 2022: A 42-year-old man who participated in the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection attempts to break into the FBI field office in Cincinnati, Ohio, after posting on social media that he wanted to kill FBI agents. Armed with a nail gun and a rifle, the man tried unsuccessfully to pass the building’s lobby and fled when confronted. After being chased by police in his vehicle, the middle-aged man raised his weapon at police and was shot to death.

Almanac for August 10

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 10th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-10-M4M5112586

Support Indies Tote Bag

Bummer August 10th

August 10, 1969: Leno LaBianca, who worked for a supermarket chain, and Rosemary LaBianca, who owned a dress shop, are murdered at their home by members of Charles Manson’s cult. The murderers write the words “Helter Skelter” on the LaBianca’s walls in blood. The words, from a Beatles song, refer to Manson’s delusional belief that Beatles lyrics are personal messages to him.

August 10, 1978: Three teenage girls, all members of the Ulrich family, are killed in an automobile accident while riding in a Ford Pinto. The state of Indiana charges the Ford Motor Company with homicide, claiming that the company was aware of manufacturing defects that made the vehicle more likely to cause death in the event of certain types of accidents. Ford is found not guilty.

August 10, 2018: 29-year-old Richard Russell steals a Horizon Air Bombardier Q400 aircraft from Seattle-Tacoma airport. Russell has no previous experience as a pilot. In communication with an air traffic controller, Russell states that he had no intention of landing the plane. He is killed when the aircraft crash-lands on Ketron Island. The crash site is near a residential cabin, but no one on the ground is hurt. 

Almanac for August 9th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 9th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-9-X7X61124R7

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Betty Boop

Uncredited, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Artist Birthday: Gillian Anderson

Bummer August 9th

August 9, 1945: The U.S. drops an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan.

August 9, 1969: Actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, celebrity hair stylist Jay Sebring, aspiring actor Wojciech Frykowski, and Tate’s unborn baby are killed when members of Charles Manson’s cult break into Tate’s home in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles, California.

August 9, 2010: Skeletal human remains are found in Malibu Canyon in California. They are later determined to belong to Mitrice Richardson, a 24-year-old woman whose family reported her missing in September 2009. 

A bright, beautiful young woman who worked as a forensic psychologist’s intern by day and as a dancer by night, Richardson is observed acting out of character before her disappearance. She eats a meal at Geoffrey’s restaurant in Malibu, California, on September 16, 2009. Staff call the police when she refuses to pay and appears to be experiencing some kind of mental health crisis. Richardson is arrested, but released from detention at 12:28 a.m. on the morning of September 17th. No arrangements are made for her to be picked up or otherwise find transportation home from the county sheriff’s office. 

She was next seen wandering through the Monte Nido residential neighborhood about three miles north of Malibu. Asked by residents if she needed help, Richardson is said to have declined any assistance. However, she was wandering alone at night with no transportation or resources of any kind in a mountainous area. By the time her remains are discovered, it’s impossible to determine whether her cause of death was exposure to the elements, accident, homicide, or some other cause.

In 2020, private investigator Catherine Townsend uncovered some, not entirely conclusive but compelling, evidence that Richardson may have fallen prey not only to a mental health crisis but also a local predator with a history of abusing women.

August 9, 2021: Matthew Taylor Coleman, a surfing instructor from California, is staying with his two children, a 2-year-old boy and a 10-month-old girl, in Rosarito, Mexico. Suffering from delusional thinking encouraged by his consumption of Qanon conspiracy media, Coleman has come to believe his children inherited “serpent blood” from his wife’s side of the family. Tragically, he stabs both children to death with a spear-fishing gun. 

Almanac for August 8

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 8: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-8-The-Edge-K3K61124EQ

Bummer August 8

August 8, 1965: American author Shirley Jackson dies at age 48 of cardiac arrest, possibly brought on by her alcoholism and use of a variety of prescription medicines.

August 8, 2010: More than 1,400 people in the Gansu region of China are killed by mudslides.

Here's a video I uploaded on August 8, 2025:

Almanac for August 7

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 7: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-7-Throwing-Muses-C0C5111SUU

Support Indies Tote Bag

Four of my audiobooks are having a first anniversary today:

Humpty Dumpty by Lewis Carroll

The Kiss by Kate Chopin

The Mummy's Foot

What Was It?

Bummer August 7

August 7, 1904: A flash flood near Pueblo, Colorado, washes a train off the tracks, killing 96 people.

August 7, 2016: 10-year-old son Caleb Schwab is killed while riding the Verrückt water raft ride at Schlitterbahn Water Park in Kansas City, Kansas. The tallest such ride in the world at the time, the ride had a screen over the top, held in place with a series of metal support rings, to keep guests from accidentally flying off the ride in the event that the raft should become airborn. Caleb, who was riding on the front of a raft with two unrelated women riding on the back, struck the metal support ring and was decapitated when his raft became airborne. 

Almanac for August 6th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 6th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-6th-N4N8106YR8

Artist Birthday: Geri Halliwell

Happy book birthday to this audiobook by Jonathan Swift that I published on August 6, 2025:

Bummer August 6

August 6, 1931: 28-year-old jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke dies of pneumonia and edema of the brain, possibly related to chronic alcoholism, in his Queens, New York, apartment. The excessive heat of the summer may have been another contributing factor.

August 6, 1945: The United States military drops the world’s first weaponized nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The bomb immediately killed 80,000 people. Another 60,000 die later from the effects of radiation. 

August 6, 2001: 27 hospital patients being treated for various mental health disorders die when the Moideen Badusha Mental Home in Erwadi, India, catches fire. All of these patients are chained to their beds at night and therefore had no chance to escape from the fire. Many other patients are injured.

Almanac for August 5th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 5th: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-5th-M4M0106Y3M

Happy 1st anniversary to this audiobook, The Glass Dog by L. Frank Baum.

Artist Birthday: Yungblud

20th Century Fox, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bummer August 5th

August 5, 1955: Hours after performing a song and dance number for The Jimmy Durante Show, 46-year-old Portuguese-Brazilian samba performer Carmen Miranda dies of a heart attack. Friends find her collapsed in the hall between her bedroom and the bathroom, clutching a mirror. Miranda, who struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, apparently expired on her way to remove her makeup for the night.

August 5, 1981: In a sign of his administration’s hostility to workers’ rights causes, U.S. President Ronald Wilson Reagan fires more than 11,000 air traffic controllers who are on strike for more pay, a shorter work week, and safer workplace conditions. Technically it had been illegal for U.S. federal employees to strike since 1947, but Reagan is the first president to actually invoke the 1947 law.

August 5, 2005: Lee Seung Seop has been playing the online game Starcraft at an internet café in Taegu, South Korea, since August 3 when he slumps in his chair and falls to the floor. He dies of dehydration and exhaustion a few hours later in Taegu Fatima Hospital, having forgotten to eat, drink, and sleep for over 48 hours.

August 5, 2022: Actor Anne Heche ingests cocaine and fentanyl, gets into a car, and is involved in three vehicle accidents. She first strikes a garage with her car, causing minor damage, and leaves the scene of the accident. She then strikes another car; the driver of the second car is not injured. In the third, high-speed crash, Heche drives her car through the wall of a house, sparking a fire. 

Heche is trapped inside the vehicle for over 40 minutes while firefighters try to put out the house fire, which renders the home uninhabitable. Heche suffers severe burns and smoke inhalation, requiring her to be hospitalized and medically ventilated. She will be declared brain dead on August 11th and taken off life support on August 14th. 

Almanac for August 4

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 4: https://ko-fi.com/Post/August-4th-East-of-Eatin-H2H6106XM3

Bummer August 4th

August 4, 1875: Hans Christian Andersen dies, possibly suffering from liver cancer and never having recovered from injuries from falling out of his bed.

August 4, 1892: Andrew and Abby Borden are murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts, home by an assailant with a hatchet. Andrew’s 32-year-old daughter Elizabeth, called Lizzie, is the primary suspect in the murders. She is tried for the crime and acquitted. 

August 4, 1962: Marilyn Monroe dies, apparently by suicide, of an overdose of prescription sleeping medicine.

Almanac for August 3rd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 3rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-3rd-Diane-Wakoski-U7U3106X14

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: LaBrea Tar Pits

Bummer August 3rd

August 3, 1924: Author Joseph Conrad dies of a heart attack at age 66. 

August 3, 1959: More than 50 dock workers on strike are killed by police in the small African country of Guinea-Bissau. At the time, Guinea-Bissau is a colony of Portugal, and the dock workers’ strike threatens Portuguese political officials, who regard it as a sign of rebellion against Portuguese rule. Guinea-Bissau won’t win its independence from the European colonial power until 1973.

August 3, 1966: 40-year-old comedian Lenny Bruce is found dead of an apparently accidental morphine overdose.

August 3, 1983: Bruce Wayne Campbell, the glam rocker who performed under the stage name Jobriath, dies at the age of 36 of AIDS-related illness.

Almanac for August 2

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 2nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-2nd-Swimming-in-the-Afternoon-L3L1106W7N

Heavy-Duty Bookends Affiliate Link

Bummer August 2nd

August 2, 1923: The 29th U.S. president, Warren G. Harding, becomes the 3rd U.S. president to die in office from natural causes when he suffers a deadly heart attack in San Francisco. Following the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, he is the 6th U.S. president to die in office of all causes.

August 2, 1973: Approximately 50 people are killed when the Summerland indoor amusement park catches fire. The building’s ceiling is constructed using a transparent acrylic material, which melts, raining burning-hot liquid acrylic down on the victims of the fire.

August 2, 1997: William S. Burroughs dies, having had a heart attack the previous day.

Almanac for August 1st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for August 1st: https://ko-fi.com/post/August-1st-Lughnasa-A0A4106VQF

Today's Observance: Lammas/Lughnasadh

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Lughnasadh

Bummer August 1st

August 1, 1966: Marine Corps veteran Charles Whitman, who has killed his mother and wife the night before, takes a sawed-off shotgun, a Magnum .357 revolver, and several rifles with him to the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. He took them, loaded onto a hand-truck, in the elevator and up a set of stairs to the observation deck of the university’s Main Building. He encounters receptionist Edna Townsley, whom he kills by striking her with the butt of a rifle. 

Over the course of 96 minutes, he shoots 44 people on the ground. The first person he shoots is Claire Wilson, who is pregnant. Wilson is injured and lives, but loses her pregnancy. Thirteen other people die of their bullet wounds. Houston police officers Ramiro "Ray" Martinez and Houston McCoy work together to kill Whitman, ending the murder spree. 

August 1, 1994: An electrical fault sparks a fire at Norwich Central Library in Norwich, England, that destroys an estimated 100,000 books and historical papers.

August 1, 2004: 394 people die when a fire breaks out inside the Ycuá Bolaño supermarket building in Asunción, Paraguay. An poorly installed barbeque chimney causes the blaze. The death toll is worsened when two of the owners decide to lock some of the exits to prevent customers from fleeing the fire with unpaid merchandise. These owners and a security guard are later convicted of negligent homicide for this heartless act.

August 1, 2018: 32-year-old Canadian model, artist, and actor Rick Genest, known as Zombie Boy for his numerous bone- and viscera-themed tattoos, dies from an accidental fall from an icy balcony where he has apparently gone to smoke a cigarette.

Almanac for July 31st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 31st: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-31st-Lammas-Eve-X8X5106UVZ

Today's Observance: Lammas Eve
Artist Birthday: Annie Parisse

Bummer July 31st 

July 31, 1703: Daniel Defoe is locked in a pillory as a punishment after being found guilty of seditious libel. He has criticized church officials in a pamphlet.

July 31, 1964: Country musician “Gentleman” Jim Reeves takes his Beechcraft Debonair aircraft and his manager Dean Manuel on a flight from Arkansas to Nashville, Tennessee, so that they can negotiate a real estate deal. The aircraft encounters a severe thunderstorm. Reeves, who is flying the plane, is thought to experience spatial disorientation. The aircraft crash-lands nose-first into the ground in a wooded area near Nashville International Airport. The wreckage is discovered two days later with the bodies of Reeves and Manuel inside.

July 31, 1988: A passenger at the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal in Malaysia collapses, killing 32 people and injuring 1,600 others. The passengers had arrived in Butterworth, Penang state, to celebrate the Kuan Yin Goddess Festival. The platform hadn’t been built to accommodate such a large number of people.

Title page of the original edition of Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year. Published in 1722 by E. Nutt. Public domain.

Almanac for July 30th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 30th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-30th-T6T3106UJ3

Bummer July 30th

July 30, 1866: A racist mob of white people in New Orleans kills 38 African-American politicians and their supporters and wounds an additional 46 people. The New Orleans police department joins the violence on the side of the racists. Almost all of those killed or injured were African-American.

July 30, 1918: American author Joyce Kilmer is killed in action, shot by a sniper at the Second Battle of the Marne in the First World War.

July 30, 1945: The heavy cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis is torpedoed by the Japanese Navy after departing from the Philippines. Of the 1,195 sailors on board, about 300 go down with the ship when it sinks 12 minutes after the torpedo hits. Of the 890 who manage to abandon ship, only 316 survive. The others fall prey to shark attacks, salt water poisoning, dehydration, and exposure.

July 30, 1997: A landslide in Thredbo Alpine Village, New South Wales, Australia destroys two ski lodges and kills 18 people. The sole survivor of the landslide is Stuart Diver, who is freed from the wreckage on August 2nd. Diver had been trapped inside the collapsed building in which his wife, Sally, had drowned after becoming trapped in an area that had slowly filled with water.

Almanac for July 29th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 29th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-29th-D1D7104UUT

Bummer July 29th

July 29, 1903: Polish Jewish immigrant Abraham Surasky is murdered with a gun and ax by two men near Aiken, rural South Carolina, in what is suspected to be an anti-Semitic hate crime. One of the murderers, Lee Green, is tried and acquitted, although he is convicted years later for another murder.

July 29, 1974: Musician Cass Elliot dies of a heart attack. Years of heroin abuse and cycles of rapidly gaining and losing weight have weakened her body. Cruelly, urban legend will afterwards contend that she died by choking to death on a ham sandwich. 

***

And now, for something completely different, an affiliate link to a Gumroad creative product you may enjoy: The Abide Guide: Living Like Lebowski 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 July 28th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 28th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-28th-Beatrix-Potter-S6S2103SLQ

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: "Over the Rainbow"

Affiliate Link

This is one of my all-time favorite songs.

Bummer July 28th

July 28, 1841: Either the police or a pair of fisherman (accounts vary) discover the body of Mary Cecilia Rogers floating in the Hudson River near Hoboken, New Jersey. Rogers, who was 20 or 21 years old and worked as a cigar seller in New York City, was last seen by her family on the 25th. Although the case is officially unsolved, it’s suspected she was either murdered by her boyfriend Daniel Payne or perhaps died as a result of an illegal abortion. Payne killed himself by overdosing on alcohol and laudanum on October 7, 1841. The discover of Rogers’s body inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.”

July 28, 1914: The Great War begins in earnest when Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.

July 28, 1945: In foggy weather, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 Mitchell bomber crashes into the Empire State Building. All three crew members on the plane and 11 people inside the building are killed. 

In the impact, elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver is thrown from her elevator car and suffers severe burns. Rescue crews place her in another elevator car to send her down to the ground for medical treatment; that elevator car, with its cables damaged in the accident, plummets 75 floors to the basement. Remarkably, Oliver survives, with broken bones, and is once again rescued from the rubble of the elevator crash. This is considered the record for the longest survivable fall in an elevator.

Almanac for July 27th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 27th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-27-Purple-Rain-U7U6103S2Q

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Blackberries 

Bummer July 27th

July 27, 1976: Taxi driver Chester Plummer scales a fence and accesses the White House grounds armed with a pipe. Stopped by a security guard, Plummer ignores a verbal command to stop and is shot. He is taken to the hospital, where he dies, the first person known to have been shot on the White House grounds. Plummer’s motivation is unknown, but some suspect this may have been an incident of “suicide by cop.”

July 27, 1996: A bomb detonates at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, killing two people and wounding 111 others. Right-wing Christian terrorist Eric Rudolph is eventually arrested and convicted of this bombing and three others.

July 27, 2014: 20-year-old Nick Fagnano and 13 other people are struck by lightning while swimming or standing on the water near Venice Beach, California. Fagnano dies of his injuries.

***

And now, for something completely different, an affiliate link to a Gumroad creative product you may enjoy: To Sway a Soul 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 July 26th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 26th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-26th-George-Bernard-Shaws-birthday-I3I6103RSF

Artist Birthday: George Bernard Shaw

Milwaukee Leader, March 9, 1926

Bummer July 26th

July 26, 1863: Ballerina Emma Livry dies of complications of extensive burns she suffered on November 15, 1862. While rehearsing for a role in a ballet, Livry’s skirts came too near to the stage’s gaslights and caught fire. 

Fire-resistant fabrics were available to dancers of that time, but Livry, like many other dancers of the era, avoided them because of the way they discolored the fabric. She suffered burns to her legs, waist, back, arms, and shoulders. She is only 20 years old at the time of her death.

This is the affiliate link. This is a review of a different book by Jennifer Wright.

July 26, 1952: First Lady of Argentina María Eva (Evita) Duarte de Perón dies of cervical cancer at the age of 33.

July 26, 2009: An automobile crash on the Taconic State Parkway near Mount Pleasant, New York State, kills eight people. A minivan driven by Diane Schuler, age 36, was observed driving the wrong way down the parkway. The minivan collided with an SUV, killing Schuler, her daughter, her three nieces, and three people inside the SUV. Toxicology reports showed Schuler was heavily intoxicated. Schuler’s son survived the crash, but has ongoing injuries.

July 26, 2015: Bobbi Kristina Houston Brown, the daughter of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, dies in a hospice care facility at the age of 22. She had been in a coma for the previous six months after being found unresponsive in her Georgia home by her fiancé, Nick Gordon. Brown was discovered face-down in her bathtub less than three years after her mother died in a bathtub at a hotel in Los Angeles. 

Eerily similar to her mother’s passing, Brown was found to have been intoxicated with alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, prescription drugs, and other substances when she apparently drowned in her bathtub.

Almanac for July 25th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 25th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-25th-St-James-Day-E1E0103RGV

Today's Observance: St. James' Day (feast day of St. James the Greater)

Read St. James' Day (Pagan Spirits #3) here:

Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/us/book/st-james-day/id6445005544

Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/st-james-day-pagan-spirits-3-erin-o-riordan/4f332dba51fb20ba?ean=9798215439876&next=t&digital=t

Everand (Scribd): https://www.everand.com/book/613027583/St-James-Day-Pagan-Spirits-3

Fable: https://fable.co/book/x-9798215439876

Kobo (Rakuten): https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/st-james-day

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1250919

Tolino: https://www.thalia.de/shop/home/artikeldetails/A1067302221

Vivlio: https://shop.vivlio.com/product/9798215439876_9798215439876_10020/st-james-day

Beatles Trivia
July 25, 1995: I had stuffed crust pizza for supper. Ringo Starr stars in those commercials. He says, “I’d do it in a second. The fans will dig it. They’ve been waiting long enough. I think I can convince them. I’ll say, ‘Lads, the time has come...to eat our pizza crust-first!” And then The Monkees show up and Ringo says, “Wrong lads.”

Bummer July 25

July 25, 1955: Pentecostal minister George Went Hensley, who believes that the Bible commands all Christians to handle poisonous snakes (and popularizes the idea of religious “snake handling”), dies after being bitten on the wrist by a snake of an unknown species in Calhoun County, Florida. Because Hensley voluntarily handled the animal, the Calhoun County sheriff’s office classifies Hensley’s death as a suicide.

July 25, 1966: Poet Frank O’Hara dies from a ruptured liver. The previous night he had been struck by a dune buggy on Fire Island while standing near a beach taxi that had broken down.

July 25, 1984: Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, the first artist to record “Hound Dog,” dies of a heart attack and liver disease at age 57 in Los Angeles.

July 25, 2001: When rain falls on the southern Indian state of Kerala, local people who get caught in the rain notice reddish, almost blood-like stains on their clothing. The colored rain falls sporadically on Kerala in July and September, sometimes colored yellow, green, or black. 

Although strange, the colloquially-named “blood rain” has a mundane explanation: the color comes from algae blooms.

Almanac for July 24th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 24th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-24-Dawn-L4L71HQFRA

Artist Birthday: Alexandre Dumas, pere

My Count of Monte Cristo sticker at Redbubble

It's also the birthday of Jennifer Lopez.

Bummer July 24th

July 24, 1913: Donald A. Kenny and Christopher Gustin die during a hazing ritual performed by the Loyal Order of Moose in Birmingham, Alabama. Told they’re going to be branded, the men are touched with a rubber brand attached to an electrical current. Apparently the current is much stronger than intended, and the two men die of electrocution.

July 24, 1915: The Western Electric Company charters four ships to sail passengers consisting of its employees and their families to Michigan City, Indiana, for a company picnic holiday. One of the ships, the SS Eastland, is loaded with passengers and crew members when it suddenly rolls onto its side, trapping many of those onboard underwater. An unfortunate 844 people die.