Almanac for March 15th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 15th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-15-Beware-the-Ides-of-March-A0A2JIAMG

Today's Observance: The Ides of March

Bummer March 15th

March 15, 1937: H.P. Lovecraft dies of cancer of the small intestine at age 46.

March 15, 1982: A man from Scotland becomes obsessed with American actress Theresa Saldana after seeing her in Raging Bull. He calls the actress’s mother to obtain Saldana’s personal address, posing as a casting agent. After doing so he arrives at the actress’s home in West Hollywood and attacks her with a hunting knife, stabbing her in the chest and puncturing her lung. Saldana survives the attack and becomes an advocate for other crime victims.

March 15, 1999: 25-year-old Charemon Jonovich, who is dating actor Robert Pastorelli (the two have a daughter together), dies of a gunshot wound to the head at the actor’s home in Hollywood. Pastorelli is questioned and testifies that while he and Jonovich were arguing, she pulled a gun from her handbag and shot herself. 

At the time of Pastorelli’s death of a morphine overdose in 2004, Jonovich’s death was classified as a homicide and investigators were planning to re-interview him about the circumstances of her shooting. It remains unclear whether she died by suicide, manslaughter, or accident.

On the same day, Ferris State University (Michigan) student Stephen Petz dies of alcohol intoxication after a Knights of College Leadership fraternity event in which Petz consumes 27 shots of alcoholic drinks.

Almanac for March 14th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 14th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-14-Pi-Day-3-14-M4M5JHOIZ

Today's Observance: Pi Day (3.14)

Bummer March 14th

March 14, 1977: Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, age 59, dies of breast cancer complicated by hypertension. Earlier in her life, Hamer had been forcibly sterilized without her knowledge or consent as part of a racist eugenics movement.

March 14, 1989: University of Texas at Austin student Mark James Kilroy, age 21, is kidnapped from Tamaulipas, Mexico, where he had gone for spring break. His abductors, led by Adolfo Constanzo and Sara Aldrete, belonged to an occult group that believed human sacrifice would grant them protection against law enforcement pursuing them for their drug trafficking activities. Kilroy is tortured for hours before being killed with a machete. 

His body is recovered along with the remains of 14 other young men who were similarly victims of human sacrifice. Although widely reported in the U.S. media as a “Satanic” murder, the group was not self-identified with the Christian conception of Satan, but rather a combination of a criminal gang with loose associations to folk religions of the Americas, including Palo Mayombe, an Afro-Caribbean religion familiar to Constanzo through his Cuban heritage.

March 14, 1991: Composer Howard Ashman, age 40, dies of complication of AIDS. He had been working on the music for the Disney animated movie The Little Mermaid and did not live to see the completed version of the film.

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Almanac for March 13th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 13th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-13-N4N1JGF6H

Beatles Trivia
March 13, 1965: “Eight Days A Week” by The Beatles hits #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Bummer March 13th

March 13, 2020: 26-year-old emergency room technician Breonna Taylor is killed by police in her home in Louisville, Kentucky. Seven police officers in plain clothes with what’s known as a “no-knock warrant” for a man wanted in connection with a drug case burst into Taylor’s home. Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker, apparently mistaking the officers for home invaders, fired a warning shot at them. The shot slightly wounded one of the officers, who returned 32 rounds of bullets in return, striking Taylor five times. 

What was Diane Meyer grateful for on March 13, 2024?

https://bottlecap.press/products/ordinarygratitude

I trust the universe
but most importantly I trust myself
trying something new
taking photos
painting
small actions
coloring pages
bonfire and s'mores
things will work out

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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Almanac for March 5th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 5th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-5-P5P7J8KM5

Artist Birthday: Murray Head

Beatles Trivia

March 5, 1963: The Beatles record “From Me to You” at Abbey Road.

Sunday, March 5, 1995, South Bend: Having read The Plague, I turned to a library book titled The Worst Rock and Roll Records Ever Made: A Fan's Guide to the Stuff You Love to Hate by Jimmy Guterman and Owen O’Donnell [ISBN 0806512318 9780806512310].

Here’s a list of some of the songs and bands Guterman and O’Donnell love to hate:
1. “Dancing in the Street” by Mick Jagger and David Bowie
2. “Eve of Destruction”
3. “American Pie”
4. The Doors
5. Mick Jagger’s brother Chris
6. The U2 album The Unforgettable Fire (which includes “Pride (In the Name of Love);” see April 4)
7. Ringo Starr’s albums Stop and Smell the Roses and Old Wave
8. Really anything done by Ringo Starr and (especially) Paul McCartney after the Beatles
9. The 1981 live Rolling Stones album Still Life
10. Duran Duran

Bummer March 5th

March 5, 1963: Musicians Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, and Hawkshaw Hawkins perish when their Piper PA-24 Comanche aircraft crashes in a forest in Tennessee during stormy weather. The pilot is also killed. Cline’s epitaph reads, “Death Cannot Kill What Never Dies: Love.”

March 5, 1977: In an unfortunate accident at the South African Grand Prix, English driver Tom Pryce struck and killed 19-year-old race marshal Frederik "Frikkie" Jansen van Vuuren, whom he couldn’t have seen in time. Jansen van Vuuren had run across the track with a fire extinguisher to rescue Italian driver Renzo Zorzi. Zorzi was trapped in his burning car while trying to remove the oxygen pipe from his helmet. 

The 40-pound fire extinguisher struck Pryce’s car and came through his windshield, striking Pryce in the head, forcing his helmet upward at a sharp angle, causing severe head and neck injuries that killed him instantly. Pryce’s car struck Jacques-Henri Laffite’s car and both vehicles struck the barrier and came to a stop.

Zorzi was not injured. The eventual winner of the 1977 South African Grand Prix was Austrian driver Niki Lauda, who had almost burned to death in the 1976 German Grand Prix.

March 5, 1982: Albanian-American comedian John Belushi dies of a drug overdose.

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Almanac for March 4th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 4th: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-4-Camus-can-do-but-Sartre-is-smartre-X7X81BMRNG

Bummer March 4th

March 4, 1874: Stage actor Ada Clare dies of rabies at the age of 39 after being bitten by a rabid dog in her theatrical agent’s office.

March 4, 1908: An elementary school in Collinwood, Ohio, catches fire for an undetermined reason. The school’s masonry exterior and almost entirely wooden interior without fire breaks cause the entire building to act like a chimney. Two teachers, one rescuer, and 172 students–almost half of the students in the building--are killed.

March 4, 2019: 52-year-old actor Luke Perry dies from complications of two ischemic strokes at a hospital in Burbank, California.

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Almanac for March 3rd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 3rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-3-Harlow-Jean-Picture-of-a-Beauty-Queen-O5O01BFN6D

Artist Birthday: Tobias Forge

Bummer March 3rd

March 3, 1991: 25-year-old Rodney King is pulled over by the Los Angeles Police Department on suspicion of drunk driving and for speeding in a residential area. Although witnesses say King did not appear to resist arrest, King was struck with a Taser weapon and then beaten by four of the police officers present at his traffic stop. King’s multiple injuries included broken teeth, a fractured skull, a broken ankle, and kidney damage.

The beating was captured by an amateur video camera by George Holliday. Holliday takes the footage to local TV station KTLA. The four officers were charged with assault and excessive force. When the jury acquitted the officers on April 29, 1992, rioting broke out in Los Angeles. The six days of rioting killed 63 people before the California National Guard, U.S. Army, and U.S. Marines intervened to end the social chaos. 

The U.S. Department of Justice later found two of the officers guilty of violating King’s civil rights and sentenced them to prison. The other two were acquitted. King sued the City of Los Angeles. A civil court awarded King $3.8 million in damages as well as $1.7 million in attorneys’ fees. 

New links for Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, the audiobook:

Everand (Scribd): https://www.everand.com/audiobook/625856267/Walden-and-On-the-Duty-of-Civil-Disobedience

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Almanac for March 2nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 2nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/March-2-P5P41BFMMW

Today's Observance: Purim (begins at sundown) 
Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: The Sound of Music

• Intermountain Jewish News (Denver, CO), February 11, 1926

Artist Birthday: Lou Reed

Bummer March 2nd 

March 2, 1978: Two thieves steal the coffin containing the body of actor Charlie Chaplin, which was interred in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland. They hope to gain $600,000 in ransom, but Chaplin’s widow Oona (the daughter of American playwright Eugene O’Neill) refused to pay. The two men, auto mechanisms from Poland and Bulgaria, were instead forced to show police the corn field in which they’d reburied the coffin. Chaplin’s family took the precaution of burying the coffin in concrete when it was returned to the cemetery. The English actor had died at age 88 on December 25, 1977.

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March 2, 1982: Science fiction author Philip K. Dick is taken off life support. He has suffered two strokes, with brain death following the second stroke. 

March 2, 1999: Singer Dusty Springfield dies of recurrent breast cancer. She’s 59 years old. 

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Almanac for March 1st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for March 1st: https://ko-fi.com/Post/March-1st-G2G11BFHPY

The Montgomery (AL) Advertiser, February 7, 1926

Artist Birthday #1: Kesha
Kesha at Dorothy Surrenders

Artist Birthday #2: Jensen Ackles

Bummer March 1st

March 1, 1846: 49-year-old newspaper editor John Hampden Pleasants dies of his wounds after being shot in a duel with Thomas Ritchie, editor of the rival newspaper in their shared home of Richmond, Virginia. The two agreed to a duel after Pleasants took offense to Ritchie calling him an "abolitionist." Now, both men were abolitionists; they both favored ending chattel slavery in the United States. However, at that time in the South, "abolitionist" was considered an insult, and the two disagreed, often quite fiercely, on the timetable of when complete abolition of slavery should be accomplished.

March 1, 1932: Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of the famed aviator, is abducted from his nursery in the home of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh in Hopewell, New Jersey. The toddler’s body is found on May 12, 1932. 

A German-American, Richard Bruno Hauptmann, is tried, convicted, and executed for the crime, but questions about his factual guilt remain. His widow maintained his innocence until her death in 1994.

March 1, 1962: American Airlines Flight 1 crashes shortly after takeoff from what is now John F. Kennedy International Airport. All 87 passengers and 9 crew members died in the crash. Linda McCartney’s mother Louise Eastman is among the dead, as is 1952 Olympics sailing gold medalist Emelyn Whiton. Also aboard the plane were 15 paintings by Abstract Expressionist Arshile Gorky. 

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