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. 

***

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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.

***

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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:

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

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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.

Almanac for July 23rd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 23rd: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-23-Middlemarch-P5P51HQFLD

Bummer July 23rd

July 23, 1846: Henry David Thoreau is put in jail for refusing to pay a $1 poll tax. He’s protesting the poll tax on the grounds that it supports slavery. 

July 23, 1982: Actor Vic Morrow (age 53) and child actors Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen are killed in a helicopter accident during the filming of the Twilight Zone movie. The filming was illegal, with director John Landis violating child labor laws and failing to obtain the required permits for the helicopter stunt filmed in Valencia, California.

Landis called for the Bell UH-1B Iroquois helicopter to hover over Morrow while he carried the two children. During filming, an explosion effect damaged the tail rotor of the helicopter. The helicopter spun out of control. The falling helicopter crushed Renee Shin-Yi Chen and decapitated Myca Dinh Le and Vic Morrow.

July 23, 2005: Thoroughbred horse racing jockey Emanuel Jose Sanchez dies of dehydration and extreme food restriction at age 22 at Richmond (Virginia) Community Hospital. The previous day, he’d been found unconscious in the shower after riding a horse in an afternoon race at Colonial Downs.

July 23, 2011: English jazz singer Amy Winehouse passes away, having recently completed rehabilitation for a severe alcohol addiction. 

Almanac for July 22nd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 22nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-22-Hale-Bopp-B0B21HQFGJ

Artist Birthday: Albert Brooks
Albert Brooks movie Modern Romance article by Movies of the 80s

Bummer July 22nd

July 22, 1934: Criminal John Dillinger is shot dead by FBI agent Melvin Purvis outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago. 

Almanac for July 21st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 21st: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-21-Lady-Chatterlys-Lover-F1F71HQFBW

Artist Birthday: Ernest Hemingway
Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Ernest Hemingway's birthday

Bummer July 21st

July 21, 1796: The poet Robert Burns dies at the age of 37, leaving behind his wife and five children.

July 21, 2023: Vegan influencer Zhanna Samsonova, who posted nutrition content on social media accounts including Instagram and TikTok under the name Zhanna D’Art, dies at age 39 of an apparent infection at a hospital in Phuket, Malaysia. Samsonova’s “raw food” diet included only uncooked plants, leaving her with a very thin body type that may have contributed to her body’s inability to fight off infection.

Almanac for July 20th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 20th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-20-Cedar-Lake-R6R61HQF77

Bummer July 20th

July 20, 1948: Herpetologist Grace Olive Wiley, the first person to successfully breed rattlesnakes in captivity, dies after being bitten by a venomous Indian cobra. Wiley had been posing for a photo with the snake when the camera’s flash startles the animal and it strikes Wiley while she attempts to restrain it. She dies less than three hours later at the hospital, having accidentally broken her only vial of antivenom.

July 20, 1973: 32-year-old Bruce Lee, who has been suffering from cerebral edema since May of that year, takes the painkiller and muscle relaxant Equagesic. He lies down to take a nap and can’t be revived, apparently having had an allergic reaction to the medicine. Lee is declared dead on arrival at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

July 20, 1981: All six crews members and 44 passengers are killed when Somali Airlines Flight 40 crashes shortly after takeoff into the town of Balad. Thunderstorm conditions and, possibly, human error cause the plane to spiral dive and the crew are unable to recover from the dive.

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Almanac for July 19

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 19: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-19-Indiana-Fever-P5P61HQEV9

Bummer July 19

July 19, 1374: Tuscan poet Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) dies on the eve of his 70th birthday.

July 19, 1850: Journalist Margaret Fuller returns, with her husband and child, from assignment as the New York Tribune’s European correspondent aboard the merchant ship Elizabeth. The vessel’s captain has died of smallpox during the 5-week voyage. The Elizabeth, being piloted by her less-experienced first mate, strikes a sandbar off of Fire Island and is run aground. Many of the crew abandon ship and are able to swim to shore, but Fuller and her husband are never found and are presumed to have drowned. Their son’s body is found washed up on the shore.

July 19, 1977: Heavy rains cause six dams in Conemaugh Valley, Pennsylvania to overflow and fail. 84 people were killed in the flooding.

July 19, 2017: Chanson réaliste singer-songwriter-musicologist Barbara Weldens is electrocuted while performing barefoot when her foot comes in contact with faulty electrical wiring. Welden is 35 years old.

Almanac for July 18th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 18th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-18-My-Brothers-Wedding-I3I11HQEQX

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: William Makepeace Thackaray

Beatles Trivia
July 18, 1995, South Bend: I dropped Mom off at work. When I came home, I turned on the tv to see Yoko Ono and beautiful, 19-year-old Sean Lennon [Ono] on the Today show.

Bummer July 18th

July 18, 1817: Jane Austen dies, aged 41. Her death is speculated to have been from Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

July 18, 1954: 18-year-old Dorothy Poore’s decomposing body is found stuffed inside a dresser drawer inside a room at the Claypool Hotel in downtown Indianapolis. Her killer is apprehended in Missouri and brought back to Indiana, where he is convicted and serves more than 25 years before being released on parole. He claimed to have killed the teenager after failing to recruit her as a sex worker.

July 18, 1966: Rock musician Bobby Fuller, whose band The Bobby Fuller Four has recently scored a hit with “I Fought the Law,” is found dead in his car outside his apartment in Hollywood. Fuller is 23 years old. His body has no signs of injury other than some small spots (indicated broken capillaries under the skin) thought to have been caused by the summer heat. No cause of death is ever determined. Strangely, the boxes for both “accident” and “suicide” are checked on the Los Angeles deputy medical examiner’s report.

July 18, 1969: U.S. Senator Edward (“Ted”) Kennedy leaves a cocktail party in his car with a passenger, Mary Joe Kopechne. The impaired senator drives the vehicle into a lake. He manages to escape, but Kopechne drowns. Kennedy fails to report the deadly accident until the following morning. He later pleads guilty to leaving the scene of an accident.

July 18, 1975: Influential graffiti-style artist Vaughn Bodē, age 33, is found dead of apparent autoerotic asphyxiation.

July 18, 1984: A lone gunman kills 21 people and wounds an additional 19 people at a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro*, California. The gunman is subsequently killed by a police sniper.

In her book Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, Caroline Fraser offers the theory that the perpetrator suffered from severe heavy metal poisoning as a result of exposure to high levels of cadmium at his workplace, where he was a welder. Outbursts of violent behavior are a documented side effect of cadmium poisoning.

July 18, 1988: Christa Päffgen, the model and singer who performed under the mononym Nico, dies in Ibiza at age 49 from a cerebral hemorrhage suffered from a fall off her bicycle.

July 18, 1989: Actress Rebecca Schaeffer, then the star of the popular sitcom My Sister Sam, is shot in the chest at her home by a 19-year-old obsessed fan who has stalked her over the course of three years. He became enraged when she appeared in a film in which her character is seen in bed with a male character. Schaeffer dies at the hospital.

*San Ysidro, in English, is called Saint Isadore, and he's the patron saint of farmers.

Almanac for July 17th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 17th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-17-ShakeScenes-H2H21HQEBJ

Bummer July 17th

July 17, 1793: Charlotte Corday is executed by guillotine for the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat.

July 17, 1918: The royal family of Russia is executed by Communist revolutionaries. Czar Nicholas II, Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, and their children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei are shot and bayonetted to death in the basement of the Ipatiev House, where they have been imprisoned. 

July 17, 1935: Cudjoe Lewis dies. The formerly enslaved man’s story of being kidnapped from his home in what is now Benin is the subject of Zora Neale Hurston’s book Barracoon. 

July 17, 1944: Munitions (including bombs, mines, and small arms ammunition) being loaded aboard the SS E.A. Bryan in Port Chicago, California, explode. None of the enlisted personnel loading the munitions had been formally trained in safely handling these materials. In the explosion, the E.A. Bryan is destroyed, the Quinault Victory is blown out of the water and torn in half, and a Coast Guard fire boat is blown up the river, where it sinks. The blast and subsequent fires kill all 320 military personnel loading the E.A. Bryan, including all five Coast Guard personnel aboard the fire boat. 

202 of the dead are African-American. Widespread discrimination in the military forced many enlisted men of color in the most dangerous jobs with little hope of advancement and no Black officers in leadership positions to advocate for them.

July 17, 1959: At 3:10 a.m., Billie Holiday passes away under arrest in her hospital bed. Her death comes from heart failure and fluid in her lungs brought about by a failing liver. She’s 44 years old. 

Billie Holiday at Dorothy Surrenders

July 17, 1967: 40-year-old jazz saxophonist John Coltrane dies of liver cancer. Although he has been sober for the last 10 years of his life, earlier struggles with heroin and alcohol use may have contributed to his cancer.

July 17, 1981: The skywalk inside the Hyatt Regency Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri, collapses onto a dance happening below. More than 200 people are injured and 114 die. Some of the victims drown when they become trapped under the rubble and unable to escape from water leaking from a broken pipe.

July 17, 1997: 10-year-old Mark Miedema gets ahead of his family while on a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. He’s attacked and killed by a female mountain lion.

Almanac for July 16

Almanac for July 16: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-16-Catcher-in-the-Rye-O4O41HQE3R

Historical Journalist Birthday: Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Southern Horrors Audiobook:

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Spotify:

Bummer July 16

July 16, 1945: The world’s first nuclear device is detonated at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

July 16, 1990: More than 1,600 people in the Philippines die in the Luzon earthquake. 

July 16, 1999: John F. Kennedy Jr. crashes the small aircraft he has been flying off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, killing himself, his wife Caroline Bessette-Kennedy, and Caroline’s sister Lauren Bessette. 

July 16, 2003: Dozens of children in the village of Gandaman in Bihar, India become sick after eating a lunch of soy beans and potato curry with rice prepared with oil that had been stored in a container that previously contained pesticides. The children become sickened with vomiting and diarrhea due to the pesticide residue. 23 of the children die.

Almanac for July 15

Almanac for July 15: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-15-Rembrandt-E1E31HQDWQ

Bummer July 15

July 15, 1940: Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in recorded history, who stood 8 feet, eleven inches tall, dies at age 22. Wadlow needed metal braces on his legs in able to walk. He’d made a public appearance at which one of the metal braces broke his skin, the wound became infected, and the infection spread throughout his body. He died in his sleep of the infection, complicated by an autoimmune disorder. 

July 15, 1974: During a live broadcast of the digest news program on which she appeared, 29-year-old journalist Christine Chubbuck pulls a loaded handgun from her purse, places it behind her left ear, and shoots herself in the head. She dies at Sarasota (Florida) Memorial Hospital fourteen hours later. Her family gets a court order to keep the tape of the broadcast from ever being aired again. 

Almanac for July 14

Almanac for July 14: https://ko-fi.com/Post/June-4-Poltergeist-O4O31G1GD6

Bummer July 14

July 14, 1908: According to his grave marker, an unknown man in Goldfield, Nevada, died from eating library paste (flour, alum, and water) on this date. It’s not entirely clear whether this is an actual historical incident or a local prank.

July 14, 2017: Stunt performer John Bernecker dies from injuries he sustained the previous day. While filming stunt footage for the TV show The Walking Dead, Bernecker had fallen 20 feet off a balcony onto a concrete floor.

Almanac for July 13

Almanac for July 13: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-13-I-Married-My-Best-Friend-E1E11HQD8B

Happy anniversary, Tit Elingtin!

Bummer July 13

July 13, 1793: 24-year-old royalist Charlotte Corday assassinates radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat in his bathtub with a knife she has concealed in her corset.

July 13, 1990: An earthquake and avalanche at Lenin Peak in the Trans-Alay mountains on the border of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (still part of the USSR in 1990) kill 43 mountaineers.

Jacques-Louis David, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Almanac for July 12

Almanac for July 12: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-12-Serpent-Mound-U7U71HQD2L

Artist Birthday: Henry David Thoreau

99 cents at Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/civil-disobedience-68?sId=4528426b-43a6-4592-941c-610fe6ed1226&ssId=pl1MMVd2lG_MxicsX0ZsR&cPos=1

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

Bummer July 12 

July 12, 1979: Singer Minnie Riperton dies of breast cancer. She’s 31 years old.

Riperton's daughter Maya Rudolph was six years old when Riperton passed away. In addition to her successful tv and film career, Rudolph is also a singer. Her band Princess is a tribute band in honor of Prince Rogers Nelson. 

July 12, 1996: Multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Melvoin, at the time touring with the Smashing Pumpkins as a keyboardist, dies of a heroin overdose. He’s 34 years old.

This song is about him:

July 12, 2007: In an incident caught on video, U.S. military forces in Iraq kill at least 12 civilians and wound two children. Military personal can be seen on the video laughing about the deaths and wishing for excuses to kill more people. The video is leaked to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning in 2010. Manning is arrested for leaking military property and imprisoned until her sentence is commuted in 2017.

Almanac for July 11

Almanac for July 11: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-11-Seven-and-Jerry-W7W01HQCVL

Bummer July 11

July 11, 1906: Pregnant, 20-year-old Grace Brown, a worker in the Gillette Skirt Factory, is intentionally drowned and murdered by her boyfriend Chester Gillette, nephew of the factory owner. Gillette is subsequently executed in the electric chair.

The murder inspires Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, which in turn inspires the 1951 film A Place In the Sun. The character based on Brown is played by Shelley Winters.

July 11, 1937: George Gershwin, age 38, dies of a brain tumor.

But if you don't want George Gershwin to die, you can listen to this fictional audiobook in which he doesn't.

Almanac for July 10th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 10th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-10-Tea-Time-O5O61HQCPI

Artist Birthday: Giorgio de Chirico

Bummer July 10th

July 10, 1861: After asking for a cup of coffee, Frances “Fanny” Appleton Longfellow dies of burn injuries she sustained the day before. Fanny’s dress caught on fire when either a spark or hot wax made contact with her dress as she melted sealing wax to seal an envelope containing locks of her children’s hair. 

Her husband, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, is napping when he hears her screams and attempts to smother the flames with a rug. Longfellow also sustains burns to his arms and face to the extent that he is too injured to attend Fanny’s funeral. He wears a beard for the rest of his life to conceal his facial scars.

July 10, 1873: French poet Paul Verlaine shoots his inappropriately younger lover/fellow poet Arthur Rimbaud in the wrist, wounding him, although the injury is not serious. 

July 10, 1985: Aeroflot Flight 7425 crashes near Uchkuduk, Uzbekistan, at the time part of the USSR. All nine crew members and 191 passengers are killed. A fatigued crew and pilot error contribute to the accident. 

***

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Almanac for July 9th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 9th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-9-Radcliffe-B0B21HQCGE

Bummer July 9th

July 9, 1850: The 12th U.S. president, Zachary Taylor, dies of acute gastroenteritis while in office. Several other members of his cabinet also become ill with gastrointestinal symptoms. Taylor is the second U.S. president to die in office after William Henry Harrison, both of natural causes.

July 9, 1937: Artist David Hockney is born in the West Riding of Yorkshire, U.K. He just passed away on June 11, 2026.

The same day Hockney is born, a fire at a warehouse in Little Ferry, New Jersey, destroys the silent film archives of the Fox Film Corporation and other studios.

July 9, 1942: 13-year-old Anne Frank and her family are forced to go into hiding to avoid Nazi persecution.

Almanac for July 8th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 8th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-8-Mona-Lisa-W7W21HQCA4

Percy Shelley is a contributor. https://amzn.to/3XHzDlM

Bummer July 8th

July 8, 1822: Poet Percy Shelley drowns while out sailing, along with his friend Edward Ellerker Williams. They are each 29 years old.

July 8, 1917: Canadian painter Thomas John Thomson accidentally drowns while canoeing in Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park in Ontario. He is 39 years old.

July 8, 1918: Ernest Hemingway is wounded while serving as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Red Cross during World War I. 

July 8, 1965: Veteran stunt pilot Paul Mantz is killed while filming the movie The Flight of the Phoenix. Mantz’s plane, specially built for the film, struck a small hill, then broke apart and hit the ground as Mantz tried to recover from the error.

July 8, 1974: 18-year-old park employee Deborah Gail Stone is crushed to death between a stationary wall and a rotating wall that are part of the America Sings attraction at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

July 8, 1998: Police find the body of screenwriter Gary DeVore inside DeVore’s Ford Explorer submerged in an aqueduct in Palmdale, California. DeVore had last been seen by his wife a year earlier when he left their home near Santa Barbara, California, to work on a screenplay at his office in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

Police do not believe DeVore’s death could have been an accident, since there were no signs that the Explorer had struck the aqueduct, the vehicle’s lights were switched off, and DeVore’s laptop and gun were missing. Further, the hands of the deceased man were missing. The death is officially unsolved. Some have speculated that something in DeVore’s screenplay was threatening to someone, possibly someone inside the U.S. government, and that he was murdered to stop the screenplay from getting out the public.

Read more about Gary DeVore here.

July 8, 2020: Actor Naya Rivera, age 33, rents a boat on Lake Piru in California and takes it out around 1 p.m. with her 4-year-old son Josey. The pair is expected to return to dock by 4 p.m. When the boat fails to appear by 5 p.m., a search begins. Searchers find Josey asleep on the boat, wearing a life jacket but alone. The boy tells the Sheriff’s Department that he and his mother jumped off the boat and into the lake to swim together, but that his mother had trouble climbing back into the boat and that he saw her go under the water. 

Rivera’s body is found in the lake on July 13th. It appears that she drowned after becoming caught in a rip current, having enough strength to push her son back onto the boat but then not enough strength to lift herself from the current. Rivera was an experienced boater and a strong swimmer, and neither alcohol nor drugs are thought to have been factors in her death.

Almanac for July 7

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 7th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-7-Tanabata-J3J81HQC4G

Artist Birthday: Ringo Starr

Bummer July 7th

July 7, 1535: Sir Thomas More is beheaded for refusing to acknowledge King Henry VIII as the head of the Church. More remains loyal to the Pope.

July 7, 1930: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle dies of a heart attack at age 71. Reportedly, his last words were to his wife Jean: “You are wonderful.”

July 7, 1973: 50-year-old actress Veronica Lake dies of cirrhosis following years of heavy alcohol use.

July 7, 2002: Retired NBA player Bison Dele, his girlfriend Serena Karlan, and boat captain Bertrand Saldo are presumed to have been murdered by Dele’s older brother Miles Dabord aboard Dele’s boat near Tahiti, French Polynesia. After the 8th of July, only Dabord is ever heard from again. Arrested for forging his brother’s signature and trying to use Dele’s passport, Dabord gives himself a lethal dose of insulin and dies in the hospital, so the exact circumstances of the incident will never be known.

July 7, 2026: Erin O'Riordan is disappointed to learn that Daniel Brühl is voicing Voldemort in the German-language audiobook recordings of the Harry Potter series. Oh Daniel, I thought we all agreed we don't want the bad wizard lady to earn any more money (she doesn't need it) since she's only going to use her platform to scapegoat and try to pry human rights away from transgender people.

This is an affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4s9ImLF

Almanac for July 6th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 6th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-6-Fire-and-Ice-S6S61HQBRG

Bummer July 6th

July 6, 1819: Sophie Blanchard, the first woman to pilot a hot air balloon as a professional balloonist, dies in a hot air ballooning accident. Performing balloon ascents for a crowd at Tivoli Gardens, the Parisian amusement park, she included fireworks in her show. The fireworks ignited the helium in her balloon. Blanchard became entangled in the balloon’s net and subsequently falls to her death.

July 6, 1944: A fire at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, Connecticut, kills an estimated 167 people.

July 6, 1962: Author William Faulkner dies of a heart attack.

July 6, 1971: Louis Armstrong dies of a heart attack.

July 6, 1983: Model/actor Tammy Lynn Leppert, 18 years old at the time, is seen for the last confirmed time getting out of a friend’s car in a parking lot in Cocoa Beach, Florida. The friend confirms he and Leppert argued and that he dropped her off in a parking lot; Leppert has never contacted her friends or family since then. Leppert appears briefly in the movie Scarface. 

July 6, 1988: An explosion on the Piper Alpha oil platform in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland kills 165 oil workers and two rescue workers. Although no one from the platform’s owner,  Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) Limited, was ever charged with a crime, neglected maintenance and inadequate safety procedures contributed to the disaster. 

The platform collapses and sinks. 61 survivors are rescued.