Almanac for July 5th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 5th: https://ko-fi.com/Post/July-5-Union-Pier-I2I41HQBMI

Bowman Gum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bummer July 5th

July 5, 1909: 38-year-old Isola Kennedy and 10-year-old Earl Wilson are bitten by a rabid mountain lion. Both will die of rabies.

July 5, 1932: Z. Smith Reynolds, an heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune, dies of a gunshot wound. Three other people are inside the house with Reynolds at the time: Reynolds’s wife Libby Holman (a noted Broadway singer/actor), Holman’s personal assistant Ab Walker, and friend Blanche Yurka. A party has taken place at the home earlier and all of the witnesses are drunk when the shooting occurs. It’s unclear if Reynolds died by suicide, accident, or murder. Holman maintains she was too drunk to remember what happened that night. She and Walker are indicted on murder charges, but the Reynolds family insists that the charges be dropped.

July 5, 2002: Retired Boston Red Sox star Ted Williams dies of congestive heart failure at the age of 83. His son John-Henry and daughter Claudia choose to have his remains cryogenically frozen, although their sister Bobby-Jo does not agree with this decision.