Almanac for September 2

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 2nd: https://ko-fi.com/post/September-2nd-Pac-Man-Fever-A0A112P3B5

The 1900 Galveston Hurricane with Disaster Area Podcast

Bummer September 2nd

September 2, 1666: The Great Fire of London begins. It kills 16 people and destroys 13,000 homes.

September 2, 1791: Virtuoso violinist Frantisek Kotzwara dies of apparent erotic asphyxiation after having intercourse with sex worker Susannah Hill in London. Hill, who was initially charged with Kotzwara’s murder but acquitted, testifies that Kotzwara asked her to cut off his testicles, and when she refused, settled instead for having intercourse with her while wearing a ligature tightened around his own neck with the other end fastened to the doorknob.

September 2, 1885: Chinese-American mine workers in Rock Springs, Wyoming, are beaten and killed by white miners. The race riot kills 28 people and destroys dozens of buildings. Hundreds of Chinese-American workers flee the town out of fear for their lives.

September 2, 1900: A tropical hurricane formed over the Atlantic Ocean makes landfall in the Dominican Republic. This storm is among the deadliest in U.S. history, with a large number of fatalities coming from Galveston, Texas. Meteorologists of the time, and in particular Isaac Cline, didn’t believe that a significant hurricane was possible in Galveston, and so rejected requests from the townspeople that the city should build a sea wall. As many as 8,000 people in the Caribbean, the U.S., and the Maritime Provinces of Canada are thought to have lost their lives in this storm, including Cline’s wife and some of his children.

September 2, 2004: A fire at the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany, destroys 12,500 irreplaceable books and damages an additional 62,000 materials, including Friedrich Schiller's death mask and 35 oil paintings of historical significance.

September 2, 2018: An air conditioner short circuits, causing a catastrophic fire at the National Museum of Brazil. The museum loses an estimated 92.5% of its collection.

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Sept. 2, 2025: I uploaded this video:

Almanac for September 1st

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for September 1st: https://ko-fi.com/post/Happy-1st-of-September-C0C412P23X

Bummer September 1st

September 1, 1859: English astronomer Richard Carrington, among other scientists, records an extraordinarily bright solar flair. Later to be identified as a coronal mass ejection (CME), the solar storm turns the night sky red. The aurora borealis can be seen as far South as Colombia. The surge of electricity washing over the Earth destroys some telegraphs in different parts of the world, sparking a few fires. Other telegraph operators find that their machines still have power even when unplugged from an electric outlet. This solar storm, the strongest in recorded history, is referred to as the Carrington Event.

That one's only a minor bummer - I don't think anyone was injured. The bigger bummer is how solar storms are events that could happen again and disrupt modern electrical systems much more than they disrupted 1859.

September 1, 2019: Spanish dancer Joana Sainz Garcia is killed while performing during a music festival when a pyrotechnics display malfunctions. A faulty cartridge strikes the 30-year-old in the abdomen.