Almanac for October 4th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 4: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-4-Mutts-W7W2140XWR

Bummer October 4th

October 4, 1951: Henrietta Lacks passes away from complications of cervical cancer. She had been treated with radiation therapy at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. As a result of her cancer and/or the radiation, her organs failed. 

After her death and without her knowledge or consent, Lacks’ cancerous cells will be collected and used to start an “immortal” cell line that will be used in most of the major medical research of the 20th century.

October 4, 1969: Diane Linkletter, the youngest of the five children of Canadian-American early television pioneer Art Linkletter and his wife Lois Foerster, jumps out of the 6th floor kitchen window of her apartment in the Shoreham Towers in West Hollywood, dying by suicide. She’s 20 years old. 

Art Linkletter says in a public statement that he believed Diane was experiencing an LSD flashback at the time of her death, even though investigators found no drugs in her system.

October 4, 1970: Her road manager finds 27-year-old singer Janis Joplin dead on the floor of her motel room in Los Angeles. She has apparently died of a heroin overdose.

October 4, 1974: Poet Anne Sexton has lunch with poet Maxine Kumin.

Later that day, Sexton dies by suicide in her car, locked inside her garage, by carbon monoxide poisoning. She is 45 years old. Kumin, who died in 2014, is believed to be the last person to see Sexton alive.

October 4, 1989: Monty Python actor Graham Chapman dies at the age of 48 from what started as a malignant tumor on one of his tonsils. The cancer spread to his spine and became inoperable.

October 4, 1992: El Al Flight 1862, a cargo plane, crashes into two apartment buildings in Amsterdam’s Bijlmermeer neighborhood. All four people on the plane and 39 people on the ground are killed. The cause of the crash is thought to have been metal fatigue caused by consistently overloading the aircraft. 

October 4, 2001: 25-year-old NASCAR driver Blaise Alexander Jr. dies of head injuries in a crash at the ARCA EasyCare 100 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina. 

On Lap 63 of the 100, Alexander caught up to Kerry Earnhart (Dale Earnhart’s oldest son). The two cars made contact. Earnhart’s car flipped over onto its roof, but Earnhart was not significantly injured and was able to exit his car without assistance. Alexander’s car crashed head-on into a wall. He was pronounced dead by health care workers at the speedway’s infield care center.