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Artist Birthday: Richelle Mead
Bummer November 12
November 12, 1956: Israeli troops massacre approximately 100 Palestinian civilian men in Rafah, Gaza Strip, supposedly because they mistake the men for soldiers.
November 12, 1961: 40-year-old optometrist Arthur Duperrault is taking his family on a cruise from the Florida Keys to the Bahamas aboard the chartered yacht Bluebelle. The vessel, captained by 44-year-old Julian Harvey, set sail on the 8th. Julian’s wife Mary Dene Harvey came aboard as the ship’s cook.
Apparently intent upon collecting an insurance policy by claiming his wife had been lost at sea, Julian Harvey kills Arthur Duperrault, Arthur’s wife Jean, their 14-year-old son Brian Duperrault, their 7-year-old daughter Rene Duperrault, and Mary Dene. Besides Julian, the other survivor is 11-year-old Terry Jo Duperrault, who witnesses the crime in progress and jumps off the yacht with a cork flotation device, then swims away. Julian is found in the dinghy on November 13 by the crew of the oil tanker Gulf Lion, with Rene’s body aboard. Rene is found to have died by drowning. He claims a sudden squall scuttled the Bluebelle, that he was unable to save anyone, and that he found Rene floating in the water and attempted to revive her.
Terry Jo is rescued by the merchant freighter Captain Theo on November 16. Rushed to a Miami hospital in critical condition, Terry Jo gradually recovers from dehydration, sunburn, and exposure to the elements, then tells authorities what Julian Harvey has done. Once Harvey learns that Terry Jo survived and contradicts his story of a terrible accident, Harvey dies by suicide in a motel bathroom.
November 12, 1974: Monmouth College (New Jersey) student William Flowers dies of suffocation during a Zeta Beta Tau fraternity hazing ritual. The Zeta Beta Taus make him lie in a hole they’ve dug in the sand; the walls of the hole collapse on Flowers.
November 12, 1981: Popular 1950s actor William Holden dies after slipping on a rug in his bedroom, striking his forehead on the bedside table, and bleeding to death while apparently too intoxicated to help himself in Santa Monica, California.
Suzanne Vega reads the account of Holden’s death in the newspaper while sitting in a diner and memorializes this diner trip in her song “Tom’s Diner.” She was a frequent patron at Tom’s Restaurant, on the corner of Broadway and 112th St. in New York, while she attended Barnard College.
Vega performs the song “Tom’s Diner” a capella on her 1987 album Solitude Standing. In 1990, English music producers Nick Batt and Neal Slateford, working under the artist name DNA, add an instrumental background to Vega’s track. The collaborative version was certified gold in the U.S. and was a #1 hit in four European countries.
The lyrics include:
“I open
Up the paper
There's a story
Of an actor
Who had died
While he was drinking
It was no one
I had heard of
And I'm turning
To the horoscope
And looking
For the funnies”
The day Vega describes must have been Nov. 18, 1981, when the New York Post carried the story about the discovery of Holden’s body. We know Vega read the story in the Post because it was the only one of New York’s then-daily newspapers that had “funnies,” or comic strips.
November 12, 2018: Ohio University student Collin Wiant dies of asphyxia after inhaling whipped cream chargers filled with nitrous oxide as part of a Sigma Pi fraternity hazing ritual.
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