Almanac for November 13th

San Antonio Light, October 25, 1925

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for November 13th: https://ko-fi.com/post/November-13-The-Song-of-Lunch-Z8Z815VW6A

Artist Birthday: Robert Louis Stevenson

Lewiston (ME) Messager, February 15, 1926 

Bummer November 13th

November 13, 1829: Sam Patch, the first famous American daredevil, attempts to leap over the Genesee River in Rochester, New York, a feat he’d accomplished one week previously. This Friday the 13th, however, he miscalculates his jump and falls into the river, failing to resurface. His frozen body is found four months later, six miles down the river. Patch’s exact date of birth is unknown, but he was believed to be about 30 at the time of his unfortunate death.

November 13, 1909: In what becomes known as the Cherry Mine Disaster, about 500 men and boys (as young as 11), many of them immigrants from Italy, and about 36 mules work in a coal mine in Cherry, Illinois, that supplies coal to St. Paul, Minnesota, and to Chicago and Detroit. Around noon, a kerosene wall lantern sets fire to a cart full of hay for the mules. Workers try to use a fan to smother the fire, but this only spreads it and burns one of the wooden ladders that miners could have used for escape. They then close the mine’s two shafts in an attempt to smother the flame, but this allows “black damp” (carbon dioxide and nitrogen) to build up. 

About 200 workers are able to escape from the mine. Others are rescued using the mine’s hoisting cages. The final trip of the hoisting cage fails, however, when the operator misunderstands the would-be rescuer’s signals and raises the cage too late, finding the workers in the hoisting cage burned to death. A group of 21 survivors is rescued eight days after the fire; one of these so-called Eight Day Men later dies of his injuries. In all, 259 men and boys are thought to have died.

November 13, 1974: 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr. shoots to death the other members of his Amityville, Long Island family: his father Ronald DeFeo Sr., mother Louise, sisters Dawn and Allison, and brothers Marc and John. John, the youngest, was nine years old. The house in which the familicide occurs will later become infamous as the focus of the Amityville Horror book and films. 

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November 13, 1985: The Nevado del Ruiz volcano in the Andes Mountains near Tolima, Colombia, erupts. The resulting landslides destroy Armero, a town of approximately 29,000 residents. Only about 9,000 of them survive. Attempts to rescue injured victims are hindered by the thick mud. 

November 13, 2015: Islamist terrorists launch coordinate attacks in Paris and the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis. A football (soccer) match, restaurants, and cafes were some of the targets. Also targeted was the Bataclan Theatre while the Eagles Of Death Metal (an American band) performed in concert. The theatre attack killed 90 people, and 40 others were killed in the coordinated attacks. The Bataclan Theatre was targeted specifically because its owners, brothers Pascal and Joël Laloux, are Jewish.

San Antonio Light, Nov. 22, 1925