Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
Today's Observance: Lupercalia Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Lupercalia
Bummer February 15th
February 15, 1933: Anarchist Guiseppe Zangara attempts to assassinate president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt as Roosevelt delivers a speech in Miami. Armed with a revolver and standing on a folding chair, Zangara misses Roosevelt and shoots Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago. Cermak tells Roosevelt, “I’m glad it was me instead of you” and dies in the hospital 19 days later. Zangara is tried, convicted, and executed by electric chair.
February 15, 1965: Nat King Cole, age 45, dies of lung cancer.
February 15, 1998: 89-year-old war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, struggling with ovarian and liver cancer and failing eyesight, chooses to end her own life by swallowing cyanide.
February 15, 2014: 42-year-old Pentecostal pastor Jamie Coots, who had been featured in tv programs for his handling of poisonous snakes during religious services, dies after being bitten on the hand by a rattlesnake during services in Middlesboro, Kentucky. Although paramedics arrived in time to treat him, Coots’s family refused the treatment, saying that it was against his religion.
February 14, 1779: Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief of Hawaii, stabs Captain James Cook to death while Cook attempts to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu and hold him for ransom. In the ensuing struggle, an unrecorded number of Hawaiians and four of Cook’s men are also killed.
February 14, 1929: In what becomes known as the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, Al Capone’s gangsters line up seven members of Bugs Moran’s rival gang and machine gun them to death. Police arrive in time to find one survivor, Frank Gusenberg, suffering from 14 bullet wounds. They ask Gusenberg to name his killer, but Gusenberg refuses before he succumbs to his injuries.
February 14, 1981: A fire at the Stardust Disco in Dublin, Ireland, kills 48 people.
February 14, 1988: A fire that begins in the newspaper room of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad destroys an estimated 300,000 books.
February 14, 1989: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issues a pronouncement urging faithful Muslims to assassinate Salman Rushdie. Rushdie’s magical realist novel The Satanic Verses depicts a fictional version of the Prophet Mohammad as a character, which the Ayatollah considers blasphemous.
February 14, 1994: Southeast Missouri State University student Michael Davis dies of bleeding on the brain after a brutal beating that served as an initiation ritual for the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.
February 13, 1925: On or around this date, cave explorer Floyd Collins dies of exposure after becoming trapped in a narrow cave passage with a 26-pound rock crushing one of his legs. He has entered the cave system in Kentucky, now part of Mammoth Cave National Park, on January 30th. Collins’ brother discovers him trapped in the narrow passage on January 31st. Despite rescue attempts, when rescuers reach Collins on February 16th, he appears to have been dead for one or more days. Collins is 37 years old.
San Antonio (Texas) Light, November 13, 1925 Vernon Dalhart
February 13, 1931: German-American circus acrobat Lillian Leitzel falls to the ground while performing at Valencia Music Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark. The metal brace holding the rigging attached to her harness has snapped and broken away. Leitzel will die of her injuries two days later.
February 13, 1945: U.S. and U.K. forces drop incendiary bombs on Dresden, Germany, causing fires with the intention of destroying munitions factories in that city. A second round of bombs is dropped in the early hours of February 14th, calculated to hamper the efforts of rescuers on the scene of the first round of bombings and fires. It’s estimated that between 22,000 and 25,000 Germans are killed, almost all of them civilians.
February 13, 1964: 22-year-old Ken Hubbs, who plays second base for the Chicago Cubs in the ‘63 season, is afraid of flying. To help himself get over his fear, he takes flying lessons and earns his pilot’s license in January 1964. The following month, the private plane he’s piloting near Provo, Utah, crashes, killing Hubbs.
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February 12, 1964: The Beatles perform a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Charles Darwin's birthday
Bummer February 12th
February 12, 1976: Rebel Without a Cause actor Sal Mineo is stabbed to death by an assailant who doesn’t know who he is and chooses him at random in an attempted robbery. The assailant is sentenced to 57 years in prison for the fatal stabbing and for a string of burglaries.
February 12, 1980: Two days after 34-year-old Patricia Frazier of Texas saw a CBS network TV broadcast of the movie The Exorcist, Frazier kills her 4-year-old daughter Khunji and cuts out her heart. According to Dr. Leon Morris, a psychologist who spoke with Frazier after the crime, Frazier believed Khunji was possessed by demons and trying to harm her (Patricia). A jury of her peers finds Patricia Frazier not guilty by reason of insanity.
I took this photo at the Nyack (NY) public library in October 2024.
Bummer February 11th
February 11, 1963: Poet Sylvia Plath, who struggles with clinical depression, dies by suicide, inhaling gas by placing her head inside an unlit gas stove. She is 30 years old.
February 11, 1989: George O’Hanlon, the voice actor portraying George Jetson, is recording his lines for Jetsons: The Movie. Just after finishing, he complains of a headache. He is taken to the hospital, where he dies of a stroke.
February 11, 2006: Then-U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney goes on a quail hunting trip near Corpus Christi, Texas. Failing to observe some safety rules, Cheney accidentally shoots his acquaintance Harry Milner Whittington in the face, neck, and chest with birdshot pellets. The pellets cause a collapsed lung and trigger a minor heart attack; Whittington is cared for in Corpus Christi Memorial Hospital’s intensive care unit.
After being released from the hospital, Whittington issues a public statement saying that he knew hunting was an inherently risky activity, that he assumed the responsibility for that risk, and that he felt badly for the vice president. Cheney did not publicly apologize to Whittington for the shooting. Whittington passed away from an unrelated accident in 2023.
February 11, 2012: 48-year-old singer/actress Whitney Houston is found unresponsive in the bathtub of her room at the Beverly Hilton hotel. Paramedics attempted CPR but are unable to revive her. The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office attributes her death to atherosclerotic heart disease, cocaine use, and drowning.
What was Diane Meyer grateful for on February 11, 2024?
friends that feel like family birthdays new necklace enjoying good food white chocolate brownies
sunlight! blankets reading before bed country music earl grey tea loving my friends latte art pink people watching in happy places looking forward to little things
February 10, 1897: Opera singer Armand Castelmary has a heart attack and dies on stage while performing at the New York Metropolitan Opera. At first the audience thinks his dramatic collapse is part of the show.
February 10, 1956: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student Thomas Clark drowns after falling through the ice into a reservoir while taking part in a Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity hazing ritual.
February 10, 2005: Playwright Arthur Miller dies of bladder cancer.
Beatles Trivia February 9, 1964: The Beatles play five songs on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Bummer February 9th
February 9, 1963: In a racially-charged incident captured in song by Bob Dylan, 51-year-old Hattie Carroll is working as a bar server at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore. The hotel is hosting an event called the Spinster’s Ball. One of the guests, Billy Zantzinger, who is white, is excessively drunk and physically and verbally abusing both his wife Jane and the African-American wait staff at the event.
Zantziger hurls racial slurs and other verbal abuse at Carroll, then strikes her in the neck/upper shoulder region with his cane. Carroll immediate begins feeling numbness in her arm, and her co-workers notice her speech is slurred. She’s taken to the hospital, where Carroll dies of a brain hemorrhage. Zantziger is convicted of manslaughter for Carroll’s death, but his sentence is a paltry six months in prison and a $500 fine, plus a fine of $125 for assaulting the other wait staff.
February 9, 1965: U.S. intervention in Vietnam begins in earnest when the U.S. sends the first ground troops to South Vietnam. An estimated 4 million Vietnamese citizens, most of them civilians, will be killed by the time the U.S. withdraws troops in 1973.
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Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: James Dean
Bummer February 8th
February 8, 1968: In what becomes known as the Orangeburg Massacre, the South Carolina state highway patrol opens fire on African-American college students protesting the segregation of a local bowling alley. Three young men are killed and more than 20 people are injured, including a pregnant woman who is beaten and suffers a miscarriage. The nine troopers who participated in the beatings and shooting were acquitted of all charges; one protestor serves seven months in prison for “rioting.”
February 8, 2007: 39-year-old model and reality TV star Anna Nicole Smith dies of multiple prescription drug intoxication complicated by multiple infections. The Hollywood, Florida, hotel in which Smith is found unresponsive contains multiple prescription bottles, all prescribed by the same doctor, but none of which are prescribed to Smith. She appears to have been taking over-the-counter cold medicine to counter the effects of skin and intestinal infections, which she may have gotten from giving herself improperly sterilized injections of a diet drug. The cold medicine may have amplified the sedative effects of the prescription drugs she used to help her sleep.
Sadly, Smith’s daughter Dannielynn is only five months old at the time of her mother’s death.
Anna Nicole Smith featured in advertising for H&M stores. Public domain.
February 7, 1497: On Shrove Tuesday in Florence, followers of the monk Girolamo Savonarola burn art, books, their cosmetics, fancy clothes, playing cards, and other cultural objects they associate with sin in the so-called Bonfire of the Vanities. Sadly, irreplaceable ancient art and manuscripts were lost to this religiously-fueled war on anything that represented luxury.
Ironically, Savonarola will later be excommunicated and convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. As punishment, he is hanged and his body burned in the same plaza where the Bonfire of the Vanities occurred. It will be forbidden for any Christian to possess copies of Savonarola’s writings.
February 7, 1904: A fire in Baltimore destroys more than 1,500 buildings, costing $150 million in damage in 1904 dollars and leaving 35,000 unemployed. Fortunately, no one is reported to have died from the fire.
February 7, 2008: A dust explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia, injures 36 people and kills 14.
February 6, 1993: 49-year-old tennis player Arthur Ashe dies of AIDS-related pneumonia.
February 6, 1998: Austrian “Rock Me Amadeus” rocker Falco (Johann Hölzel) dies in a traffic accident while on vacation in the Dominican Republic. He is 40 years old.
February 5, 1885: King Leopold II of Belgium declares Congo to be his personal possession, establishing the Congo Free State. This will prove disastrous for the Congolese people as Leopold tries to extract wealth from their nation by turning them, essentially, into serfs on the land. With the invention of vulcanized rubber and increasing demand for rubber for automobile tires, the Congolese people are subjected to horrific work conditions and abuses on rubber plantations.
February 5, 2004: At least 21 people, undocumented immigrants from China, drown in Lancashire, England, when the tide comes into Moracambe Bay while they're harvesting cockles in the sand flats. The immigrants all work for a Chinese gang boss who pays them a minuscule amount for their labor. This gang boss and two of his associates are tried and convicted of manslaughter, violating immigration law, and related crimes.
February 5, 2008: A series of tornados in Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, and Tennessee kills 57 people.
February 4, 1912: Parachute pioneer Franz Reichelt jumps from the Eiffel Tower to test a parachute suit he’s designed. The suit fails and Reichelt falls to his death in front of a crowd of people who thought they were going to watch the suit being tested on a dummy.
February 4, 1983: Singer-songwriter-drummer Karen Carpenter, half of the brother and sister duo Carpenters, dies of a heart attack while suffering from an eating disorder. She is 32 years old.
Carpenter in 1972. Public domain.
February 4, 1984: Patrick Nagel, a renowned illustrator whose style combined Art Deco inspiration with pop art, dies at age 38. He participates in a 15-minute aerobics sprint as part of a fundraiser for the American Heart Association, then succumbs to a heart attack due to a congenital heart condition that had gone undetected until his sudden death.
February 4, 1987: 67-year-old piano virtuoso Władziu Valentino “Lee” Liberace dies of AIDS-related cytomegalovirus pneumonia at his home in Palm Springs, California, after receiving the sacrament of last rites from a Catholic priest.
February 4, 2018: Indianapolis Colts football player Edwin Jackson is the passenger in a ride-sharing car driven by Jeffrey Monroe. Jackson asks Monroe to pull over by the side of Interstate 70 in Indianapolis. As the two stand by the shoulder of the road, they are struck and killed by a pickup truck driven by Manuel Orrego-Savala, a citizen of Guatemala who is in the United States illegally. Orrego-Savala pleads guilty to “operating a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol content of 0.15 or more, causing death.”
February 3, 1959: “The Day the Music Died,” when early rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson were all killed in a plane crash outside Clear Lake, Iowa. The musicians had performed at Clear Lake’s Surf Ballroom and were on their way to their next show in Minnesota. This accident is remembered in poetic form through the Don McLean song “American Pie,” recorded on May 26, 1971.
February 2, 2005: California State University, Chico, student Matthew Carrington dies of water intoxication after taking part in a Chi Tau local fraternity hazing ritual in which he’s encouraged to drink excessive water while exercising.
February 2, 2022: A pastor in Nashville, Tennessee, holds a burning of books he deems “demonic.” According to his loosely-organized, conspiratorial beliefs, a book counted as “demonic” if it was “anything tied to the Masonic Lodge.” It’s unclear whether these actions were influenced more by religious fanaticism or by mental illness.
Albino groundhog. Exhibit in the Southern Vermont Natural History Museum, Marlboro, Vermont, USA. Photography was permitted in the museum without restriction.
Beatles Trivia February 1, 1964: The #1 single in the U.S. is The Beatles’s “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
Bummer February 1st
February 1, 1891: Newspaper publisher Ignacio Martínez is assassinated by two men in Laredo, Texas, because they disagree with his newspaper’s criticism of Mexican president Porfirio Díaz.
February 1, 1974: The 25-story Joelma Building in São Paulo, Brazil, catches fire when an air conditioner malfunctions. An estimated 180 people lose their lives.
February 1, 1988: Heather Michele O'Rourke, the 12-year-old actress who starred in the Poltergeist horror movies, dies of septic shock due to stenosis of the intestine, which causes her to go into cardiac arrest. The previous day she’d been suffering from flu-like symptoms when she suddenly collapsed, prompting her parents to take her to the emergency room, where the narrowing of her intestine was discovered.
February 1, 2001: The Los Angeles funicular railway known as Angels Flight is built in 1915, discontinued in 1969, and restored in 1996. Using the original two cars, named Olivet and Sinai, the funicular has known maintenance issues in 2001, including a non-working emergency brake on the Sinai. As a result, the Sinai malfunctions while approaching the station at the top of the hill, descending back down the track and colliding with the Olivet. Seven people are injured; 83-year-old Leon Praport is killed.
What was Diane Meyer grateful for on February 1, 2024?
January 31 January 31, 1967: On Johnny Rotten’s 11th birthday, John Lennon is shopping at an antiques store in Sevenoaks in the English county of Kent. He finds and purchases a vintage circus poster, the text of which becomes the basis for the Beatles song “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.”
Bummer January 31st
January 31, 1915: During the World War I Battle of Bolimów, Germany deploys toxic chemicals in its attack on Russian troops. It’s Germany’s first large-scale use of chemical weapons, a strategy that will unfortunately become all too common in the Great War.
January 31, 1957: A Douglas DC-7B aircraft takes off from Santa Monica Airport on a test flight, accompanied by two U.S. Air Force Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jets. The role of the jets is to test the DC-7B’s radar capabilities. At 11:18 a.m. local time, one of the Scorpions collides with the DC-7B. The pilot of the Scorpion is killed in the crash; the radar operator ejects from the jet, and despite severe burns and a broken leg, survives.
All four crew members aboard the DC-7B are killed when the craft crashes, partially into the grounds of Pacoima Congregational Church and partially into the grounds of Pacoima Junior High School, where a boys’ gym class is taking place outdoors. Three students are killed, and approximately 75 students are injured by falling debris.
Among the witnesses of the mid-air collision is musician Ritchie Valens, 15 years old at the time. Valens himself will die in a plane crash two years and three days later.
January 30, 1969: The Beatles perform a 42-minute concert on the roof of their Apple Corporation record company building in London, as documented in the concert film Let It Be. It will be their last public performance together.
January 30, 2006: 55-year-old playwright Wendy Wasserstein dies of lymphoma.
January 30, 2021: 34-year-old electronic musician Sophie Xeon dies from injuries suffered from an accidental fall from a roof in Athens, Greece, where Sophie had climbed to look at the full moon.
January 29, 1916: During the Great War, Germany uses zeppelins to bomb Paris. The physical damage is minimal, but the aerial bombardment has the effect of psychologically terrorizing Parisians.
January 29, 1933: Poet Sara Teasdale overdoses on sleeping pills, an apparent suicide. She is 48 years old.
January 29, 1964: Actor Alan Ladd, age 50, dies at his home in bed from cerebral edema caused by an overdose of alcohol and prescription medications. His life had been difficult as you will see on July 3rd, November 2nd, and November 29th.
January 29, 2003: A dust explosion caused by highly flammable polyethylene dust at the West Pharmaceutical Plant in Kinston, North Carolina, kills six people, injures 36 workers, and subsequently injures two firefighters who arrive to fight the fire caused by the explosion.
January 28, 1856: Robert and Margaret (called Peggy) Garner and their four children, an enslaved family running for their freedom along the Underground Railroad, shelter at the home of free person of color Joseph Kite on the west side of Cincinnati, Ohio. U.S. Marshalls, required by the cruel Fugitive Slave Act to track down escaping enslaved persons, surround Mr. Kite’s home and demand the surrender of the Garner party. To their horror, Peggy has attempted to kill her two sons and two daughters rather than seeing them returned to slavery in Kentucky. She’s succeeded in killing her second-youngest child, her 2-year-old daughter Mary. She’d intended to kill her children and then herself; the other three children were wounded but survived. After a trial, the surviving Garners were forced back into enslavement. Peggy Garner’s story became the basis of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved.
January 28, 1960: African-American folklorist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston dies from heart disease after suffering a stroke.
January 28, 1986: A tragic cultural touchstone of my young life occurs when the space shuttle Challenger breaks apart shortly after launch. I’m eight years old and, I should note, not watching the live TV broadcast with my third grade class when it happens. We watched some of the coverage of the aftermath on a TV in the school gym after the school principal entered our classroom and told our teacher what had happened, to the best of my recollection.
January 28, 1993: Celina Shribbs becomes the second 2-year-old child to die of kidney failure from the Jack In the Box E. coli O157:H7 contamination incident. Celina didn’t eat the contaminated beef directly but contracted a secondhand infection from contact with another child.
Bummer January 27th January 27, 1967: Aspiring astronauts Roger B. Chaffee, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, and Edward H. White die when fire breaks out in their Apollo 1 space capsule as it sits on the launch pad. The high oxygen content of the air inside the capsule, plus an inefficient escape procedure, virtually guarantee they could not have survived the fire.
January 26, 1946: Two teenage sailors in the U.S. Navy, LeRoy Robert Bragg and Stanford Fluitt, die aboard the SS Frederick Galbraith of saltpeter poisoning after drinking saltpeter mixed with water as part of a tradition for a sailor’s first crossing of the Equator.
January 26, 1966: On Australia Day, the three children of the Beaumont family left their home in the Somerton Park suburb of Adelaide, Australia, and took a bus to Glenelg Beach, about three kilometers away. 9-year-old Jane, 7-year-old Arnna, and 4-year-old Grant didn’t return on the noon bus like their parents expected them to. Their father Jim drove to the beach to look for them. The baker at a local bakery reported selling them a meat pie and some pasties, allegedly for more money than the children were thought to have on them when they left, leading to speculation that a man at the beach had abducted the children, but they were never seen again.
January 26, 1972: JAT Yugoslav Airlines Flight 367 explodes mid-flight over the village of Srbská Kamenice, Czechia (then part of Czechoslovakia). Although no one is ever arrested for the crime, authorities suspect a Croatian separatist group smuggled a suitcase bomb aboard the plane. All 23 passengers and four crew members died in the explosion and subsequent crash.
The fifth crew member, flight attendant Vesna Vulović, survived with a fractured skull, a fractured pelvis, broken legs, broken ribs, and broken vertebrae. Villager Bruno Honke, who had been a medic during World War II, discovered her unconscious body and rendered aid until rescuers arrived to take the flight attendant to the hospital. 22-year-old Vulović fell 33,330 feet from the plane to the ground, believed to be the longest fall a human being without a parachute has ever survived. Vulović lived for almost 45 more years after her fall.
January 26, 2001: Lacrosse coach Diane Whipple is mauled to death by two Presa Canario dogs being cared for by Whipple’s neighbors. The neighbors, married attorneys Marjorie Knoller and Robert Noel, cared for the dogs belonging to their client while their client, a member of a violent white supremacist gang, served time in prison. Knoller was attempting to control both dogs while carrying groceries when the dogs escaped from her control and attacked Whipple.
Whipple dies of her injuries at San Francisco Memorial Hospital. Both dogs are euthanized. Knoller is convicted of second-degree murder. Noel is disbarred and convicted of manslaughter.
January 26, 2005: Juan Manuel Álvarez parks his Jeep on a railroad track north of Los Angeles, later testifying that he was intent on killing himself, but changed his mind at the last moment. The abandoned Jeep is struck by Metrolink commuter train #100, which jackknifes, striking two trains, one on either side of it. Eleven people are killed. Álvarez is ultimately sentenced to eleven consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for their deaths.
January 26, 2010: Boa Sr, an approximately 65-year-old woman of the Bo people on her mother’s side and the Jeru people on her father’s side, dies. She was the last fluent native speaker of the Aka-Bo language of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, part of India.
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January 25, 1960: Actor Diana Barrymore, aunt of actor Drew Barrymore, dies at the age of 38. Her death is initially thought to have been caused by an accidental drug overdose, but no evidence of drug overdose is found during her autopsy. The cause of her death remains undetermined.
Drew Barrymore at the Lucky You film premiere on May 1, 2007. Public domain.
January 25, 1979: Robert Nicholas Williams, working at Ford Motor Company Flat Rock Casting Plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, becomes the first human being known to have been killed by a robot. The 5-story robot, called the Parts Retrieval System, is either retrieving parts incorrectly or not quickly enough. Therefore, Williams attempts to either fix the machine or at least get a closer look. Williams climbs to the third story of the robot and is struck from behind by one of the one-ton transfer vehicles used to move the robotic arms. The vehicle crushes him, killing him instantly.
January 25, 1980: University of South Carolina student Lurie "Barry" Ballou chokes to death on his own vomit after a night of heavy drinking as part of a Sigma Nu fraternity hazing ritual. At the time of death, Ballou’s blood-alcohol level was 0.46. Impairment begins at a blood-alcohol level of 0.08, and anything above 0.40 can cause fatal respiratory failure.
January 25, 2006: Bailiffs arrive to repossess the bedsit flat occupied by Joyce Carol Vincent in Wood Green, North London. Vincent owes £2,400 in back rent. Authorities are shocked to discover Vincent’s mostly skeletal, decomposed body lying on her back next to Christmas presents that Vincent had apparently wrapped but never delivered. Food in her refrigerator has expiration dates from 2003, and although the TV is still on and the heat is working, it appears that Vincent had died in December 2003 of natural causes and her body has lain undiscovered until that January day.
With no sign of foul play, her cause of death is suspected to be either an asthma attack or complications from a peptic ulcer, both of which she’s documented to have suffered from. Vincent had a sister, but apparently had distanced herself from her family and they didn’t try to contact her during the more than two years that her body lay undiscovered in her flat.
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