Almanac for July 8th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for July 8th: https://ko-fi.com/post/July-8-Mona-Lisa-W7W21HQCA4

Percy Shelley is a contributor. https://amzn.to/3XHzDlM

Bummer July 8th

July 8, 1822: Poet Percy Shelley drowns while out sailing, along with his friend Edward Ellerker Williams. They are each 29 years old.

July 8, 1917: Canadian painter Thomas John Thomson accidentally drowns while canoeing in Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park in Ontario. He is 39 years old.

July 8, 1918: Ernest Hemingway is wounded while serving as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Red Cross during World War I. 

July 8, 1965: Veteran stunt pilot Paul Mantz is killed while filming the movie The Flight of the Phoenix. Mantz’s plane, specially built for the film, struck a small hill, then broke apart and hit the ground as Mantz tried to recover from the error.

July 8, 1974: 18-year-old park employee Deborah Gail Stone is crushed to death between a stationary wall and a rotating wall that are part of the America Sings attraction at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

July 8, 1998: Police find the body of screenwriter Gary DeVore inside DeVore’s Ford Explorer submerged in an aqueduct in Palmdale, California. DeVore had last been seen by his wife a year earlier when he left their home near Santa Barbara, California, to work on a screenplay at his office in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

Police do not believe DeVore’s death could have been an accident, since there were no signs that the Explorer had struck the aqueduct, the vehicle’s lights were switched off, and DeVore’s laptop and gun were missing. Further, the hands of the deceased man were missing. The death is officially unsolved. Some have speculated that something in DeVore’s screenplay was threatening to someone, possibly someone inside the U.S. government, and that he was murdered to stop the screenplay from getting out the public.

Read more about Gary DeVore here.

July 8, 2020: Actor Naya Rivera, age 33, rents a boat on Lake Piru in California and takes it out around 1 p.m. with her 4-year-old son Josey. The pair is expected to return to dock by 4 p.m. When the boat fails to appear by 5 p.m., a search begins. Searchers find Josey asleep on the boat, wearing a life jacket but alone. The boy tells the Sheriff’s Department that he and his mother jumped off the boat and into the lake to swim together, but that his mother had trouble climbing back into the boat and that he saw her go under the water. 

Rivera’s body is found in the lake on July 13th. It appears that she drowned after becoming caught in a rip current, having enough strength to push her son back onto the boat but then not enough strength to lift herself from the current. Rivera was an experienced boater and a strong swimmer, and neither alcohol nor drugs are thought to have been factors in her death.

Almanac for June 20th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 20th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-20-Sagrada-Familia-Q5Q01HQ6LW

Don't forget: Tomorrow is Fathers Day!

Bummer June 20th 

June 20, 1756: The infamous “Black Hole of Calcutta,” a dungeon belonging to Siraj-ud-Daulah, the ruler of Bengal in Mughal India, kills approximately 43 prisoners who are either British or supporters of the British. The fortress cell was designed to hold two to three prisoners; an estimated 64 to 66 people are forced inside by military officials, although apparently without Siraj-ud-Daulah’s knowledge. The men suffer crush injuries, heat exhaustion, and dehydration. Only 21 to 23 people survive. 

June 20, 1973: An 18-year-old man drowns in the river surrounding the Tom Sawyer’s Island location at Disneyland. He and his 10-year-old brother had attempted to remain on the island past the park’s closing time. When told by park security that they have to leave, the two brothers try to swim across the river; apparently, neither knows how to swim. The 10-year-old is rescued by a staff member.

June 20, 1979: ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart and interpreter Juan Espinosa are executed by a member of the Nicaraguan National Guard while attempting to cover the Nicaraguan civil war for the televised news broadcast. Their film crew captures the murders on camera and survives to escape and share the footage, which is aired on the evening news broadcast.

June 20, 2007: A young couple (both 21 years old) climbs to the roof of the Palmetto State Armory building (a gun shop) on the Isle of Palms in South Carolina in the early morning hours. They take off their clothes to have sex. Unfortunately, the metal roof of the building is rather slippery. The couple suffers an accidental fall from the roof. A homeless couple witnesses the accident and alerts a taxi cab driver, who finds the couple severely injured, lying in the road. Both are taken to the hospital, where they die from their multiple traumatic injuries.

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Almanac for June 17th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for June 17th: https://ko-fi.com/post/June-17-Z8Z61GMIOG

Beatles Trivia
June 17, 1974: John Lennon is in a New York recording studio working on his album Walls and Bridges when Elton John pays him a visit. Elton John hears the potential in the track “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night” and agrees to play piano on the song.

Bummer June 17th

June 17, 1871: Clement Vallandigham, an attorney who once represented Ohio in the U.S. House of Representatives, dies after accidentally shooting himself in the abdomen. The wound happened the previous day while Vallandigham demonstrated to a courtroom how the alleged victim of his client (Vallandigham represented the defendant) may have accidentally shot himself.

June 17, 1952: 37-year-old rocket scientist Marvel Whiteside “Jack” Parsons is killed in an accidental explosion while mixing explosive fuel in his home laboratory. Since Parsons was known to be meticulously careful in the lab, some have speculated that his unexpected death could have been the result of suicide or foul play. 

Sadly, when she heard the news of her son’s death, Parson’s mother Ruth Whiteside killed herself by taking an overdose of barbiturates.

June 17, 1966: A 19-year-old man who illegally entered Disneyland in Anaheim, California, is struck and killed by the park’s Monorail. 

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Almanac for January 3rd

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for January 3: https://ko-fi.com/post/January-3rd-X8X6Z4S7F

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: J.R.R. Tolkien

Bummer January 3rd

January 3, 1967: Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer Jack Ruby dies in prison at age 55. Ruby, suffering from lung cancer, dies of a pulmonary embolism.

Jack Ruby. Image is in the public domain.

January 3, 1984: 48-year-old Dolly Young is decapitated by the Matterhorn Bobsled ride at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Her seatbelt is unbuckled (either deliberately or due to a malfunction), she is thrown from the ride, and she is then struck by another bobsled.

January 3, 2014: Islamist extremists burn the Christian books of Al-Saʼe Library in Tripoli, Lebanon.

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