Almanac for January 25th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for January 25th: https://ko-fi.com/post/January-25-Burns-Supper-X8X2199WHE

January 25, 1926

Today's Observation: Burns Night (in honor of Robert Burns)

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Virginia Woolf

Bummer January 25th

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.

More Unfortunate Happenings of Past Decembers

Read last December's post here.

Lupe Vélez appeared in Photoplay magazine in 1928.

December 5, 2016: A 28-year-old man from North Carolina arrives at Washington, D.C.’s Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant armed with a rifle and two additional firearms. The man, who had been reading completely falsified conspiracy theories that the restaurant served as a front for child abuse by D.C. elites, threatened staff with the weapons and fired the rifle in the restaurant’s kitchen, apparently a “warning shot” not directed at anyone. He is arrested before anyone inside the pizza place is hurt. In March 2017, the man pleads guilty to federal weapons charges and judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (not yet an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) sentences him to four years in prison. He is released from prison in 2020.

December 14, 1944: Golden Age of Hollywood actress Lupe Vélez dies by suicide, taking 75 barbiturate pills with a glass of brandy. Her secretary found her body lying in Vélez’s bed and not, as urban legend has it, drowned in her toilet. 

December 16, 1988: Disco singer Sylvester James dies at his home in San Francisco from AIDS-related illness. He’s 41 years old.

December 17, 2021: Visual artist, classic album cover designer, and novelist Eve Babitz dies at age 78 from Huntington’s disease, the same hereditary neurodegenerative disease that killed Woody Guthrie.

December 20, 1882: Swiss Romantic poet Alice de Chambrier dies at age 21 from complications of diabetes.

December 22, 1995: Retired actor and dancer Butterfly McQueen, then 84 years old, dies at the hospital from burn wounds she suffers when she attempts to heat her home using a kerosene heater that malfunctions.

Cropped screenshot of Butterfly McQueen from the film Affectionately Yours. Trailer screenshot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

December 24, 1936: Stage and early silent film actress Irene Fenwick dies at age 49 due to complications of an eating disorder. Her husband Lionel Barrymore (great-uncle of Drew Barrymore), who famously plays Ebenezer Scrooge on the radio every Christmas, is forced to turn the role over his brother John (great-grandfather of Drew Barrymore).

December 26, 2002: Photographer Herb Ritts dies of AIDS-related pneumonia at the age of 50.

December 29, 1170: Knights loyal to King Henry II assassinate Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, inside Becket’s cathedral.

December 30, 1999: Former Beatle George Harrison, his wife Olivia, and their son Dhani are asleep in their home, Friar Park, outside London at around 3 a.m. local time. George and Olivia hear glass breaking. George goes downstairs to investigate, only to find a 33-year-old man screaming. The stranger had broken into the home by breaking a window with a bit of lawn statuary. The man has a knife and stabs George repeatedly in the chest until Olivia comes down and hits the man with a fireplace poker. The intruder then tries to strangle Olivia with the cord of a lamp. Olivia manages to fight off the attacker. 

George survives but has to have part of a lung removed. The attacker, who is experiencing serious mental illness, is found to be not criminally liable for his actions because of his mental state and is admitted to a secured mental health hospital, where he stays until after George’s death in 2001 from cancer.