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.
August 4, 1875: Hans Christian Andersen dies, possibly suffering from liver cancer and never having recovered from injuries from falling out of his bed.
August 4, 1892: Andrew and Abby Borden are murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts, home by an assailant with a hatchet. Andrew’s 32-year-old daughter Elizabeth, called Lizzie, is the primary suspect in the murders. She is tried for the crime and acquitted.
August 4, 1962: Marilyn Monroe dies, apparently by suicide, of an overdose of prescription sleeping medicine.
Marilyn Monroe was born 100 years ago today, on June 1, 1926.
Bummer June 1st
June 1, 1600: Quaker preacher Mary Dyer is executed by hanging in Boston for the crime of repeatedly preaching Quaker doctrine in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where it’s illegal to be any religion other than Puritan. Offered a last-minute reprieve, Dyer refuses it, choosing to be martyred for her cause.
June 1, 1981: A mob of Sinhalese people in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, burns the Jaffna Public Library. The mob formed in protest of the killing of three Sinhalese police officers the night before, at a rally held by a Tamil pro-democracy political party. The burning of the library, which destroyed an estimated 97,000 books and manuscripts, came as part of clashes between the Sinhalese, who make up about three quarters of the population of Sri Lanka, and the Tamil minority.
June 1, 2001: According to an official Nepalese investigatory team, Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal shoots and kills nine members of his own family. Among the victims were his father King Birendra, his mother Queen Aishwarya, and Dipendra’s younger brother and sister. And additional four relatives are wounded. Dipendra shoots himself following the massacre; while he is in a coma, he is declared king.
He dies on June 4th. Riots break out at his funeral, since many Nepalese people believe Dipendra’s body doesn’t deserve any of the ceremonial honors traditionally bestowed on a deceased king.
June 1, 2009: Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashes into the Atlantic Ocean after the flight crew fails to recover the aircraft from a stall. All 228 people on board are killed. Among the dead are composer Silvio Sergio Bonaccorsi Barbato and Classical harpist Fatma Ceren Necipoğlu.
Happy Saturday, people of the books. My husband and I went to Terre Haute, Indiana, to do a small plumbing repair at a business this morning. On our way, we stopped at the Oasis Diner in Plainfield.
On the way back to Indianapolis, we heard "We Didn't Start the Fire." At that moment, I suddenly remembered that which I'd completely forgotten when I originally posted that Billy Joel-themed post:
That's right: FireStarters podcast, the podcast that went over the references in "We Didn't Start the Fire." How could I have forgotten this podcast that I used to listen to regularly?
The podcast ran for 120 episodes, and that would be a lot of content to cover in a single blog post, so for now, we'll look only at the first verse. Enjoy, and stay tuned for more FireStarters!
In August 2022, I saw Jordan Peele's Nope and had the idea for a spin-off almanac of just the bad stuff. As a preview of my work in progress, I've been bringing you, the reader, posts about the most unpleasant historical happenings I come across, with a literary focus.
The following is additional material that's gone into the August entries since last year. In other words, there are some of the things I missed in last August's post.
August 1, 1994: An electrical fault sparks a fire at Norwich Central Library in Norwich, England, that destroys an estimated 100,000 books and historical papers.
August 1, 2018: 32-year-old Canadian model, artist, and actor Rick Genest, known as Zombie Boy for his numerous bone- and viscera-themed tattoos, dies from an accidental fall from an icy balcony where he has apparently gone to smoke a cigarette.
August 3, 1924: Author Joseph Conrad dies of a heart attack at age 66.
August 3, 1966: 40-year-old comedian Lenny Bruce is found dead of an apparently accidental morphine overdose.
August 4, 1875: Hans Christian Andersen dies, possibly suffering from liver cancer and never having recovered from injuries from falling out of his bed.
August 4, 1962: Marilyn Monroe dies, apparently by suicide, of an overdose of prescription sleeping medicine.
August 8, 1965: American author Shirley Jackson dies at age 48 of cardiac arrest, possibly brought on by her alcoholism and use of a variety of prescription medicines.
August 12, 2022: Indian-British author Salman Rushdie is stabbed ten times at an event in Chautauqua, New York, allegedly by a 24-year-old man from New Jersey. Rushdie suffers nerve damage to one arm, one eye, and his liver. The attacker was apparently motivated by a late Iranian religious leader’s description of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses as blasphemous since it depicted the prophet Muhammad as a fictional character.
Rushdie is an atheist. The attacker had not read The Satanic Verses.
August 16, 1949: Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell dies in the hospital of injuries she sustained on August 11th when she was struck by a speeding car with an intoxicated driver. The driver was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served 11 months in jail.
August 18, 1992: On or around this date, 24-year-old adventurer Christopher McCandless dies of apparent starvation in the Alaskan wilderness. The story of his nomadic, short life is the basis of the book and film Into the Wild.
August 19, 1936: According to LitHub, “Federico García Lorca—the Spanish avant-garde poet, playwright, and ardent socialist—was shot and killed by Nationalist militia before being buried in an unmarked mass grave somewhere outside Granada, where he remains to this day.”
Lorca had predicted his manner of death in his 1929 poem “The Fable And Round of the Three Friends:”
“Then I realized I had been murdered.
They looked for me in cafes, cemeteries and churches
August 23, 1981: East German comedic actor Rolf Herricht suffers a heart attack and dies while performing in Kiss Me Kate at Berlin’s Metropol theatre.
August 25, 1914: During World War I, German troops occupying Leuven, Belgium, set fire to the city and destroying almost half of it. 300 civilians die. Included in the burning and destruction is the library of the Catholic University of Leuven, which loses approximately 230,000 materials, including priceless medieval manuscripts.
August 25, 1992: The National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina is destroyed by Serbian bombing during the Siege of Sarajevo.
Goodreads Summary: "Was Andy Warhol a hoarder? Did Einstein have autism? Was Frank Lloyd Wright a narcissist? In this surprising, inventive, and meticulously researched look at the evolution of mental health, acclaimed health and science journalist Claudia Kalb gives readers a glimpse into the lives of high-profile historic figures through the lens of modern psychology, weaving groundbreaking research into biographical narratives that are deeply embedded in our culture. From Marilyn Monroe's borderline personality disorder to Charles Darwin's anxiety, Kalb provides compelling insight into a broad range of maladies, using historical records and interviews with leading mental health experts, biographers, sociologists, and other specialists. Packed with intriguing revelations, this smart narrative brings a new perspective to one of the hottest new topics in today's cultural conversation."
I got this book free, in exchange for an honest review, from Amazon.com's Vine program. To be perfectly honest, I chose it based on a misunderstanding. It has a chapter on Charles DARWIN, but I thought there was a chapter on Charles DICKENS. Oliver Sacks wrote in Hallucinations that Dickens had "a haunted mind" and I've been meaning to find out why.
Still, maybe it's just because I was a psychology major, but I could barely put this book down. I went to bed at 10 last night, but I stayed awake reading past 11:30.
Right before I woke up this morning, I was dreaming of a version of Romeo and Juliet, in which instead of members of warring families, the issue between the couple was that she was an "ordinary" American teenager. She was 18-19 years old, like Diana Spencer was when she got engaged to Prince Charles. Princess Diana has a chapter in Andy Warhol; she was famously a victim of bulimia nervosa.
The "Romeo" in my dream was Hugh Jackman. His rather condescending, sort of Fitzwilliam Darcy-esque dialogue made reference to the fact that he was a famous, wealthy Australian used to having servants bring him alcoholic drinks, and she didn't have money, name recognition, or staff.
(A bit of Christian Grey/Ana Steele got in there, too. I'm now on disc 15 of the 16-disc audiobook Grey. The Shakespearean bit is, no doubt, because the First Folio exhibit just opened at the University of Notre Dame, next to my birthplace of South Bend, Indiana. I intend to go visit the Folio this month.)
The plot in this dream-version of the play had to do with Hugh and his love interest finding Ron Weasley, because apparently it was also a version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. J.K. Rowling isn't featured in Kalb's book, but the author has also been candid about her personal mental illness. She's a sufferer of major depressive illness, which informed her depiction of the Dementors in Harry and Ron's world.
I guess even after I put the book up and went to bed, my brain didn't want to stop reading. I wonder if my brain was clever enough to dream in accurate iambic pentameter?
Happy Wednesday! Let's link up with Michelle at TheVintageApple.com for Oh, How Pinteresting.
Pinterest has a large collection of pictures of Marilyn Monroe reading; she read often. I made a this post with just some of those images.
I'm glad Tennessee Williams won a Pulitzer for Streetcar and not Suddenly Last Summer. I'm still somewhat traumatized by the latter. Did you know Brando was native to Omaha, Nebraska?
Yesterday was Jack Kerouac's birthday. Kerouac desperately wanted Marlon Brando to play the lead in a movie version of On the Road, but it never happened. You can read Kerouac's letter here.
This is a gorgeous screencap from From Here to Eternity: Montgomery Clift (another native Nebraskan, btw) as Prewitt, doing what Prew does best, and Donna Reed as Lorene, the ultimate ride-or-die chick, down for whatever. Donna Reed has the best costumes in this movie - especially the party dress she's wearing when Prew first sees her at the club. Gorgeous.
The English actress Lily Elsie.
Live fast, die young, bad girls do it well.
Okay, this one's not vintage. It's just a lovely image from Alex O'Hurley's Sexy Man Monday posts.
Once upon a time, I used to host a link on this blog to Nibiru Planet X, a conspiracy theory blog. Its author, Ray Austin, contacted me and asked me if I wanted to host a link on my blog in exchange for a link on Nibiru. I put up his link, but I don't think he ever put up mine. But anyway...
What caught my eye about the post mentioned in the link was that it was about Lady Gaga. I'm a fan. Why, only yesterday I was moved to express my support for Mother Monster on Mandy Nicole's blog Pretty Little Endeavors, when Mandy expressed the opinion that she much preferred Madonna to Gaga. But anyway...
I ended up spending a great deal of time reading over MK Culture. Its main premise seems to be that much of pop culture is directly related to, and influenced by, something called Project MKUltra, which a Wikipedia entry defines as "a covert, illegal human research program into behavior modification run by the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Office of Scientific Intelligence. The program began in the early 1950s, was officially sanctioned in 1953, was reduced in scope in 1964, further curtailed in 1967 and finally halted in 1973." Yeshua contends, however, that it still goes on, and that young pop stars all show signs of having been indoctrinated into a specific mind control program.
Creative Commons
Yeshua has a large number of posts related to Lady Gaga, dating back to 2009. One titled "Just Dance" also makes reference to Madonna, Beyonce, Rihanna, Ciara, Britney Spears, and Janet Jackson, among other pop cultural phenomena. Across several blog posts, Yeshua contends that the on-stage or on-record alternate personalities represented by pop stars (Beyonce's Sasha Fierce, Janet Jackson's Damita Jo, Madonna's Dita) actually represent alternate personalities caused by intentional personality-splitting through ritualistic abuse.
Public domain
It was an odd thing to read - and, like a supermarket tabloid, it was far too odd, disturbing and intriguing to stop reading. Here are a few highlights of the blog, in chronological order:
I notice a lot of these female pop stars are people whose names are already listed in my tags, women I've already blogged about. What does this say about me?
Branching off from Yeshua's blog, I read this intriguing post about the symbolism in The Prestige (the movie that caused me to fall in love with Christian Bale). Then I explored the blog Invoking Mother Spirit (now defunct). Some interesting stuff there, too, such as: Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and Amy Winehouse all died on the eve of major awards shows. To my chagrin, it didn't actually have much to do with mother spirit. I love my goddess symbolism, not because I belong to the Illuminati (or want to) but because I'm a witch. That's my spirituality.
I'm not saying I agree or disagree with any of the theories presented in the posts I read. They were just something that caught my interest today.
August 5, 2012 was the 50th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe. I'm not a gigantic Marilyn Monroe fan, although I do admire her work. I will always stop flipping channels when I happen upon Some Like it Hot. (It doesn't hurt that Tony Curtis is a gorgeous Hebrew hottie.)
I'm no fan of Joyce Carol Oates, but I have read bits and pieces of Blonde, as I wrote about in "The Good Parts." *By the way, my dad still has that biography of Marilyn in his bedroom (I stumbled upon the book when he went to Florida and left me the keys to his Ford Ranger - it was in the drawer with the truck keys). I called it "trashy," but I think I was unfairly dismissive of it. * This is that book, Goddess by Anthony Summers, being held with affection by Megan Fox, star of Jennifer's Body. Fox has a Marilyn tattoo on her left arm.
Marilyn herself loved to read. This is the image I have pinned to my Hotties Read board.
But Pinterest abounds with photos of the oft-photographed actress with her beautiful nose in a good book. Here she is tackling James Joyce.
Here she is reading Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
She read standing. She read sitting. She read lying down. (Notice her book is called How to Improve Your Thinking Ability.)
She read on park benches.
She read on the floor.
She even read to children.
She was photographed reading so often, you could make a collage.
...and of Marilyn's The Misfits co-stars, the very dapper ClarkGable could, on occasion, be caught reading...
Here they are together on a movie tie-in edition of Arthur Miller's book.
