January 3, 1999
Michael Scaglione killed himself with a golf club in
1982. Angry about a poor shot, he threw the club at a golf
cart. A portion broke off, flew back at him, and severed his
jugular vein. (Trivial Trivia,
donated by Fiendish Freya Harris)
January 4, 1999
William Shortis, of England, and his wife Emily Ann
were found dead in 1903. They were walking up the stairs in
their home when Emily, 204 pounds, fell backward on top of
William. She died immediately, but he lived for three days,
pinned under her body, before he also died. (Trivial
Trivia, donated by Fiendish Freya Harris)
January 5, 1999
In July 1995, a Ukrainian man accused of killing a woman and making
a bra and shorts out of her skin told a court that he did it to calm his
nerves. (donated by Academy Receptionist)
January 8, 1999
In January, 1905, striking Russian workers marched on the Winter
Palace in St. Petersburg to present their petition of grievances to
Czar Nicholas II. They were met, not by the czar, who had left the
city, but by a hail of bullets from barricaded Russian troops.
Outrage over the killing of 1,000 strikers and the wounding of another
1,000 helped spark an unsuccessful revolution later that year. (The
People's Almanac #2)
January 9, 1999
Engineer Suhrid Ganguly, 22, hanged himself in Calcutta, India,
after becoming despondent trying to get his telephone fixed. He
discovered it was impossible to get a phone engineer out without paying
a bribe. Wrote Ganguly in his suicide note, "[T]here is no other way
to change the system and get an honest right to live." (Bizarre,
2/99)
January 11, 1999
In March, 1912, British naval captain and explorer Robert F. Scott,
44, and four others died in Antarctica, after reaching the South Pole
on January 18. (The People's Almanac #2)
January 13, 1999
On the afternoon of November 15, 1996, the emergency services in
El Cerrito, California received a call for help from one Marlene
Corrigan saying that her daughter was unconscious and that she was
unable to revive her. When police and paramedics arrived at the
Corrigan apartment a few minutes later, they were horrifed by the
spectacle that confronted them. The body of Christina Corrigan was
lying on the living room floor in front of a blaring television set.
She was naked, save for a filthy blanket, and was surrounded by fast
food wrappers, empty pizza, and half-gallon ice cream tubs. Her body
was also covered in bed sores and stank of feces and urine, but what
horrifed the emergency services most was the sheer bulk of the child.
She was enormous. It took 10 men to remove her corpse from the
apartment to the morgue where a postmortem showed that Christina had
died of congestive heart failure, a condition caused directly by her
obesity. Though only 13 years old, she weighed in at an incredible 680
lbs and the circumference of each thigh measured an enormous 50 inches.
Police pressed child abuse and neglect charges against Christina's
mother, who was convicted on a misdemeanor charge of child endangerment
and sentenced to a six-month suspended jail sentence. (Crimes And
Punishment Yearbook 1999)
January 14, 1999
Joan Tribblet and Everett Johnson of Chicago were
accused on June 13, 1998, for killing their 16-month-old
daughter, Onowanique. On Dec. 19, she would not sleep
through the night, so they either strangled or suffocated her.
The couple then dismembered the child's body and dissolved
the remains in battery acid. Undissolved pieces were battered,
deep fried, and tossed into the alley for animals to eat. (Trivial
Trivia, donated by Fiendish Freya
Harris)
January 16, 1999
The following people were hit by trains in May, 1998: Mr. Heath Hess,
Hornell, New York (didn't hear the whistle because he was talking on a
cell phone); Jesse Jones, San Mateo, California (tried to beat a train by
driving around a flashing railroad crossing gate); Brian McArdle, 27,
Burlingame, California (sitting on the edge of a station platform, though
the train could go by without hitting him); and David Flannery, 22,
Berkeley Springs, West Virginia (beat his friend at a game of "Who Can
Stand on the Tracks Longer in Front of an Oncoming Train")
(Bizarre)
January 25, 1999
Marie-Madeleine-Sophie Armant, second wife of North American hot air
balloon pioneer Jean Pierre Blanchard carried on the Blanchard family name
in ballooning after Jean Pierre's death from a heart attack in 1809 and
became the best-known woman aeronaut in Europe. However, Madame Blanchard
also had the dubious honor of being the first woman balloonist to die in
an aerial accident. When her balloon caught fire during a pyrotechnic
night flight on July 6, 1819, she fell out of the basket, struck a roof
and fell to her death in the street. (The
History Net)
January 26, 1999
On May 31, 1915 London suffered its first air raid. A Zeppelin LZ-38
dropped nearly 100 incendiary bombs totaling 3,000 lb. on the northeast
sector of the city. Seven people were killed. The zeppelin attacks
continued, but the airships proved too cumbersome to pose any real threat
to Britain. (The People's Almanac #2)
January 27, 1999
A man known for his few words, president Calvin Coolidge's entire will
was only 23 words long: "Not unmindful of my son, I give all of my
estate, both real and personal, to my wife, Grace Coolidge, in fee
simple." He died in 1933 from a heart attack as he finished a
jigsaw puzzle of George Washington. His estate was valued at $70,000. (Wills And
Obituaries)
January 28, 1999
In separate incidents in a three-week period in April and May, three
people attempted to set fire to their spouses yet botched the jobs and
actually lit themselves up: Ms. Solonia Gene, 25, Des Moines, Iowa
(intended to punish husband for staying out all night); a Durham, N.C.,
man (just planned to scare his wife after a fight); and Tarance Love, 37,
St. Louis (ordinary domestic fight). (News Of The Weird)
January 29, 1999
As he and his wife were leaving the LAX (Los Angeles) airport, country
music star Randy Travis was forced to vault into the front seat and turn
off the ignition of his out-of-control limousine when his driver dropped
dead of a heart attack at the wheel. (Bizarre)
January 30, 1999
Sandra Ilene West, an oil heiress, was buried in 1977
wearing a lace negligee and seated behind the wheel of her
powder-blue 1964 Ferrari. (Trivial Trivia,
donated by Fiendish Freya Harris)
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