October 1, 1997
Sulphuric acid - Oil of Vitriol - is one of the strongest corrosive
poisons. It is used extensively in its most concentrated form for
industrial purposes and also in laboratory work, but battery acid (30%
sulphuric acid) is still sufficiently strong to cause corrosive
poisoning. Sulphuric acid acts by extracting water from the tissues
and, in the process, generates considerable heat. This has a charring
and blackening effect. Perforation of the esophagus and stomach is
likely to follow this method of poisoning.
October 2, 1997
When asked why he murdered John Lennon, Mark David Chapman replied
"I understood the words but I didn't understand the meaning." When he
was asked if he had anything to say before sentence was passed he
stood up and read a passage from The Catcher In The Rye, the
novel he had told police was his statement. He talked of standing on
"the edge of some crazy cliff" and of "seeing kids playing a game in a
field of rye". Judge Dennis Edwards Jr then sentenced Chapman to
twenty years to life and ordered that he should receive psychiatric
treatment in prison.
October 3, 1997
Student Jaimie Rising of Indiana University of Pennsylvania filed
a sexual harassment lawsuit in March against Prof. Gordon
Thornton for his behavior in his psychology of death course.
According to the lawsuit, Thornton asked in class whether any
student had ever kissed a dead person, and Rising said she had
kissed her father when he died, an action which Thornton then
described aloud as "disgusting and gross." Thornton allegedly
continued, asking Rising whether she had "stuck her tongue down
her father's throat."
October 4, 1997
In June, Glynn "Scotty" Wolfe, 88, reported to be the world's most
often-married man, passed away in Redlands, Calif., but none of his 29
wives claimed the body, and only two weeks later did his son (from wife
number 14) do so.
October 5, 1997
Austria's first automobile, the Graf und Stift, was produced in
1897. While in this car Austria's heir to the throne, Archduke Franz
Ferdinand, was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914, a
tragedy that precipitated WWI. In the next dozen years, this same car was
owned by 15 private parties, and was involved in six major accidents that
cost the lives of 13 people. After its last crack-up, in Romania in
1926, the Graf und Stift was retired to Vienna's Museum of War History,
where it may still be seen.
October 6, 1997
In 1916, a British seaman saw a bottle bobbing in the north
Atlantic. He fished it from the water, opened it, and read the final
message sent from the Lusitania before it sank, taking with it some
1,198 passengers. "Still on deck with a few people. The last boats
have left. We are sinking fast. Some men near me are praying with a
priest. The end is near. Maybe this note will..." And there it
ended.
October 10, 1997
In the city of Basel, in 1474, a rooster was accused of being a
witch. Its heinous crime was to lay an egg! The trial was held in all
seriousness by the citizens of Basel and the rooster was subsequently
sentenced to be burned at the stake.
October 11, 1997
After 1736, no one was persecuted for being a witch in the
American Colonies and witchcraft was removed as a capital offense.
October 12, 1997
Phillip Cross was an aging Lothario and a bungler. To dispose of
the wife he no longer wanted, he used arsenic, the most detectable of
all poisons. Then - only two weeks later - he married his mistress, a
girl young enough to be his granddaughter. The gossip this started
led to the exhumation of Mrs. Cross's body. The arsenic was traced to
Cross and a jury took only 10 minutes to find him guilty. His young
wife abandoned him, and he died on the gallows, a very bitter man, in
1888.
October 13, 1997
In 399 BC, Socrates stood accused of two crimes: impiety (not
recognizing the gods recognized by the state) and corrupting the youth
of Athens. Both charges were trumped up in an attempt to rid Athens
of its most outspoken citizen. At the trial before 501 jurors,
Socrates' three accusers testified that he continuously criticized
established institutions and their leaders, and that he encouraged the
youth of Athens to do the same. Socrates spoke in his own behalf, but
instead of refuting the nebulous charges, he defended his position as
a seeker of truth. By a margin of 60 votes he was convicted and
sentenced to death. His friends provided for his escape, but Socrates
refused - the death penalty offered an opportunity for martyrdom. He
spent his last moments consoling friends, then drank the fabled
hemlock potion.
October 14, 1997
The Italian author, lover, and military leader Gabriele D'Annunzio
claimed that he had once eaten a roasted baby and drunk wine from the
skull of a virgin. He died in 1938.
October 16, 1997
Alfred Lowenstein was one of the richest tycoons in Europe - an
enigmatic and well-known character. However, a blackmailer caught on
to his illegal and unethical dealings and threatened to publish a
5,000 word document which unearthed all the scandalous details. The
threat of financial ruin and public humiliation was too much for
Lowenstein. While his plane was flying over the English channel,
Lowenstein retired to the lavatory. When one of his employees went to
check on him, they found that he had disappeared through a door in the
back of the plane. His body was found two weeks later with no signs
that would indicate a struggle, so Lowenstein's death was ruled a
suicide. Unfortunately for him, he hadn't died when he hit the water
because the plane was (under his command) flying very low; Lowenstein
had drowned.
October 17, 1997
Miami, FL motorist Alvin Sims didn't notice that his truck had
smacked into a utility pole and his passenger was dead until the
police stopped his car. Donna Richardson, 29, was hanging her head out of
the window of her boyfriend's 1993 Chevrolet truck early Saturday - she
was vomiting - when the truck suddenly veered. Her head slammed a pole and
she died instantly, police said Monday. Sims, 36. kept driving.
Metro-Dade police said when an officer stopped the truck several miles
later - it's right mirror and antenna were damaged. Sims told police that
he was looking for a hospital because his passenger was sick. "Apparently,
he thought he hit a puddle and did not see that he had killed
her."
October 19, 1997
Pope Leo VIII died of a stroke in 965 while committing adultery.
October 20, 1997
Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Rooney died together on Christmas Eve, 1885.
Mrs. Rooney allegedly spontaneously combusted and Mr. Rooney, a Seneca,
Illinois, farmer, died of asphyxiation from the smoke in the air.
October 21, 1997
In 1789, a man whom police termed a "monster" and "ripper"
terrorized London. The difference between this man and subsequent
"rippers" was that he didn't murder his victims. He was a sexual
attacker whose preference was to slash women in the buttocks or to
offer a beautiful bouquet of flowers for them to smell and then slash
their faces with a sharp object strategically inserted in the bouquet.
When he was finally identified by one of his victims and taken to trial,
the judge did not know what crime to charge him with, since slashing
women's buttocks was not a listed offense. Therefore, he was charged with
damaging the ladies' clothing and sentenced to six years in prison and a
f400 fine.
October 22, 1997
Betty Lou Williams was the daughter of poor black sharecroppers.
She looked very pretty and shapely in her two-piece bathing suit on
the sideshow stage - but growing out of her left side was the bottom
half of a body, with two legs and one misplaced arm. Betty, who died
at the age of 21, made a lot of money during the depression. Her
friends say she died of a broken heart, jilted by a man she loved.
October 23, 1997
In 1980, Dr. Herman Tarnower, the founder of the Scarsdale Diet, made
the fatal mistake of dumping his long-term lover, headmistress Jean
Harris, for a younger mistress. Ms. Harris was overwhelmed by
jealousy and the pain of rejection and she drove to Tarnower's home
with a loaded gun. They argued and Harris ended up pumping five
bullets into the fatally injured Tarnower. In one of the more
unsuccessful defenses in the history of crime, Harris claimed that she
had been trying to commit suicide, when Tarnower had struggled with
the gun, which resulted in her accidentally discharging the bullets
into him. The jury was unconvinced and sentenced her to life
imprisonment. She was released from prison on the grounds of clemency
in by New York Governor Cuomo in 1993.
October 23, 1997
In 1980, Dr. Herman Tarnower, the founder of the Scarsdale Diet, made
the fatal mistake of dumping his long-term lover, headmistress Jean
Harris, for a younger mistress. Ms. Harris was overwhelmed by
jealousy and the pain of rejection and she drove to Tarnower's home
with a loaded gun. They argued and Harris ended up pumping five
bullets into the fatally injured Tarnower. In one of the more
unsuccessful defenses in the history of crime, Harris claimed that she
had been trying to commit suicide, when Tarnower had struggled with
the gun, which resulted in her accidentally discharging the bullets
into him. The jury was unconvinced and sentenced her to life
imprisonment. She was released from prison on the grounds of clemency
in by New York Governor Cuomo in 1993.
October 25, 1997
James Van Gorder, 31, filed a lawsuit in August against the
Parkway Chiropractic Center in Detroit, Mich., for negligence
during his recent treatment for back pain. According to Van
Gorder, the chiropractor had him take off his clothes and lie face
down on the two-part examining table. The way he was lying, his
genitals fell between the parts, and when the chiropractor adjusted
the table, Van Gorder got caught. He claims extreme pain,
suffering, disfigurement, and loss of sexual desire.
October 26, 1997
In June, a Scripps Howard News Service reporter examined
Consumer Product Safety Commission records recently made
public and found that 1,823 serious injuries caused by "electronic
air-fresheners" had been reported to the agency. Though the
records were short on details, they included 50 cases of amputation,
46 burns, 48 scaldings, 68 poisonings, 56 "foreign-body"
penetrations, and 69 "drownings."
October 27, 1997
On June 29, 1955, the reign of King Haakon VII, who had ruled
Norway from the time of its independence in 1905, effectively came to
an end when the beloved monarch fell in the royal bathtub at his
palace in Oslo. The elderly king lingered on for over two years
before succumbing on Setpember 21, 1957, to complications resulting
from his fall.
October 28, 1997
During the witch hunt hysteria at Neisse, in Silesia, the
executioner made an oven in which he roasted witches. In 1651, 42
women and young girls were roasted to death in it, and in nine years
he roasted over two thousand, including two babies.
October 29, 1997
Speaking to reporters at the Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) Hospital in
April, where he was recuperating after being shot in the leg by a
stray bullet during a police-robber shootout, 16-year-old Mohd
Zulkhairi Khalid said it was both a shock and a rush to be hit.
Although he had seen such things on television, he told The Star
newspaper, he felt thrilled to experience for himself the excruciating
pain.
October 30, 1997
Jennifer Lee RoGala, 30, was arrested in March in Anthony, Ala.,
and charged with aggravated child abuse after she playfully chased
and wounded three neighborhood children by shooting them with
an air-powered pellet gun. According to the neighbor who called
the police, RoGala was unremorseful: "She said they used to do it
all the time up North and couldn't understand what the big deal was
about shooting kids with pellets."
October 31, 1997
The real-life Dracula was born in 1431 in Transylvania and was given
the name Prince Vlad Tepes. His father was called Dracul -- meaning "the
devil" -- because he was a fearsome warrior. His son adopted the name
"Dracula" -- meaning "son of Dracul". Vlad's usual method of killing was
impalement with a spear or large stake. Typically, he preferred that the
victim be impaled through the rectum and out the mouth. His victims were
then hoisted high into the air so all could see. But Vlad added variations
and specialized in his sadistic art form. He impaled from the front, back
and side . . . through the stomach, navel, breast and groin. He impaled
from above while his victims hung upside down . . . and with rounded-off
stakes to prolong the torture. He had the stakes arranged in geometric
patterns and at different heights. The Bishop of Erlau, a papal legate
who had no reason to exaggerate, reported that Vlad Tepes authorized the
killing of over 100,000 people in his lifetime.
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