This day in history: Starting on this day (October 31) in 1923 to April 7 1924, Marble Bar, Australia experienced 160 straight days of 100 degrees (or above) Fahrenheit, setting a world record of most consecutive days at such heat.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the highest temperature ever recorded was 134.1 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 °C) on 10 July 1913 in Furnace Creek (Greenland Ranch), California, United States, though some dispute this.
In 2019 Denver, Colorado, broke their all-time coldest low-temperature record for Halloween at 7 degrees Fahrenheit. The previous record was 10 F, set back in 1991.
This day in history: On this day in 1975, Martha Moxley, 15, vanished after going to a Halloween party at the home of her neighbor, 15-year-old Michael Skakel, in an affluent neighborhood in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her body was found the next day bludgeoned and stabbed with a golf club. Skakel, a wealthy nephew of Ethel Kennedy, would be indicted for Moxley's murder 24 years later. Tried as an adult, Skakel would be convicted in 2002 and given a sentence of 20 years to life.
This day in history: On this day in 2019, Pamela Kreimeyer, 56, of Marion County, Iowa, was killed during an explosion at a gender reveal party. In an attempt to film a gender reveal worthy of posting online, members of her family filled a steel umbrella stand with gunpowder. Instead of emitting a shower of sparks as intended, the metal pipe failed to contain the overpressure, and the device acted as a pipe bomb instead. Kreimeyer was struck in the head by a metal fragment and was killed instantly.
This was not the only time someone died at a gender reveal party.
In 2021, four people died at gender reveal parties. Two pilots died in a plane crash in Cancun Mexico.
In 2020, a gender reveal party in El Dorado, California started a fire that burned 22,000 acres and killed a firefighter.
In Mexico, a pilot died after crashing a plane during a gender reveal party.
This day in history: On this day in 1881, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday participated in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. The gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a thirty-second gunfight between lawmen, actually led by Virgil (not Wyatt) Earp and members of a loosely organized group of outlaws called the Cowboys that occurred at about 3:00 p.m. It is generally regarded as the most famous gunfight in the history of the American Old West.
The shootout has come to represent a period of the Old West when the frontier was virtually an open range for outlaws, largely unopposed by lawmen who were spread thin over vast territories.
However, despite this, the old American West was actually quite tame. In his book, Frontier Violence: Another Look, W. Eugene Hollon stated that he believed “that the Western frontier was a far more civilized, more peaceful, and safer place than American society is today.” The legend of the “wild, wild West” lives on despite Robert Dykstra’s finding that in five of the major cattle towns (Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell) for the years from 1870 to 1885, only 45 homicides were reported — an average of 1.5 per cattle-trading season.
In Abilene, supposedly one of the wildest of the cow towns, “nobody was killed in 1869 or 1870. In fact, nobody was killed until the advent of officers of the law, employed to prevent killings.” [The Trampling Herd] Only two towns, Ellsworth in 1873 and Dodge City in 1876, ever had 5 killings in any one year. [Frontier Violence] Frank Prassel states in his book subtitled A Legacy of Law and Order, that “if any conclusion can be drawn from recent crime statistics, it must be that this last frontier left no significant heritage of offenses against the person, relative to other sections of the country." Mises.org
Many studies have produced the conclusion that the Wild West was much tamer than legend has it, and it only got more violent when Government "Peacemakers" were introduced.
"In their book The Not So Wild, Wild West, economists Terry Anderson and Peter Hill masterfully demonstrate that the West was not at all like the common view. Not only was violence not particularly prevalent, but stable socioeconomic relationships arose spontaneously before there was much governmental presence. In fact, Anderson and Hill repeatedly show, the arrival of government usually made matters worse, as politicians and interest groups were able to upset the arrangements that people had worked out to maximize the benefits they could derive from the land and its resources and to minimize conflict." ~George C. Leef
This day in history: American singer-songwriter Roger Miller died on this day in 1992. Roger Dean Miller was widely known for his honky-tonk-influenced novelty songs and his chart-topping country hits "King of the Road", "Dang Me", and "England Swings".
Miller also wrote and performed three songs in the Walt Disney animated feature Robin Hood as the rooster and minstrel Allan-a-Dale: "Oo-De-Lally", "Not in Nottingham", and "Whistle-Stop" (which was sampled for use in the popular Hampster Dance web site).
Although he is usually grouped with country music singers, Miller's unique style defies easy classification. Many of his recordings were humorous novelty songs with whimsical lyrics, coupled with scat singing or vocalese riffs filled with nonsense syllables. Others were sincere ballads which caught the public's fancy, like his signature song, "King of the Road". The biographical book Ain't Got No Cigarettes described Miller as an "uncategorizable talent" and stated that many regarded him as a genius.
Miller was a lifelong cigarette smoker. During a television interview, Miller explained that he composed his songs from "bits and pieces" of ideas he wrote on scraps of paper. When asked what he did with the unused bits and pieces, he half-joked, "I smoke 'em!" He also wrote a song about his habit, titled "Dad Blame Anything A Man Can't Quit". Miller died of lung and throat cancer in 1992, at age 56, shortly after the discovery of a malignant tumor under his vocal cords.
This day in history: On this day in 1666, the most intense tornado on record in English history, an F4 storm on the Fujita scale or T8 on the TORRO scale, struck the county of Lincolnshire, with winds of more than 213 miles per hour (343 km/h).
1666 was such a bad year. The Great Fire of London happened in 1666. This fire destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, the Royal Exchange, Guildhall, and St. Paul's Cathedral. It also killed off some of the black rats and fleas that carried the plague bacillus. The fire began on September 2, 1666 and lasted just under five days. One-third of London was destroyed and about 100,000 people were made homeless.
A Great Plague also happened in 1666. Also known as the Black Death, this disease had been known in England for centuries. Those who could, including most doctors, lawyers, and merchants, fled the city of London. Charles II and his courtiers left in July for Hampton Court and then Oxford.
This day in history: On this day in 1961, Chubby Checker performed his 1960 #1 hit, "The Twist" on The Ed Sullivan Show, reigniting the popularity of both the dance and the record. The song returned to the Top 100 three weeks later, and became one of only two songs to reach #1 twice.
The other song is Mariah Carey's hit "All I Want for Christmas Is You." It came out initially in 1994, however, in 2019 it topped the US Billboard Hot 100 for the first time, 25 years after its original release, thereby breaking several records, including the longest trip to number one. The following year, it also topped the charts in the United Kingdom for the first time, spending a record 69 weeks in its top 40 prior to reaching number one. With sales of 16 million copies worldwide, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" is the best-selling holiday song by a female artist, and one of the best-selling digital singles of all time.
In 1988, "The Twist" again became popular due to a new recording of the song by The Fat Boys featuring Chubby Checker. This version reached number 2 in the United Kingdom and number 1 in Germany. In 2014, Billboard magazine declared the song the "biggest hit" of the 1960s.
