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Today in Rotten History

Mar 9 1170
In Essex, a UFO is spotted over St. Ostwyth, manifesting itself as a "wonderfully large dragon ... borne up from the Earth through the air". The craft kindled the air and destroyed a house.

Mar 9 1556
David Rizzio, the secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, stabbed 56 times by a gaggle of Scottish nobles. Her husband Henry Lord Darnley had orchestrated the murder with Mary witnessing, hoping to precipitate a miscarriage.

Mar 9 1967
Josef Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, walks into the U.S. Embassy at New Delhi and asks to defect.

Mar 9 1989
Photographer/homosexual Robert Mapplethorpe dead from AIDS. His bullwhip will be missed.

Mar 9 1995
Jon Schmitz (straight) kills Scott Amedure (gay) three days after an appearance on the trashy Jenny Jones TV talk show, where Amedure admitted having a crush on Schmitz. Allegedly the two men had an affair that evening after the show, but the backlash from their rural community was going to be so severe that Schmitz panicked to defend his manlihood, filling his admirer with buckshot. Amedure's famly later sued the Jenny Jones show for $50M.

Mar 9 1997
Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace) killed in a drive-by outside the Soul Train Music Awards in Los Angeles. The murder has never been officially solved, though an ongoing feud with Death Row Records may have had something to do with it.

Interesting articles that I didn't write:::

These are some of my favorite articles from the past few years.


Shooting Star - "Three years ago, at the pinnacle of their 15-year career, local rock heroes the Meat Puppets vanished from view, after bass player Cris Kirkwood became addicted to cocaine and heroin. The story only gets worse from there." Phoenix New Times | Local Mirror

Lake of Fire - "Cris-- You know me, but you've smoked so much coke since we last talked I should probably reintroduce myself...I'm the guy who will write your obituary, unless you stop this mad jig to death's fiddle. I imagine what's going on inside your hell portal of a home, and I see long, white finger bones, racing up and down the strings like spider legs, as you whirl ever faster." Phoenix New Times | Local Mirror

EPZ Money - "The inside story of two yankees who dodged the law, flew to Belize's Export Processing Zone, and flipped the switch on a get-rich-quick Internet casino. Too bad nobody mentioned the bugs." Wired | Local Mirror

Suspicious Silo: Cold War relic site of LSD-related intrigue - "There were suspicions about what was happening northwest of town, but Wamego residents had no idea of what was really going on." CJOnline.com | Local Mirror

Welcome to Sealand. Now Bugger Off. - "Hunkered down on a North Sea fortress, a crew of armed cypherpunks, amped-up networking geeks, and libertarian swashbucklers is seceding from the world to pursue a revolutionary idea: an offshore, fat-pipe data haven that answers to nobody." Wired | Local Mirror

The Electric Kool-Aid Bandwidth Test - "Luke Stewart boldly sold politicians, businesspeople, and financiers on his trillion-dollar idea: Use the electrical grid to carry data at speeds faster than we've ever seen. Never mind how." Wired | Local Mirror



It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune. -- Woody Allen