This day in history: November 20, 1820 – The sinking of the Essex.

The Essex, a Nantucket ship hunting sperm whales in the South Pacific, sighted a school of whales on November 20, 1820 and three boats set out in pursuit. One boat was damaged during the hunt and returned to the Essex; during repairs, the men noticed a large sperm whale, 85 feet long, swimming near the ship. The whale, perhaps agitated by the sounds of repair hammers, suddenly rammed the ship twice, breaching the hull below the water line and then vanishing from sight.

The men aboard the Essex realized the ship was doomed, so they quickly collected some supplies and boarded the hastily repaired whaleboat before the Essex capsized. The other two boats returned from the hunt, and the dismayed men (twenty in all) plotted a course of action. The masts were sawn from the ship and the hull righted, then searched for more supplies. Fear of cannibals led them to reject the idea of trying for the nearer islands, so they instead planned to sail south in the whaleboats and then east, hoping to land in Peru or Chile. They estimated the trip at 56 days, and the small amount of salvaged food and water was strictly rationed.

They left the wreck of the Essex on November 22 and made fair progress, and morale was good even though everyone was tired and hungry. On December 20 the men spotted a small island and landed, gorging themselves on fish and birds, vegetation and fresh water. By Christmas they realized they had almost depleted the island’s resources and would have to depart again. Three men elected to stay on the island, and the others shoved off on December 26, promising to send help when they could.

The already inadequate rations of food and water were halved, and the dispirited men were beginning to lose hope. On January 10, 1821, one of the men died and was thrown overboard after prayers. The next day a storm separated one of the boats from the group, and the men were too exhausted to search for each other. The lone boat continued south as best as it was able, and another crewman succumbed to hardship on January 18; he too was buried at sea. When a third died on February 8, the three remaining men assessed their nearly spent stores of food and chose to keep the body. They ate from the corpse over the next ten days before being rescued by a British vessel.

The other two whaleboats had stayed together after the storm, but supplies had dwindled and were exhausted by mid-January. On January 20 one man died of thirst and exposure, and his hungry mates cannibalized the body; three more men perished over the next week and were similarly eaten.

The boats were separated on January 28; one, with three crewmen, was never seen again. The last boat, occupied by Captain George Pollard and three others, again ran out of food on February 1. The starving men decided one would have to be slain to feed the rest and drew lots to determine who would be sacrificed. Pollard’s young cousin drew the shortest straw, and was shot, butchered, and devoured. Another man died on February 11 and was also eaten. When the boat was rescued by another whaling ship on February 23, only Captain Pollard and one other sailor were left, gnawing on bones for survival.

The men were reunited in Valparaiso, Chile and told authorities of the three crewmen stranded on the island. Though nearly dead of starvation and thirst, they were rescued on April 5. Of the twenty men who left the Essex on November 20, only eight survived – three were lost and presumed dead, two had been buried at sea, and seven had been devoured by their desperate comrades.

Many of the survivors wrote accounts of the tragedy, the most famous being First Mate Owen Chase’s Narrative of the Most Extra-Ordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex. In later years, Chase’s son met a young whaler named Herman Melville and gave him a copy of his father’s manuscript, thus inspiring Moby Dick.

Sources: BBC, Maritime Quest, Wiki

This day in history: November 19, 1984 – The Mexico City PEMEX disaster.

Petróleos Mexicanos, or PEMEX, is Mexico’s nationalized petroleum company. On November 19, 1984, the PEMEX LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec, Mexico City was being filled from a local refinery when a pipe ruptured, releasing petroleum gas into the environment for several minutes. The control station noticed the drop in pressure but was unable to immediately identify the cause; as the operators worked to locate the source, the gas cloud (estimated at 60,000 cubic meters) drifted into a flare stack and ignited, exploding and starting numerous ground fires. Workers tried to flee the area and someone finally thought to initiate an emergency shutdown, but it was too late – the LPG storage tanks began to explode (registering on seismographs at the University of Mexico), some raining liquefied gas on nearby structures which then burst into flame. The terminal was totally destroyed, and more than 500 people lost their lives.

Sources: Fire and Blast Information Group, UK Health and Safety Executive

This day in history: November 18, 1978 – Jonestown.

The tragedies of this day, from the assassination of California Congressman Leo Ryan (the only Congressman in US history to be murdered in the line of duty) and the CBS journalists at the Port Kaituma airstrip, to the suicides of more than 900 men, women and children by a concoction of Flavor Aid, chloral hydrate, valium, and cyanide, are too large for a simple Livejournal entry to do them justice. So I instead offer a smaller, more intimate moment of horror from that day:

Cult leader Jim Jones had also established a Peoples Temple office in Georgetown, Guyana, 150 miles from the Jonestown site. Sharon Amos, the senior official, was with her children – Liane (21), Christa (11), and Martin (10) - on November 18 when they received a radio message from Jonestown to kill themselves. Amos shepherded her children into the bathroom, then used a kitchen knife to murder Christa and Martin. Afterward, Liane helped her mother commit suicide with the knife, then used it to end her own life.



Sources: BBC, Wiki

This day in history: November 17, 2002 – The coincidental deaths of Sheila Wentworth and Doris Jean Hall.

Two Jeeps approached from opposite directions on Alabama Route 25; one vehicle crossed the center line and they collided head on. Billy Joe Hall Jr. and his wife Doris Jean were killed in the wreck, and their eight-year-old granddaughter severely injured; Sheila Wentworth, the driver of the other vehicle, was also killed, though her young nephew Frankie survived.

Family members were doubly shocked to learn of the tragic accident – Sheila and Doris Jean were sisters who had set out to visit each other across town.

Sources: Snopes, New York Times

This day in history: November 16, 1957 – Ed Gein’s private life is revealed.

Bernice Worden had disappeared.

After a day of deer hunting, her son Frank had gone to the hardware store she ran but found the doors locked. Entering with his own key he found a pool of blood, but not his mother or the cash register. The Sheriff’s Department was summoned and began to investigate, and was soon informed by hunters that a local man named Ed Gein had been seen driving the Worden truck away from the store.

Gein was well known to the town as an odd and lonely, but seemingly harmless person. He lived alone in a rambling house on a two-hundred acre farm. His father had died in 1940 and his brother Henry just four years later; Ed was left with his fanatically religious and domineering mother, whom he doted on, until she suffered a series of strokes and passed away on December 29, 1945. He was traumatized by her loss and kept mostly to himself thereafter, performing odd jobs and babysitting to get by.

The Sheriff’s men located Gein and simply asked how he had spent his day; Ed gave conflicting stories and then abruptly claimed he had been framed for Worden’s murder. Now fearing the worst, the authorities went to Ed’s property and came across an open woodshed. Shining their flashlights around they discovered Bernice Worden – she had been decapitated, sliced open, and gutted; her corpse hung upside down from the rafters of the shed, suspended by a crossbar at her ankles and ropes on her wrists.

The men called in reinforcements and they began to search the house, cataloguing the horrors inside: Worden’s heart was in a pan on the stove, a nearby bowl was fashioned from a human skull, lampshades and chair upholstery were crafted from skin. Detectives found a belt made of nipples, a box of excised vaginas, a window shade pull made of severed lips, a carton of noses. Skulls decorated Gein’s bedposts, and a vest, complete with breasts, had been made from the skin of a woman’s torso. The peeled face of Mary Hogan, a tavern owner who had disappeared three years prior, was found in a bag; the faces of several other women, dried and stuffed with newspaper, were mounted on the wall.

Gein was questioned (and physically assaulted by Sheriff Art Schley), and eventually confessed to the murders of Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan; although suspected of others he never admitted to them. The other specimens in the house came from corpses he removed from the cemetery. He would steal the bodies of women who reminded him of his mother, making decorations and clothes from their remains; on some nights he would even wear his “costume” and pretend to be a woman.

Gein was found incompetent to stand trial and sent to a mental hospital. In 1968 doctors deemed him healthy enough for trial and he was found guilty of murder, but because he had been insane at the time of the murders Gein was sentenced to remain at the hospital. He died on July 26, 1984, and was buried next to his mother.

Sheriff Schley died of a heart attack in December 1968, at age 43. Those close to him said he was so deeply affected by Gein's crimes and the stress of testifying that it led to an early death.

Sources: Deranged, Minneapolis Tribune, TruTV Crime Library, Wiki

This day in history: November 15, 1959 – The Clutter family is murdered in cold blood.

While in prison at the Kansas State Penitentiary, Richard Hickock was told by his cellmate of a wealthy farmer, Herb Clutter, who supposedly kept ten thousand dollars in a safe at his ranch. Hickock devised a plan to rob the farmer, leave no witnesses, then start life anew in Mexico; after parole he contacted former KSP inmate Perry Smith and they put the plan into action.

Hickock and Smith walked through the Clutter’s unlocked front door in the early morning hours of November 15, 1959, binding the family and ransacking the house. Hickock learned that his information was wrong: there was no safe or large amount of cash at the ranch. The robbers instead took forty dollars, a radio, and Herb’s binoculars, and then proceeded to the next step of the plan.

“I thought he was a very nice gentleman,” Smith later told investigators. “Soft spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat." Smith was upset by the gurgling noises Herb made, so he went to each member of the family – father, mother, son and daughter – and executed them with shotgun blasts to the head.

Hickock and Smith fled the scene and wandered the country, getting caught in Las Vegas on December 30. Hickock claimed Smith committed all the murders; Smith said Hickock killed the women, but then took responsibility for them all. Both men were hanged on April 14, 1965 at the Kansas State Penitentiary, the birthplace of the crime.

Truman Capote’s account of the murders, In Cold Blood, is considered by many to be the first non-fiction novel.

Sources: TruTV Crime Library, Fun Trivia, Wiki

This day in history: November 14, 1970 – They were Marshall.

Southern Airways Flight 932 was flying low on its final approach to Huntington, West Virginia's Tri-State Airport when it collided with hillside treetops one mile west of the runway. The DC-9 burst into flames from the impact and rained wreckage upon the ground; all 75 people on board were killed.

The airplane had been carrying thirty-seven members of the Marshall University football team plus eight coaches, returning from a losing game against East Carolina University. Also on board were twenty-five members of the football team booster club, including four of the city's six physicians. Twenty-six children were left orphaned from the crash.

The town mourned its dead and the Marshall University football program was nearly discontinued, but students and fans persuaded the dean to reconsider. The new coach recruited junior varsity players and athletes from other sports and led them against Morehead State on September 18, 1971; they lost 29-6.

Sources: Marshall University, Herald-Dispatch, Check-Six.com, Wiki

This day in history: November 13, 1942 – The Sullivan brothers go down.

The Sullivan brothers – George (27), Francis (26), Joseph (24), Madison (23), and Albert (20) - were siblings from Iowa who joined the US Navy on January 3, 1942. Although the Navy had regulations barring family members from serving together, these rules were not rigidly enforced, and the Sullivans enlisted with the stipulation that they remain together. Thus, all five brothers were assigned to the cruiser USS Juneau.

The Juneau saw action at the Battle of Guadalcanal, and on November 13, 1942 the ship was struck by a torpedo and forced to withdraw. The Juneau and two other stricken vessels set out for open waters but were spotted by a Japanese submarine, which launched three torpedoes; the Juneau evaded the first two but was hit by the third torpedo in the same location that had been damaged earlier. The ship broke in half and sank within seconds. Fearing attack by the hidden submarine, the two cruisers accompanying the Juneau fled without attempting to rescue the survivors.

Francis, Joseph, and Madison Sullivan died in the torpedo explosion, but George and Albert, along with more than one hundred crewmen, survived and waited desperately for rescue. The Navy was reluctant to launch a rescue operation, fearing further attacks by Japanese submarines, so the men struggled to stay alive for eight long days, facing the elements and ocean predators. Albert drowned on November 14, while George lived a few more days before being devoured by sharks. When the Navy finally came for them, only ten men were left.

Naval security was such that news of the Juneau’s destruction was kept private. The Sullivan family had stopped receiving mail from the brothers and grew concerned, prompting Mrs. Sullivan to write to the Bureau of Naval Personnel:



The Sullivan family was officially informed of the brother’s deaths on January 12, 1943. President Roosevelt and Pope Pius XII sent letters of condolence, and both House and Senate paid tribute to their sacrifice. As a direct result of the Sullivan incident the US War Department adopted the Sole Survivor Policy, whereby families that have lost members during military service are protected from draft or combat duty.

Sources: Archives.gov, Naval Historical Center, Wikipedia

This day in history: November 12, 1966 – Robert Smith makes a name for himself.

Mesa, Arizona student Robert Smith wanted to be famous. On November 12, 1966, he left his house with a knife and revolver and walked into town. Entering a local beauty parlor he fired a shot into the ceiling, startling the five women and two little girls inside. He then forced them to lie face down in a circle, heads in the center and feet radiating outward like the spokes of a wheel, and shot each of them in the back of the head. Smith walked outside and sat down to wait for the police; upon their arrival he smiled and said, “I've just killed all the women in there.”

Four women and one girl died in the assault, and Smith was charged with five counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder, found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. When asked why he committed such a heinous act, he replied “I wanted to become known, to get myself a name.”

Sources: The Mammoth Book of True Crime, wackymurder.com

This day in history: November 11, 1864 – The burning of Atlanta.

On September 2, 1864, after a four-month siege by Union troops, the mayor of Atlanta, Georgia surrendered the city to General William Sherman, who sent a telegram to President Lincoln – “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won” – and ordered the civilian population to evacuate. Believing the Civil War could be won only if the Confederacy’s morale and economic ability to conduct war were broken, Sherman planned a “March to the Sea”, a campaign of seizure and destruction of property and materials through the South.

Sherman commanded his men to burn Atlanta on November 11, although he spared the hospitals and churches after a plea from a local priest. After several days of destruction Sherman led his troops out of the ravaged city to commence pillaging and burning his way to Savannah.

“...We rode out of Atlanta by the Decatur road, filled by the marching troops and wagons of the Fourteenth Corps; and reaching the hill, just outside of the old rebel works, we naturally paused to look back upon the scenes of our past battles. We stood upon the very ground whereon was fought the bloody battle of July 22d, and could see the copse of wood where McPherson fell. Behind us lay Atlanta, smouldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in air, and hanging like a pall over the ruined city.”

– Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman

Sources: Sonofthesouth.net, Wiki