Showing posts with label Celebrities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Celebrities. Show all posts

Thursday, October 6, 2022

Suspicious Deaths: Edgar Allen Poe

 


Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most known Authors of America. He was a poet, writer, critic, and editor that  Many of his short stories and poems haunted the minds of the readers. He’s even credited with giving birth to the detective story.  He’s even inspired many like Alfred Hitchcock. His poems and stories have even been adapted into a film and T.V. Poe even wrote a poem that the Baltimore Ravens were named after.

Born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts, but was raised in Richmond Virginia. It’s not surprising that Poe’s young life was not shy from death at an early age. Before he was 3 years old both of his parents had died, his first love died when he was 15, and his foster mother when he was 20.

Poe did not know his parents and was separated from his brothers and sisters after their mother had died. He was sent to live with John and Frances Valentine Allan who were tobacco merchants. They never officially adopted Poe. He had gone to a good school and grew up in a good environment. But John and Poe did not get along, but Frances and he did. John did not like the fact that Poe wasn’t following in the family business and wanted to do literature.

When Poe was 6 he was sent for schooling in England. He returned to America when he was 11.

By the time Poe was 13, he was considered a prolific poet. Both his foster father and headmaster tried to discourage him. Neither could as he focused on his poetry. It was rumored that Poe even wrote poetry on the back of his foster father's paperwork.

By the time he was an adult, Poe did not mend his relationship with his father. Poe had gotten into the University of Virginia in 1826. Poe was a great student who excelled in his classes but did not get enough money from Allan to pay for everything. In order to help Poe turned to gamble, but it backfired causing him to go into debt. This was also the time that Poe started to drink excessively.

When he returned home he found that his fiance Sarah Elmira Royster was engaged to someone else. This made Poe decide to move to Boston and join the military. In 1827 Poe published his first poetry book called Tamerlane and Other Poems. In 1829 he published his second collection of poems called Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems.

In 1829 Poe was honorably discharged from the military. He had acquired the label regimental sergeant major. Poe’s father refused to give him the money to stay a cadet, and when Poe began to ignore his duties and violating regulations the military discharged him. Some think that he did it to spite his father.

He then went to New York City where he published his third poetry book Poems in 1831. Poe then moved to Baltimore to live with his Aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia. Poe was not rich and could not sustain himself on his own. Even after his father’s death in 1834, he wasn’t left with anything extravagant. In 1835 though Poe found a job at the Southern Literary Messenger as an editor in Richmond, Virginia. Poe brought with him his Aunt and his 12-year-old cousin. While being an editor he published many of his own poems and stories.

In 1836 when he was 26 he married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia. The two were first cousins when Poe started to live with His Aunt Maria Clemm and Virginia he began doting on her. She eventually became the inspiration and a love interest. It was not uncommon at the time for first cousins to marry.

In the late 1830’s and 1840’s Poe’s works began to get more attention, but he didn’t make much profit from his works. He started editing for Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia and the Broadway Journal in New York City.

Sadly on January 30, 1847, Virginia died from a 5 year-long battle with tuberculosis. She was 24 years old. This affected Poe deeply. He was reported to not want to see his wife’s face dead and would have wanted to remember seeing her as alive. Not having a picture of her he hired a painter to paint her.

On October 3, 1849, Poe was found wandering the streets of Baltimore delirious. He was brought to Washington Medical Hospital. It was found out that he was not wearing his own clothes. It was said that Poe was never coherent enough to say what had happened to him.

On October 7, 1849, at the age 40-years-old, Poe met with death and like many of his poems and stories, it’s a mystery.
At the time Newspapers claimed that it was congestion of the brain from his alcoholism. In reality, no one is sure how he had died. There are many theories on what had happened.

Some think it might have been caused by a beating, or epilepsy, or even Alcohol poisoning, and many more theories. Even one theory is that he was a victim of electoral fraud which citizens force people to vote repeatedly for a candidate. They make the person change their clothes and force them to vote for a certain candidate which would have accounted for him not wearing his own clothes. It can sometimes lead to violence and sometimes death.

And the man who wrote about mysteries death involved a large mystery.

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Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Murder of Francis Boggs




Francis Boggs was born in Santa Rosa California he had started his acting career in his teens. He eventually became one of the first motion picture pioneer directors. He was also one of the first to direct a movie in California. In 1902 during his tour southwest with stock companies, he went to Chicago where he met William Selig.

William Selig began to fund a few films. Together they created the first films filmed entirely in California. This included Count of Monte Cristo (1909), In the Sultans Power (1909), and Te Heart of a Race Trout (1909). In 1909 Selig gave Boggs head position in Selig's Los Angeles branch it was built in Edendale.

Today only three of his films are known to exist.

On October 27, 1911, a meeting was happening in Boggs office at Selig Polyscope Co.'s studios in Edendale, California. Selig had traveled all the way from Chicago and arrived in Edendale that morning. The meeting included the business manager, J.L. McGee, actor, W. Santshi, and Hobart Bosworth.

Japanese janitor Frank Minnimatsu out of nowhere busted in the door and opened fire in the room. The first bullet pierced Francis Boggs in the heart and killed him. William Selig was also injured as he was shot in the arm while struggling with Minnimatsu. The others in the room tackled and restrained Minnimatsu. Minnimatsu claimed that Boggs was an evil man and that he had been waiting 6 months to kill him.

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Thursday, August 20, 2020

Interesting Deaths: The Skyway Man


The Skyway Man was a silent film from 1920 that featured plane stunts and one of the real-life deaths on the screen. According to Wikipedia the plot of the movie was as the following:

"Captain Norman Craig (Ormer Locklear) returns from the Lafayette Escadrille as a shell-shocked veteran, suffering from amnesia. Seeing him wandering around San Francisco, his girlfriend Virginia Ames (Louise Lovely), with the help of Dr. Wayne Leveridge (Sam De Grasse), devises a plan to help him restore his memory. Her family hires Craig to pursue a pair of supposed Russian thieves after the Ames jewels. The doctor, however, has plans to steal the jewels and wants Virginia for himself. An aerial chase ending with a tailspin and crash brings Craig back to his senses. He is able to thwart the doctor's schemes and finally remembers his girlfriend."

On the night of August 20, 1920, it was the last night of filming for the film Skyway Man in Los Angelos, California. They were filming a stunt scene that involved the illusion of a biplane crashing.  The stunt was to be done by Omar Locklear and Milton "Skeets" Elliot. Both were professional pilots. They were a part of the Locklear Flying Circus and had done similar stunts previously. They had flares on the wings to give the illusion of them crashing.

Things didn't go to plan this night though. The crew was supposed to turn off the lights when Omar and Skeets were close to the ground. The lights weren't turned off and this may have blinded the two and they didn't realize how close to the ground they were. The plane crashed and the two were killed immediately.

The plane crash, their deaths, and Omar's girlfriend Viola Dana's reaction were all caught on camera. The studio decided to place all of this inside the movie. They probably thought people would want to see it for the fact it had an actual death in it. They released the movie on September 5, 1920, and this makes it one of the first films with real-life deaths in it. You cannot watch the scene as the movie has been lost to time. 


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