Page 6 Archives - Alex's Asteroid Astrology

February 14th, 2025 at 08:15am by Alex Miller

Happy St Valentine’s Day (Massacre)

Yeah, well, you can’t expect cupids and flowers from yours truly on Valentine’s Day, right? Something a bit more twisted is on offer here, but it does involve asteroid Valentine 447.

It’s the infamous St Valentine’s Day massacre, perpetrated in 1929, when seven gang members were slain in a Chicago garage by associates of a rival gang, competing for dominance in Prohibition-era Illinois. The killers have never been positively identified, but suspicion rests with former members of Egan’s Rats, now working for Al Capone, in the mass shooting at 2122 Clark Street in Chicago’s Lincoln Park section. Competition for bootleg liquor smuggled from Canada was the proximate cause of the feud between the North Side Gang and Capone’s Chicago Outfit; some of the killers were disguised as police and the rival mobsters were slain with Thompson submachine guns, the romanticized “Tommy gun,” the most powerful weaponry of the period.

February 3rd, 2025 at 08:25am by Alex Miller

Asteroid Sleuth: The Case of the Deadly Dessert

A family holiday party in Tores, Brazil on December 23, 2024, turned fatal, resulting in the deaths of three members, and the hospitalization of three others, from arsenic poisoning. Dead are sisters Maida da Silva, 58, and Neuza Silva Dos Anjos, 65; and Neuza’s daughter Tatiana, 43; a third sister, Zeli Silva, 60, Maida’s husband Jefferson, and Tatiana’s son Matheus, 10, were hospitalized with severe injuries but survived.

January 2nd, 2025 at 02:58pm by Alex Miller

Aster-Obit: Jimmy Carter

On Sunday, 29 December 2024, former US president Jimmy Carter passed away peacefully at his home in Plains, Georgia; at age 100, he was the longest-lived chief executive in US history. Carter had been in hospice care for nearly two years, since February of 2023, and had lost his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, that November. He also enjoyed the longest post-presidency, which was viewed, rightly or wrongly, as considerably more successful than his administration, with the Carter Center promoting democracy, advancing human rights and assisting disease eradication globally. Jimmy and Rosalynn also partnered with Habitat for Humanity in an annual home-building blitz, which the Carters joined personally.

December 24th, 2024 at 09:32am by Alex Miller

What the Dickens?

It’s that time of year again; the holidays are upon us, and amidst the lights and tinsel, trees and presents, one enduring emblem of the season remains almost inescapable. It’s well-nigh impossible to make it through December without at least a glimpse of “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens’ classic 1843 novella that introduced the world to Ebeneezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim, and almost single-handedly created the modern concept of Christmas. Filmed over 100 times, and adapted into endless variations on TV, radio, the stage, animation, even a ballet, “A Christmas Carol” is surely one of the pillars that upholds yuletide.

December 20th, 2024 at 09:14am by Alex Miller

House Diary: Yule 2024 – Back to Basics

2024 is rapidly drawing to close, and the holidays are upon us! Here, my TLS (short for Tchotchke Lust Syndrome, an incurable disease common to inveterate collectors) has kicked-in fulltime over the past few years, leading to a circumstance whereby the breadth and depth of the Yule/Winter/Christmas collection has swollen to such a size that it can no longer be displayed all at once. There simply isn’t room, and the collection has had to be divided into three themes, displayed on a rotational basis.

November 10th, 2024 at 09:06am by Alex Miller

Asteroid Sleuth: The Case of the Cross-Country Cat

After the recent political developments in the US, couldn’t we all use a nice, feel-good story? Such is the tale of Rayne Beau (pronounced “rainbow”), a savvy tabby who, against all odds, was reunited with his family in Salinas, California two months after becoming lost in Yellowstone National Park, some 1100 miles away. Rayne Beau made the vast majority of the return trip, almost 900 miles, under his own steam, though no one knows how, being found and then trapped in Roseville, California, about 200 miles from home.