Atropos Archives - Page 2 of 25 - 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 30th, 2024 at 09:26am by Alex Miller

2024’s Skipped Stories: Lost in Transmission

Inevitably, it happens. Stories, small and large, are encountered, researched and prepped, and then something – a “bigger” event or a life circumstance – intervenes, and the story never sees the light of day. Until now. Join AAA for a wrap-up of some of those missed stories, as we close out the old year and ring in the new!

December 23rd, 2024 at 07:57am by Alex Miller

Death at Abundant Life

On Monday, 16 December 2024, shooting suspect Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, 15, discharged a 9mm handgun in a study hall at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, killing two and wounding six others, before turning the gun on herself. The incident, sadly, is hardly isolated, but it is unusual. The vast number of mass shootings are perpetrated by males, using assault-style rifles; women constitute only 5% of mass shooters, and with both victims also female, this becomes an “all-female” cast of characters.

October 28th, 2024 at 09:43am by Alex Miller

Halloween Horror: The Candy Man Murder Turns Fifty

It was half a century ago, on 31 October 1974, that eight-year-old Timothy O’Bryan died in agony after eating a Halloween treat laced with cyanide. The family and friends had been trick-or-treating in Pasadena, Texas, when they came across a house which did not respond to their knocks. Thinking no one was home, the group proceeded down the street, but Timothy’s father Ronald hung back awhile. In a couple minutes he rejoined the group, offering five 21” Pixy Stix to his son, daughter, and three other children, claiming that his repeated knocking had finally elicited an answer, and these were the treats he was given.