May 18

Apparently being God’s messenger on Earth is not all that it is cracked up to be. Just think about it for a moment. Consider that Father Devine, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and scores of others have all met with singularly unpleasant ends. At first the only woman that sprang to my mind was Tammy Faye Bakker, she of the ludicrous make-up. Then it occurred to me that I had overlooked someone. I had failed to consider a dainty woman born at the end of the nineteenth century. How could I have overlooked the saintly, sweet, demure Aimee Semple McPherson? On the 18th in 1926, she disappeared from a very lovely beach in Venice, California.