His species only lives for a minute, but he has a long bucket list. (via the Presurfer)

"Till death do us part" does not apply to this tragic love story from Thailand, where a man decided to marry his bride, who died in a car accident just days before their planned wedding.

Oddity Central has the story of the real life corpse bride:

Merely days before the wedding, Sarinya was involved in a car crash, leaving her severely injured. She still could have been saved with timely medical attention. However, the doctors made her wait for 6 hours due to an overcrowded ICU instead of transferring her to another hospital. During this time, she succumbed to her injuries and passed away.

Deffy and Sarinya had been together for 10 years, before they finally decided to settle down. They had postponed the wedding several times, due to busy schedules and the fact that Deffy wanted to complete his education before he got married. However, after Sarinya’s untimely death, he couldn’t let her go without fulfilling her deepest desire. So, he decided to marry her anyway. On the 4th of January, in Buddhist ceremony, Deffy married the corpse of his girlfriend. The event took place in Surin, a city in northern Thailand. During the ceremony, he expressed his devotion and deep love for Sarinya.

Link (Photo: MThai)

For hundreds, if not thousands, of years it has been accepted as an axiom that inanimate objects, such as nails, are dead. This self-evident truth has been expressed in the phrase: “dead as a doornail.” Thus, someone who is unequivocally dead is said to be “dead as a doornail.”

Advanced life support technology now allows us to maintain the heart and lung’s functionality in patients who no longer have any brain function. This ability has created legal, moral and religious conundrums. Until a generation ago, these problems were solely the domain of a few ethicists who entertained them as theoretical exercises.

However, now most states have laws concerning brain death. The American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, the American Neurological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics came together and formed a Special Task Force1,2,3,4 and have endorsed the following as a definition of death: Irreversible cessation of all function of the entire brain, including the brain stem.

If the definition of death as expressed by the AMA et al has validity, it should be possible to compare this recent criteria against the widely accepted and time-tested “doornail” standard. We did just that.

We subjected a large doornail (see Figure 1) that was forged in 1986 to thorough examination, prolonged close observation, and an electroencephalogram (EEG).

Our Findings
The doornail was repeatedly examined and closely observed over a 24 hour period.

1. The nail did not exhibit any vocalizations of volitional activity.

2. The nail evidenced no spontaneous eye movements; neither could respiratory movements be detected.

3. There was no evidence of postural activity (decerebrate or decorticate).

4. The nail made no spontaneous or induced movements whatsoever. Thus, the nail met the “physical examination” criteria of death.3.4

A well-executed and reliably read electroencephalogram is a useful adjunct in the diagnosis of brain death. We performed a 30-minute EEG to document electrocerebral silence (see Figure 2). As is of ten the case with small children, it was not possible to meet the standard requirement for 10 cm electrode separation. Instead, the inter-electrode distance was decreased proportionally to the size of the nail’s head. The EEG was isoelectric, i.e. flat. Further, there was no electrical response to rousing stimuli. When we subjected the doornail to rousing stimuli, there was no response.

We conclude that the criteria for death as described in modem medical literature 1,2,3.4 is valid and may be used with confidence by clinicians.

References
1. “Determination of brain death,” Ad Hoc Committee on Brain Death (The Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA),  Journal of Pediatrics, vol. 110, January, 1987, pp. 15-19.

2. “Guidelines for the determination of death,” President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Washington, DC, Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 246, 1981, p. 2184.

3. Report of a Special Task Force: Guidelines for the Determination of Brain Death in Children,” Pediatrics, 1987, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 298-300.

4. “Guidelines for the Determination of Brain Death in Children,” Task Force for the Determination of Brain Death in Children, Neurology, vol. 37, June, 1987, pp. 1077-8.

5. You should see the door it came from.

6. The patient was seven years old at the time of the study.

(Title image credit: Flickr user topher76)

__________________________

This article is republished with permission from the November-December 1995 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

Following Napoleon’s death, demand for his uncommonly life-like, and, dare we say, rather handsome, deathly visage was high. Reproductions of the cast made by his attending doctors were copied, and copied again. As a result, there are many questions about the authenticity of the masks, up to and including controversy over whether it is even the face of the emperor at all.Today Napoleon’s death mask can bee seen in museums from North Carolina to Liverpool, Paris to Havana, Cuba.

Read more about death masks at Atlas Obscura blog. Link

About two miles (three kilometers) per hour.  That’s the conclusion of a group of researchers at the University of Sidney, who found that the walking speed of adults correlated inversely with their risk of death.

The Grim Reaper’s preferred walking speed is 0.82 m/s (2 miles (about 3 km) per hour) under working conditions. As none of the men in the study with walking speeds of 1.36 m/s (3 miles (about 5 km) per hour) or greater had contact with Death, this seems to be the Grim Reaper’s most likely maximum speed; for those wishing to avoid their allotted fate, this would be the advised walking speed.

Details of the methodology and analysis of the results are published in the British Medical Journal.  The authors note also that “the preferred walking speed of the Grim Reaper while collecting souls is relatively constant irrespective of people’s geographical location, sex, or ethnic background.”

Link.  Image credit Belle Mellor.

Burial in the United States is increasingly expensive, so some people have made their final plans with thrift in mind. That’s where Minnesota woodworker Randy Schnobrich steps in. He teaches traditional coffin building over a three-day, $700 course. Many of the participants are building coffins for themselves:

“A lot of people cringe at the idea of building their own casket,” Schnobrich says. “They see it as morbid. They think, ‘Boy, that must be kind of weird.’ But for some folks, they want to have a hand in, an intimate connection with the end of their life. Instead of just being a bystander, you can be involved in at least this aspect of your death.”

Marilyn Bader’s friends have seen her casket in her bedroom and said, “Isn’t that a little weird, having your casket in your bedroom?” But Bader, a widow who makes her living as a health care researcher, shrugs off such talk. “It’s something I made,” she says. “I’m proud of it.”

What I find fascinating about this story is that some of Schnobrich’s students begin the project when they’re dying. The act of building their coffins helps them emotionally process their mortality:

A retired teacher in her mid-60s named Carla made her coffin shortly before she died of cancer. Carla was undergoing chemotherapy before the coffin-making class. Schnobrich said she was so fatigued that he set up a futon in the workshop so Carla could nap when she needed to. At times, she had so little strength that Schnobrich had to help her push screws into the casket with a cordless drill.

“She was extremely motivated and wanted to do as much as she could,” Schnobrich recalls.

Link | Photo: Jon Kalish

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m still uncertain about whether or not I would want my body to be buried or cremated after I die. That being said, I certainly would love to be a part of any of these unique and cool cemeteries located around the world.

Link

The dance of death (usually represented by a skeleton) has been a recurring theme in art and literature for centuries -at least! BibliOddysey has a sampling of such illustrations from the Heinrich Hein University of Düsseldorf collection, ranging from 1736 to the 20th century. Link

Neatorama presents

In the New York Times Magazine, 72-year-old fitness guru Jerome I. Rodale had declared proudly sand defiantly: “I’m going to live to be 100, unless I get run down by a sugar-crazed taxi driver.”

The very next day, the confident health guru made an appearance on the then-popular TV talk show The Dick Cavett Show. The date was June 5, 1971 and I repeat (with apologies) “health fitness guru” Jerome Rodale was chatting amiably in front of a studio audience with the always clever host, Dick Cavett.

If a comedy writer was writing a sketch for a sitcom, and he or she wanted to write about the funniest, most ironic person who could possibly die in the middle of a talk show, what profession would they write the character in as? Hmmm …a health expert?

The gods, merciless as they apparently are, must indeed have a sense of humor. Obviously, no man’s death is funny or amusing, but “Tragedy plus time equals humor.” (I once politely argued with Tim Conway over whose quote that was: I said it was Steve Allen’s, but Tim said it was Carole Burnett’s. Whoever.)

Rodale was a slight man, he looked like Leon Trotsky with a goatee. He was extremely friendly with host Dick Cavett for a half-hour, chatting about health foods, and soon he offered Cavett some of his special asparagus, which he said was “boiled in urine.”

Cavett, always a ready wit, remembers asking, “Anybody’s we know?” Cavett enjoyed the interview and made a mental note to invite Rodale back. The next guest came out: Pete Hamill, a columnist for The New York Post. It was during the interview with Hamill that Rodale suddenly made a snoring sound, which got a laugh from the audience. (Comics sometimes make this sound sarcastically, as if the other person talking is dull or tedious.)

But the snoring sound caused Cavett to ask Rodale, “Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?” The line is disputed; Cavett says he “emphatically” does not recall saying it.

Pete Hamill said, “This looks bad.” and the audience laughed.

But Cavett suddenly realized his guest was dead. Next, Cavett grabbed Rodale’s wrist, thinking, “I don’t know anything about what a wrist is supposed to feel like.” Cavett went to the front of the stage and called out, “Is there a doctor in the …audience?”

Two medical interns scrambled onto the stage. They put Rodale flat on the floor, loosened his shirt and pants, and began working on him.

Cavett recalled two stewardesses in the front row who had been winking at him and joking during commercial breaks were now crying. A cameraman was standing up on his tiptoes, his camera pointing straight down on Rodale to catch the “action.” Pete Hamill, amid all the turmoil, was calmly and professionally taking notes on his reporter’s notepad.

Cavett then recalled seeing an ambulance crew arrive and feeling the bizarre feeling of denial with the audience, who had been laughing and happy just moments ago. He remembered the objects someone must have given him that he discovered in his pocket when he was in his dressing room after the show: a chapstick, a watch, and some keys. They were clearly from the dead man’s pockets.

As Cavett left and walked down an alley to get in his car, a voice called out, “Hey, Dick, was that for real?”

Cavett recalled a few lines from Rodale that night: “I’m in such good health that I fell down a long flight of stairs yesterday and I laughed all the way,” and “I’ve decided to live to be a hundred.” And, of course, the inevitable, “I’ve never felt better in my life.”

Cavett remembers going home and reading Robert Frost’s poem Out, Out-. The poem ends with the words, “And they, since they/were not the ones dead, turned to their affairs.”

On the next show, Cavett talked about the strange events during his opening monologue. No laughs from the audience. He dreaded coming back after commercial to do the rest of the show. But after he returned, the laughs started coming and he realized, much to his relief, that the crowd was “eager to get back to laughs.”

Months later, Cavett met the great (and very astute) actress Katherine Hepburn. Always curious, she asked for all the details about “the man who died” on the show. Cavett told Hepburn everything he could remember.

Then he asked her a question that had been bothering him, i.e. “Why did I take that awkward pause and say ‘Is there a doctor in the …audience?’”

“Because,” said Hepburn, “You knew that if you had said ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ it would have gotten a laugh.”

He hadn’t realized it at the time, but he knew she was right.

Although “the show where the guy died” was never aired, Dick Cavett said he met several hundreds of fans over the years who have claimed -with great certainly- that they had seen it on TV. He says he meets 20 or so every year who still say this, and devoutly believe it, to this day.

Dead Bodies Under The Mattress

This one involves someone checking into a hotel room and noticing that something smells rotten. Eventually, they realize it’s coming from under the bed. So they move the mattress and discover a dead body. This story has been going around forever and has even been featured in movies like Four Rooms. It seems like this story is pretty unlikely, particularly given that you’d at least think a hotel maid would notice the smell of a rotting body before a hotel guest enters the room, but if you believe that, you’re giving hotel staff too much credit. In fact, the most disturbing thing about this story is how often it actually happens.

In 1982, a few auto thieves killed an accomplice and left him under the bed of their hotel in New Jersey. Four days later, someone discovered the corpse, but the room had been rented three different times in the meanwhile and no one noticed they were sleeping above a dead body. In 1987, a drug user overdosed and his high friend stuffed him under the bed and then ran away. Three days later, a family reported a nasty odor in their room, prompting the hotel staff to discover the body.

In New York 1988, a murderer was clever enough to actually put the body inside the box spring. Even so, the smell still gave away the body’s hiding place only a few days later. This time, at least two guests slept on top of the mattress, not knowing what was below.

There are tons more stories like this. Apparently hotel workers often shrug off these types of odors and go on with their business until a guest complains or even refuses to stay in the room thanks to the smell. If there’s anything to be learned here, it’s that you should never stay in a hotel room with a funky smell. And, if you do notice something off, check under your bed or mattress…or you might not want to, that is, if you’d rather not know what’s below.

Source: Snopes

Image Via neekatnite [Flickr]

Spooky Acts Resulting In Death

Whether it involves a trained escape artist failing in his act or a Halloween stunt that goes awry, this tale revolves around someone dying while an audience watches, often thinking it is all part of the act. Eventually, everyone is shocked when they learn the performer has really passed away.

While it’s a chilling story that has been told over and over, even used in an episode of Tales From The Crypt, it is far from fiction. In fact, it happens more often then you would think. In 1984, magician/comedian Tommy Cooper had a heart attack while performing on a variety show. Unfortunately, because one of the staples of his act was his inept magic skills that resulted in things going terribly wrong, everyone assumed it was part of the act until it was too late.

October 1990 was a particularly bad month for these kinds of stunts. It started when teen Brian Jewell died while performing a hanging stunt meant to entertain guests on a haunted hayride. Only six days later, another teen, William Anthony Odom, died while performing a gallows scene at a Halloween party and the noose tightened around his neck, choking him to death. Days later, Joseph Burrus performed an act that involved him having to break free from a plastic coffin buried underground and covered in concrete. As spectators watched the concrete being poured into the hole, everyone noticed when the wet concrete level suddenly dropped two feet down –the coffin had been crushed. By the time they got Burrus out of the coffin, he was dead.

In 2001, haunted hayride worker Caleb Rebh died when he decided to take the place of a skeleton placed in a noose on a tree. When he struggled with the rope, guests and fellow workers thought he was acting and left him alone until he suffocated.

A good take away from these stories is to make sure your kids never think to do tricks that involve nooses. Also, don’t raise your kid to be an escape artist.

Sources: Snopes #1, #2

Image Via Sospitis [Flickr]

Dead Bodies Mistaken For Spooky Decorations

On a similar note, there have been many of occasions where someone thought something was a Halloween decoration, but it was really a dead body. Heck, this one even served as the basic plot for the Vincent Price classic House of Wax.

In at least two cases, one in 2005 and one in 2009, a suicide victim has killed themselves in October and been left for hours, even days, because people mistook the real corpse for a Halloween decoration.

One of the more interesting, slightly less gruesome stories in this vein involves the corpse of Elmer McCurdy. The outlaw was killed in a 1911 shoot-out. Afterwards, his undertaker went ahead and embalmed him, dressed him up, and started to charge locals $.05 to take a look at the bandit. Eventually, two men claimed McCurdy as their brother in 1915, but the men were actually carnival promoters who wanted the corpse for themselves. The body toured with his “brothers” for a few years and after a few stops at various other side shows it ended up in a Los Angeles wax museum, where those operating the attraction believed it was just another wax creation. It wasn’t until the Six Million Dollar Man filmed at the wax museum and a worker accidentally broke off McCurdy’s arm that people realized it wasn’t just a creepy prop. Finally, in 1977, McCurdy was given a proper burial. To ensure he would stay buried, the medical examiner ordered that two yards of cement were laid over the body.

Strangely, House of Wax was based on a Charles Belden’s story The Wax Works written in 1933. Both of these were made long before any of these stories hit the news, so either earlier news stories like this are now buried or else this one was an urban legend that eventually came true rather than a true story that became an urban legend.

Sources: Snopes #1, #2

Kidney Thieves

Just about everyone has heard the story of the person waking up in a bathtub full of ice with a note telling them to go to a hospital if they want to live. While the bathtub of ice  and note parts may be fiction, this kind of this has been known to happen in India, where a 1995 law requires organ donations to come only from closely related family members, creating a thriving black market for organs.

In 1998, three surgeons and seven accomplices were arrested after being accused of tricking people into having their kidneys removed without permission. The criminals would tell the impoverished victims they could get a good job, but first they had to undergo a medical exam. The exam would then reveal the “applicant” needed a small surgery. During the procedure, the doctor would remove one of the unconscious victim’s kidneys and then the victim would hear nothing more about a job offer. In 2008, a similar racket was discovered by authorities.

Like the wax museum stories, the interesting thing about these cases is the fact that the urban legend was around long before the true stories. In this case, the legend has been spread around since at least the eighties, but the problem in India did not start until after the 1995 law was passed.

Sources: Snopes, Washington Post

Image Via The Doctr [Flickr]

Intentionally Infected With AIDS

The most common version of this story involves a young girl dancing at a club when she feels a small prick on her arm or leg. Then she hears someone whisper “welcome to the wonderful world of AIDS,” before they escape unseen. At her feet, she discovers a blood-filled needle and when she visits the hospital, they confirm that she now has HIV. Another version involves a girl going to the movies and discovering a note informing her of her new status before she leaves.

The earliest version of this story has actually been traced back to the mid-80’s, when a man sleeps with a woman he’s only just met at a bar and then wakes up seeing the words “welcome to the world of AIDS” scrawled on the mirror in lipstick.

While the story of an anonymous stranger injecting someone at a club and the “welcome to the world of AIDS” line are both urban legends, the truth is that there are many stories of people who have intentionally been given HIV. In 2006, a woman in England was arrested for intentionally having unprotected sex with men in an act of revenge after she became infected with the disease.

Some people have even been intentionally injected with the virus, but not by random strangers like the victims in the legends. AIDS activist Brryan Jackson was infected as an 11 month-old baby by his father, who did not want to have to pay child support. By the time he was five, his infection was discovered and his father was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. Fortunately, the nineteen year-old activist is still doing fine despite his condition.

Another person intentionally infected was Janice Trahan, who was given the virus, along with Hepatitis C, by her ex-lover Doctor Richard J. Schmidt who collected a samples from some of his patients and gave it to Trahan by claiming it was a vitamin B injection. Dr. Schmidt was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to 50 years. It is unknown how Trahan is doing because the case was so long ago and there are no follow up new stories on her since 2000. This case was the first of its kind to hit the court system and it eventually inspired a similar Law & Order episode.

Sources: About.com, BBC, ABC News, Wikipedia

Image Via cooling [Flickr]

I know people always claim that urban legends are true and often claim that they know someone that was really involved with the story, but do any of you know any true urban legends that you can actually prove? Try to leave links to the news stories or other sources that prove your tale if you really want any of us to believe you.

“It was really strange, they were holding hands, and dad stopped breathing but I couldn’t figure out what was going on because the heart monitor was still going,” said Dennis Yeager. “But we were like, he isn’t breathing. How does he still have a heart beat? The nurse checked and said that’s because they were holding hands and it’s going through them. Her heart was beating through him and picking it up.”

“They were still getting her heartbeat through him,” said Donna Sheets.

At 4:38 p.m., exactly one hour after Gordon died, Norma passed too.

Link -via Kottke | Photo: Yeager Family

Chesnut Hill Baptist Church Cemetery in Exeter, Rhode Island is reported to be haunted by a vampire named Mercy Lena Brown. She was preceded in death by her mother and sister, victims of tuberculosis, and Mercy would often visit their graves. In January 1892, 19-year-old Mercy herself fell to tuberculosis and was interred with her family members. Mercy’s father George claimed she haunted him every night, complaining of hunger. His son Edwin fell sick, also with tuberculosis, but as he experienced visits from Mercy, the family and townspeople considered the cause of his illness to be the restless dead. George Brown, with the help of others, dug up the graves of his wife and two daughters on March 17, 1892. Only Mercy, who died in January, was free of decomposition. This led George to believe she was a vampire.

Read what happened then, and other tales, at mental_floss. Link

Being buried alive is a fear that has been with humanity for a long, long time. As early as the Greeks one can find stories of people being prematurely pronounced dead and accidentally burned alive on their funeral pyres. At various moments throughout history, this fear, this Taphephobia, has actively gripped the Western mind. The terror wasn’t without it’s basis in reality.

One circumstance in which live burials are thought to have often taken place were during outbreaks of disease such as the black plague. Due to the rapid spread of the disease victims were buried almost immediately after death, and sometimes beforehand. These circumstances would repeat themselves again with the cholera outbreaks throughout Europe.

Throughout the enlightenment, doctors were learning more about the human body and death. As they learned to revive people who were previously considered dead (such as drowning victims via the recently invented mouth to mouth resuscitation) doctors began to question if all the people they were burying had truly been dead. With increasing reports of premature burial, by the late 1700s the fear of being buried alive had fully taken hold of the Western mind.

And then folks dreamed up many ways to avoid this horrific fate, which you can read about. Link

(Image credit: Illustrator Harry Clarke)

Japan’s Suicide Forrest

At first glance, the Aokigahara Forest near Mount Fuji is an ideal nature destination, filled with stunning trees growing on hard volcanic rock, and icy, rocky caverns. But the forest has a much darker side, one that was popularized with the 1960 novel Nami no T?, where the main characters end up committing suicide in the area. While Aokigahara was always a destination for the forlorn to end their lives, Nami no T? made the idea much more popular and since the book was released, an average of 30 people kill themselves in the area every year, with a record-setting body count of 108 deaths in 2004.

The government has put out a number of signs in both Japanese and English urging people to reconsider their decision and seek psychiatric help. Once a year, a group of volunteers patrols the forest looking for bodies. These body hunters mark off the areas they are exploring with plastic tape that is never removed. Thus, even if you never see a dead body or ghost roaming the forest, you are still bound to see signs of the forest’s secrets wherever you happen to go.

Image Via Al Kaiser [Flickr]

Mexico’s Island of the Dolls

Unless you already have a doll phobia, the idea of an island filled with dolls doesn’t sound all that creepy at first. It’s once you learn that the dolls are mutilated and left hung in trees while they rot away, all in honor of a drowned little girl that you start to realize just how creepy this macabre tourist destination really is.

It all started over fifty years ago, when the island’s only resident, Don Julian Santana found the body of a dead little girl in the canal where the island sits. He was haunted by her memory and soon started hanging dolls in the trees to appease the girl’s spirits and to ward off evil spirits from entering the island. Doll heads, arms, legs, etc. are sprawled out across the island in a strange sacrifice to prevent further evil. Strangely though, in 2001, Don Julian suffered the same fate as the little girl, drowning in the canal beside his home. Some people believe this was the work of the dolls who have since become inhabited by evil spirits. These days, the dolls remain the sole occupants of one of Mexico’s darkest tourist attractions.

Image Via SkilliShots [Flickr]

Italy’s Catacomb of Mummies

The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo started when the local monastery outgrew its original cemetery, so the monks decided to mummify one of their recently deceased brothers before placing him in their newly opened catacombs. The process seemed to work well, so the monks began mummifying all of their fallen comrades and placing them in the catacombs. After a few centuries, word spread about the monk’s unique burial methods and it soon began to be a status symbol for rich people to be entombed in the catacombs buried in their finest clothing. Some people even left wills requesting that their clothing be changed by their family members at regular intervals.

The last friar was buried in the catacombs in 1871, but famous people from the area continued to be interred up until the 1920s. There are now about 8000 mummies lining the walls of the many hallways, which have been organized into categories: men, women, virgins, children, priests, monks and professionals. Some of the bodies are even set in poses, including the bodies of two children who sit together in a rocking chair.

Austria’s Skull Ossuary

Halstatt is one of the oldest cities in Europe, but it’s not the town’s long history span that brings most tourists to the area. Instead, it is the small town’s massive ossuary that is filled with the painted skulls of more than 650 deceased residents of the town. The ossuary was built back in the twelfth century when the town became so large that the cemetery could no longer provide a final resting place for the residents. As a solution, graves began being rented for a span of 10-15 years, at which time, the bodies would be removed, the bones bleached in the sun and then left to rest in the ossuary.

While there are plenty of ossuaries in Europe, it’s the fact that the skulls in Halstatt are painted that make this one so special. The practice began in 1790, when members of the deceaseds’ families began adorning skulls with paintings of flowers, their names and the victim’s date of birth and death. Since their family members weren’t going to have a tombstone, it was their way of marking the “grave” of their loved ones.

These days, Halstatt is small enough that residents are no longer removed from their graves, but most people prefer cremation anyway. Anyone who wishes to be interred into the ossuary just needs to make the request before they die. The most recent addition to the collection was in 1997. Nowadays, most visitors to the ossuary are morbid tourists, not residents paying respects to their ancestors.

Image Via ambivalence [Flickr]

Portugal’s Chapel of Bones

Most of us like to relish life and ignore death as much as possible, but for the devoutly religious, the greatest rewards often come long after life has passed. That’s precisely what led a 16^th century Franciscan monk to build the Capela dos Ossos (meaning “Chapel of Bones” in English) for his fellow monks. The concept that life is transitory was reflected both in the macabre décor and in the warning sign above the chapel’s entrance, which read, “We bones, lying here, for yours we wait.”

Of course, the ominous sign is still far less creepy than the interior, which is adorned with skeletal remains of around 5,000 monks held in place with cement. The bodies were removed from several dozen nearby cemeteries and, of course, the bodies of the monks who died while the chapel was being completed. As if the bone-covered walls weren’t enough, there are two bodies dangling from chains coming from the ceiling –one of which belonged to a young child. Near these bodies, along the ceiling, are written the words “Better is the day of death than the day of birth.”

Image Via Chrisiano Maia [Flickr]

Rome’s Bone-Riddled Chapels

Rome has a lot of tourist attractions, but located below the lesser-known church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini sits a tourist attraction that Frommer’s describes as “one of the most horrifying images in all of Christendom.” That’s because in the chapels below the church’s main floor, are the bones of more than 4,000 Capuchin friars. Like Capela dos Ossos, the intention here isn’t to be morbid, but to remind visitors of the swift passage of life.

Construction of the chapels began in 1631, when the monks brought 300 cartloads of deceased friars to be buried in the crypt, which contained soil imported directly from Jerusalem. As monks died while the crypt was open, the body that had been in the crypt the longest would then be exhumed and his bones would be used to adorn the chapels. There are six rooms in the underground area, including the main chapel, which does not hold any skeletal remains. Three of other rooms are decorated only by certain body parts, skulls, pelvises and torsos, and legs. The other two rooms are the most interesting.

The Crypt of the Resurrection features a large picture of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, framed by different skeleton parts. In the Crypt of the Three Skeletons, the center skeleton is enclosed in an oval to represent life coming to birth. This center skeleton also holds a scythe and scales symbolizing death and the judgment of the human soul. Beside this fixture sits a sign with translations into five languages that reads, “What you are now we used to be; what we are now you will be.”

Image Via Thomas van Ardenne [Flickr]

The Czech Republic’s Chapel of Bones

While most of the places on this list are minor tourist attractions in their region, the Sedlec Ossuary is one of the most popular travel destinations in all of the Czech Republic, attracting over 200,000 annually. Of course, that wasn’t the intention of its creators and designers. Like many ossuaries, the building was created after the city’s cemetery became incredibly over crowded.  In the year 1400, the church was constructed in the center of the cemetery with a massive lower chapel designed to be used as an ossuary. It was soon filled to the brim with the bones of around 55,000 people.

In 1870, a local aristocratic family, the Schwarzenbergs, hired woodcarver Frantisek Rint to put the bone heaps in some kind of order. Rint went further than just sorting things out, he turned the bones into works of art. He built massive bell-shaped mounds in the corners of the chapel and an enormous chandelier featuring every bone in the body. Garlands of skulls drape the vault and even the artist’s signature and the Schwarzenberg family coat of arms are recreated in bones inside the chapel.

Image Via kostnice03 [Wikipedia]

Paris’ Catacombs

This is actually the only place on this list that I myself have visited and I must say, it was well worth the visit. The Catacombs of Paris were created after the city suffered from massive cemetery overcrowding for centuries. It was so bad that all but the rich were buried in mass grave sites. Unfortunately, because the city relied on well water, the rotting corpses started to contaminate the area’s drinking supply. Finally in the 18^th century, the city decided to close down all cemeteries within the city limits and to move the bodies from the existing graves into a new ossuary located in the city’s massive underground stone quarries that had long since been abandoned. The exhumations started in 1786 and the whole process took over two years to complete –it takes a long time to transfer 6 million skeletons. In 1810, the Inspector General of Quarries Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury oversaw the renovations in the ossuary that would transform the piles of bones into a true mausoleum. He was responsible for arranging the bones into their iconic patterns and incorporating the handful of scavenged tombstones he could find into the overall design.

The deep underground ossuary ended up attracting visitors by the early 18^th century and by 1867, the area was opened to the public for tours. It has remained a popular tourist attraction ever since.

Image Via Vlastula [Wikipedia]

Pennsylvania’s Constantly Burning Ghost Town

(Video Link)

If you’ve ever played Silent Hill, then you know just how terrifying Centralia, Pennsylvania can be. While it might not be filled with dead bodies or dolls like the other places on this list, the ghost town is creepy enough to have inspired the location for one of the most terrifying video games ever created. Up until 1962, the town was just like every other small American town. But when a fire broke out in the abandoned coal mine below the town, residents started suffering adverse health effects from the resulting carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide emissions. Despite multiple attempts to put out the fire, it continued to burn. Experts now believe it may continue to burn for another 250 years. Things didn’t get really bad until the sinkholes started to burst open in the early eighties, revealing burning infernos below the surface.

In 1984, congress offered residents buyout offers to allow them to move to away from the dangerous towns, but many insisted on staying. In 1992, the state claimed eminent domain on the city and condemned all the buildings inside the area. Despite the city’s decrees, at least ten people continue to live in the five buildings left in the evacuation zone.

Unlike the town of Silent Hill, these days, practically all the buildings have collapsed and the city looks more like a field filled with too many paved streets. The four cemeteries in the town continue to be well maintained though, despite the fact that one of them continues to have smoke rising around it at all times.

Have any of you ever visited any of these places? Are they worth a visit? Also, do you have any other creepy destinations to add to the list?

Last week, I told you about 10 Things You Can Do With Your Ashes, but if you want to read about some really creepy postmortem activities, be sure to check out Mental Floss’ great article about 10 Things Your Body Can Do After You Die, including getting married and standing trial.

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Incorporate Them Into Bullets

A true hunter shouldn’t let death stop them from killing more animals. Fortunately, a new company named Holy Smoke is making efforts to ensure the last remnants of your physical remains can still be used to hunt down your favorite prey by incorporating your ashes into hollow-point bullets or shotgun shells. While it’s not among the suggested uses, you could also hire a hitman to use these bullets to take out your most-hated enemy, ensuring even death can’t stop you from exacting your revenge.

Image Via celest343 [Flickr]

Press Them Into Your Favorite Record

For those people who live and breathe music, there’s no better way to be remembered than to actually become part of their favorite album. And Vinyl will allow you to press your ashes into any record you want, including your own original album. They’ll even write a song for you for an additional fee. As a bonus, you can also have your ashes incorporated into a painting that will be used as the album cover. Now that’s a rocking way to go.

Tattoo Them Into Someone’s Skin

Granted, there have not been any long-term studies about the potential risks of tattoos incorporating ashes, but plenty of people have these memorials without any side effects and ashes are generally sterile, so it’s too much of a hazard as far as we know. Even so, if you’re going to ask a loved one to get a tattoo memorializing you, you might want to make sure they’re ok with the idea first, and, of course, make sure you can find a legitimate tattoo artist that is willing to work with ashes, since many are not.

Image Via Spy On Pea [Flickr]

Melt Them Into a Diamond

If you or your spouse loves bling, then why not make plans to turn yourself into a sparkly fashion accessory after your death? This is also a good way to ensure that your spouse won’t get remarried for a long time –after all, it’s a little weird to go on a date while wearing the remains of your loved one.

Create Art With Them

Be honest, it’s a little creepy when someone has a giant portrait of a long-deceased relative in their home, but if you really want to take the feeling of unease to another level, try incorporating the ashes of the person into their memorial portrait. Of course, if your family isn’t the type to line hallways with portraits of dead family members, you’re likely to end up decorating the attic.

While there are a number of companies that offer this service, such as Memories From Ashes who did the work above, they seem to go out of business on a regular basis, so you might want to talk to some local artists if you really want to get this done.

Melt and Cut Them Into Stained Glass Designs

If you like the idea of diamonds and artwork made from ashes, but wish there was an option that was slightly less creepy, then a stained glass memorial might be the way to go. This way you can be in the home of your loved one, shining light on them, but not staring down at them or tagging along wherever they go. You’ll be still pretty, but a lot more subtle.

Shoot Them Into Space

Is your favorite song “Rocket Man” by Elton John? Then you might just be the ideal customer for Celestis, a space burial company. For only $2,500, your remains can orbit around Earth. At $10,000, you can ensure they achieve lunar orbit, but if you want to go all out, be sure to save up for the deep space package that will run you $12,500. Wondering who else will share your resting place? Well, LSD advocate Timothy Leary and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry have both has their ashes scattered in the night sky.

Burry Them In A Pringles Can

To be fair, this is a pretty strange idea for even the most hardcore junk food addict, but it was certainly an appropriate move for the inventor of the Pringles can. Fredric J Baur first created the prototype for the design in 1966 and in 2008, he was laid to rest inside an empty, original-flavor can, per his dying wish.

Image Via Roadsidepictures [Flickr]

Incorporate Them Into A Frisbee

Baur isn’t the only person to request that his final resting place incorporate his life’s work. While Edward Headrick wasn’t the inventor of the Frisbee, he was the person most responsible for the toy’s success. As a manager at Wham-O, Headrick made a number of improvements to the design and he also invented disc golf.

Before he died, Headrick requested that his kids have his ashes mixed in with a batch of Frisbees and that the proceeds from the special edition discs would be used to establish a disc golf museum. No word yet on the museum, but the Frisbees themselves became quite a popular collector’s item. These days, the two-disc collector’s set costs $200 on Amazon.

Use Them In Comic Book Ink

While plenty of comic book fans might love to have their ashes incorporated into the ink of their favorite titles, so far only one person (that we know of) has been lucky enough to have this wish made into a reality. Of course, it helped that Mark Gruenwald was an editor for Marvel Comics for a long time before he made the strange request. The reprinted version of his 1985 comic Squadron Supreme was printed in 1997 complete with ink featuring trace amounts of its creator.

If you could do anything with your ashes, what would you do? Would you pick any of the items on this list?

You probably know that Socrates was forced to die by drinking poison, but did you know that he was made to drink hemlock, which essentially shuts down the body and allows the mind to continue functioning until death finally sets in?

For more interesting information about poisons and the people who used them, enjoy this great Mental Floss article by Miss C.

Link

Overall, “Transportation and material moving occupations”—people who work operating vehicles—dominated the death list, with 1,115 killed on the job. Only seven percent of them were murdered.

The 45-54 year-old bracket made up the plurality of deaths, with a full quarter. 16% of them plummeted to their demises.

The deadliest state to work in? Texas, with 456 fatalities. The safest? New Hampshire, with only 5. West Virginia won the explosion death contest, with 34—likely from all that coal mining, which is extremely dangerous and explosion-prone.

Happy Labor Day! Link -via the Presurfer

He’s not the only celebrity responsible for someone else’s death. BuzzFeed has an interesting list of people who have killed someone.

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A lot of people go to Vegas for bachelor parties, but death party? Now that's unusual:

A British marine killed in Afghanistan left an unusual bequest in his will: money for his friends to go to Las Vegas for a party. [...]

Like many soldiers assigned to a war zone, Hart had taken out a life insurance policy.

After his death, his family found Hart had designated 50,000 British pounds for a charity that helps wounded service personnel -- and 100,000 pounds (about $163,000) for his military and civilian buddies and their girlfriends to go to Las Vegas.

Link

In the French animation Mortys, death is a working mother. Business is disrupted when her child schemes to get more of her time. Mortys is a graduation short film co-directed by Gaelle Lebegue, Mathieu Vidal, Aurelien Ronceray-Peslin et Nicolas Villeneuve, and produced by the ESMA. -via I Am Bored

Before Alice Taylor of Wonderland blog quit her day job to work on a startup, she worked for Britain's Channel 4 Education to create public service games with social lessons. This one above deserves a particular note: The End is a Flash game about death, belief and science.

The game about death & philosophy I commissioned from lovely Preloaded, to have a look at death and all the things around it. It's something as a society we report on a lot, and fetishise/agonise over, but we never really talk about how to handle it when it happens.

Kids (in the UK) are predominantly atheist or agnostic these days (large numbers of adults, too), and religion usually has quite a lot of ritual and support ideas around death, but the secular world, not so much. Us atheists are on our own, a bit. This game was commissioned around wanting to help out with that, a bit.

It's a platformer, and a quiz, and a 2-player card game, and a bunch of thought-provoking, open ended questions. Oh, and collectibles. Dig in.

Link | Alice's blog post about The End - via Boing Boing

Caught in a snowstorm, the trekkers veered off course and decided to set up camp on the slopes of Kholat Syakhl – at 5pm on February 2, judging from their photos and diary entries. They went to sleep. Then something horrific occurred, the nature of which we can but guess at. Some have suggested that it was an avalanche, but others aren’t satisfied with this explanation. Only one thing is known for sure. Whatever it was, it was serious enough to make the skiers leap up in the middle of the night and escape from their tent by cutting it open from the inside. Some didn’t even bother to put on clothes or boots as they ventured outside into the bitter cold.

When the bodies were finally recovered, some had unexplained wounds, and the tongue of one woman was missing. Read about the investigation and the various theories about what happened to the campers, at Environmental Graffiti. Link

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Abandoned places can be creepy. Morgues are always creepy to most people. Put them together, and you’ve got some really creepy places -and even more so when you know their history. Environmental Graffiti has a photo collection of abandoned morgues in hospitals, asylums, municipalities, military bases, and even this one from Ellis Island. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Vilseskogen)

Ancient Arab swords. Note that some designs were more commonly used for decapitation, and other designs less so. Drawing: The Book of the Sword, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Chatto and Windus, London, 1884.

The following is reprinted from The Annals of Improbable Research. Click to enlarge images.

by Simcha Lev-Yadun, Department of Science Education—Biology, Faculty of Science and Science Education University of Haifa, Oranim, Tivon, Israel.
with instructive illustrations and historical documentation selected by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff

The global energy crisis and other global changes have been studied from endless points of view. Here, I wish to discuss these matters, and also global ecology, from the point of view of the changing methods of executions, a point of view that has never been studied before.

Ancient Hebrews and Arab Innovations
The ancient Hebrews, living in the barren hill country of Judea and Samaria, executed people by stoning. The rocky, almost tree-less environment explains the use of this execution method. Arabs in the nearby sandy deserts of Saudi Arabia could not stone condemned people to death with sand particles, and instead used to decapitate them with a sword.

At least one form of impalement by stake is thought to be a Turkish innovation. Details here are from The Eastern Question: Its Facts and Fallacies, Malcolm MacColl, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1877.

Ancient Turkish and Asian Tropical Innovations

In the Near East, gravity, which comes free of charge, was also used for traditional execution. The Turks, for instance, used to execute by impaling people on a metal spear, a vivid practice known as “Chazuk.” A botanical parallel was in use in tropical regions of Asia, where instead of putting the bound condemned person on top of a spear, he was tied on top of a young palm or a bamboo. The plant shoot, in its search for light, grew quickly (a very relative term for the impaled one) through the condemned person. Such good plant growth was possible in the tropics, but not in the much more arid Near East. We see that when it was possible, biology was used, but when impossible, physics also served the purpose.

Impalement by bamboo growth originated in regions of Asia that could take advantage of the rapid growth of certain varieties of the bamboo plant. Details shown here are from Two Happy Years in Ceylon, Constance Frederica Gordon Cumming, Chatto and Windus, London, 1893. Be sure to read footnote 1 in this image. (below)

Ancient Roman Innovations
Still in the semi-arid Mediterranean, the Romans, who suffered from the consequences of severe deforestation, conserved good quality timber by the practice of crucifixion. They used wooden crosses repeatedly, and even forced the condemned people to carry the horizontal beam. An alternative tree-based method that saved the trees used in execution was to bend two trees till they were close and tie them with ropes so the ropes prevented them from straightening up. The condemned person was tied to the trees (an arm and a leg to each tree), the ropes holding the trees were cut. The end was quick, and again, there was no waste of timber. medieval European Innovations In then-wooded Medieval Europe, people were executed for centuries by the auto-de-fe, i.e., burnt alive on the stake. This spectacular procedure was carried on till the increasing depletion of the forests was recognized. Thus, in the 18th century, a new method, much friendlier to the environment, emerged: the guillotine. Taking into account the large number of people executed using the guillotine during the French Revolution, the continued use of auto-de-fe would probably have depleted the remaining forests of Western Europe.

The guillotine proved to be an environmentally friendly innovation in France. Drawing: History of the Guillotine, John Wilson Croker, John Murray, London, 1853.

North American Innovations
In a different wooded ecosystem, in North America, before the forests were cut down, condemned people were hanged on trees. Following the forest decline in many parts of the U.S., the electric chair, based on electricity produced from fossil oil or coal, was invented and used. Being industrialized, this method of execution suited the U.S. However, following the energy crisis of the 1970s, among the various measures to save energy, many of the U.S. states decided to use lethal injections.

“The end was quick,
and again, there was
no waste of timber.”

Conclusion: Execution and Conservation
We can therefore see that both regional ecology and environmental changes influenced the methods of execution in various countries and ecologies. In any case, a global trend of environmental conservation along with the exploitation of specific local resources is obvious in this colorful aspect of human culture.

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the July-August 2009 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

The snail shells above are simply gorgeous, as are the jewelry made from them. The only problem? The snails are being driven to extinction just so people can makes earrings and necklaces from them. That’s not the only idiotic reason humans have been driving certain creatures to extinction, read the rest over at Cracked. Warning: some of the language is NSFW.

Link

Interim chamber president Blue Hessner says the chamber wants to sell rights to the event and concentrate on business development.

According to the Boulder Daily Camera, the event has become too expensive and the chamber believes an event company could do a better job.

Anyone interested in purchasing the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival should contact the Chamber of Commerce. Link -via Fortean Times

(Image credit: Frozen Dead Guy Days)

Marie Curie

Perhaps the most influential inventor on this list is Maria Sklodowska-Curie. Maria co-discovered both radium and polonium and revolutionized modern chemistry when she discovered a method to isolate radioactive isotopes. She was so well-respected that she became the first female professor at the University of Paris. If that weren’t impressive enough, she was not only the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, she was also the first person to receive two Nobel Prizes. Even the word “radioactive” was her creation.

Unfortunately, being one of the first researchers to work with radioactive particles, she did not understand the dangers they presented to the human body. Most of her work was carried out in a shed without any protective measures whatsoever. Eventually, she died from aplastic anemia caused by extensive exposure to ionized radiation that emanated from her research materials.

Her shed has now been converted to a museum, but her paperwork, even her cookbook, is so radioactive that they are too dangerous to handle without protective gear and are stored in lead-lined boxes.

Horace Lawson Hunley

Horace had a number of careers, serving as a legislator, a lawyer and a confederate marine engineer in his short 40 years, but it was his role as a marine engineer that he will be best remembered for. Horace was the inventor of the first combat submarine. His creation, the H.L. Hunley, was known to be dangerous after five out of nine crew members died on the device’s first run in an attempt to attack the Union blockade in the Charleston Harbor, but that didn’t stop the inventor or the confederacy from investing more time and manpower into the device.

Like any good inventor, Horace knew he couldn’t quit. He kept working on the sub and was so willing to stand by his work that he served on the second run to attack the blockade. Again the sub sank, this time killing all eight crew members, including Horace.

Determined not to give up, the confederates recovered the sub and made a third attempt to attack the blockade. This time they were successful and Horace’s invention went down in history for being the first sub to bring down an enemy ship. Unfortunately for the crew, the sub still wasn’t safe and it sank shortly after the attack, without even being struck, and all nine crew members died.

This time, the Hunley was allowed to stay underwater. Lost for 132 years, the sub was eventually discovered just outside of Charleston Harbor in the middle of the Atlantic.

Li Si

You may have heard the rumors that Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was killed by his own invention, the guillotine, but as it turns out, he not only died from natural causes, he didn’t even invent the guillotine. He simply served on a panel that had set out to develop a more humane way to execute criminals. Guillotin suggested a simple device that would behead the victim quickly and painlessly, paving the way for the invention paving his namesake.

On the opposite side of the spectrum though, was Li Si, a Prime Minister who served under the first emperor of China. Li Si wrote many of the state’s policies and invented one of its most cruel execution methods, The Five Pains. This torture method involved cutting off the victim’s nose, then one of his hands, then one of his feet, then his manhood, and finally, the man would be cut in half at the waist. He would then be left to suffer until he finally bled to death.

After the first emperor passed on, his son took over and Li Si faithfully served him, until he died. Li Si knew he would have lost position as Prime Minister, so he manipulated the emperor’s chosen successor into killing himself. Unfortunately for Li Si, his accomplice in the act quickly turned on him and had him charged with treason. Li Si was executed using his own devious method, The Five Pains.

John Godfrey Parry-Thomas

Both a race-car driver and an engineer, John Godfrey Parry-Thomas was in a unique position to attempt to beat the land speed record. He was quite the talented engineer and he was able to rebuild a car to be powered by a Liberty V-12 aero-engine. He also added a number of his own modifications, including his own piston designs and chains attaching the wheels directly to the engine. By the time he was done, he had the first car ever dedicated exclusively to beating the land speed record, rather than just racing in the auto circuit.

His car, Babs, was a success. On April 27, 1926, John beat the existing land speed record. The next day, he came back to break his own record, locking in an impressive 170 mph speed. A year later, the previous record holder reclaimed the record, so John set out to beat him again.

Babs was a fast car, but it wasn’t the safest design. For one thing, the high engine cover required the driver to lean to one side to be able to see. For another, the external chains could easily get caught on something or, if broken, they could fly off in any direction. Unfortunately for John, the later problem occurred when the car was going 170 mph. Because John’s head was tilted off to the same side, the chain ended up smacking him in the head, killing him instantly. John went down in history not as a one-time land speed record holder or a talented engineer, but as the first driver to be killed in pursuit of the land speed record.

Aurel Vlaicu

Aurel started his career working in a Romanian car factory, but the engineer’s true passion was flight. In 1909, he built his first glider and a year later, he flew his first invention, the Vlaicu I airplane. He continued to work on the design and he and his Vlaicu II model won awards for precise landing, projectile throwing and tight flying in the Aspern Air Show in Vienna.

While working on his newest development, the Vlaicu III, Aurel took a trip to Transylvania in his aged second-generation plane. While he was flying over the Carpathian Mountains, the plane lost its wing and Aurel died in the crash.

After his death, Aurel’s friends completed the Vlaicu III, but though it was taken on a few short test runs, no one could extensively test the plane’s capabilities because Aurel’s control system was too strange for anyone else to figure out all the way. Eventually, the Nazi’s seized the plane during their occupation of Budapest and it was lost at some point during the war.

Romania was proud of their native notable aviation engineer though and the Bucharest airport, the second busiest in the country, is now named after him.

Sources: The Atlantic, Discovery, Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6

He was required to get a permit from the county to transport his father. The woman at the county office said that they don’t issue permits to individuals but to businesses licensed to do this work. She refused to issue the permit but Larry refused to leave without one. He thinks that he just finally wore her down and he got the permit.

At every point, he met resistance as though it was the craziest thing they’d ever heard of. Only professionals are allowed to do it, he was told, and there are all kinds of regulations. He was determined, however, and in the end, everyone at the hospital and county turned around and became helpful and came to respect his decision.

But that was not the end of the red tape Larry had to cut through. Read the rest of the story at Make magazine. Link -via Boing Boing

It has long been theorized that the week prior to an exam is an extremely dangerous time for the relatives of college students. Ever since I began my teaching career, I heard vague comments, incomplete references and unfinished remarks, all alluding to the “Dead Grandmother Problem.”

Few colleagues would ever be explicit in their description of what they knew, but I quickly discovered that anyone who was involved in teaching at the college level would react to any mention of the concept. In my travels I found that a similar phenomenon is known in other countries. In Eng- land it is called the “Graveyard Grannies” problem, in France the “Chere Grand’mere,” while in Bulgaria it is inexplicably known as “The Toadstool Waxing Plan” (I may have had some problems here with the translation. Since the revolution this may have changed anyway.) Although the problem may be international in scope it is here in the USA that it reaches its culmination, so it is only fitting that the first warnings originate here also.

The basic problem can be stated very simply:

A student’s grandmother is far more likely to die suddenly just before the student takes an exam, than at any other time of year.

While this idea has long been a matter of conjecture or merely a part of the folklore of college teaching, I can now confirm that the phenomenon is real. For over twenty years I have collected data on this supposed relationship, and have not only confirmed what most faculty had suspected, but also found some additional aspects of this process that are of potential importance to the future of the country. The results presented in this report provide a chilling picture and should waken the profession and the general public to a serious health and sociological problem before it is too late.

Table 1: The mean number of family deaths/100 students for periods when no exam is coming up, the week prior to a mid-term exam and the week prior to finals. Values are corrected for the number of students in each grade class and the relative frequency of mid-terms and finals.

As can be seen in Table 1, when no exam is imminent the family death rate per 100 students (FDR) is low and is not related to the student’s grade in the class. The effect of an upcoming exam is unambiguous. The mean FDR jumps from 0.054 with no exam, to 0.574 with a mid-term, and to 1.042 with a final, representing increases of 10-fold and 19-fold, respectively. Figure 1 shows that the changes are strongly grade dependent, with correlation coefficients of 0.974 for mid-terms and 0.988 for finals. Overall, a student who is failing a class and has a final coming up is more than 50 times more likely to lose a family member than is an A student not facing any exams.

Figure 1. Graph of data in Table 1, showing the relationship between exam, student grade and FDR. The equation for the simple linear regression on each is shown, as is the correlation coefficient.

Only one conclusion can be drawn from these data. Family members literally worry themselves to death over the outcome of their relatives’ performance on each exam.

Naturally, the worse the student’s record is, and the more important the exam, the more the family worries; and it is the ensuing tension that presumably causes premature death. Since such behavior is most likely to result in high blood pressure, leading to stroke and heart attacks, this would also explain why these deaths seem to occur so suddenly, with no warning and usually immediately prior to the exam. It might also explain the disproportionate number of grandmothers in the victim pool, since they are more likely to be susceptible to strokes. This explanation, however, does not explain why grandfathers are seldom affected, and clearly there are other factors involved that have not been identified. Nonetheless, there is considerable comfort to be had in realizing that these results indicate that the American family is obviously still close-knit and deeply concerned about the welfare of individual members, perhaps too much so.

Family Values
As some colleagues have expressed some degree of skepticism over my interpretation of these data, I have extended the scope of my research into the phenomenon. Using readily available sources (including the National Census Bureau and The National Enquirer ) have examined the relationship between education and family structure. Interestingly, there appears to be no correlation between FDR and the size of the extended family (Table 2). Either large families worry less on a per capita basis than do small families, or there is a single “designated worrier” in each family, who bears the brunt of the danger. The exceptionally high death rate among grandmothers (24 times greater than for grandfathers) suggests the latter explanation is correct. If not, then people from very small families would be well advised to discourage other family members from attending college, since the potential risk becomes excessive with so few members to share the danger.

Table 2. Mean FDR for all exam periods and all student GPAs over the last decade. Families ranging in size from 1-30+ show no significant correlation (0.04) between family size and FDR. The figure for students with no family would have been zero, had the class not included a family-less student (a member of the baseball team) who tragically lost at least one grandmother every semester for four years.

The problem is clearly far more pervasive than most people realize. For example, if one examines the percentage of the population attending college and the mean divorce rate on a country by country basis, there is a very strong positive correlation between the two. The United States has the highest percentage of its population attending college and also the world’s highest divorce rate, while South Yemen is last in both categories.

Although this study is still in progress and will form the basis for a future CSU grant proposal, it seems results already are becoming clear. As more people go to college, their families find that, for safety reasons, it is wise to increase the number of grandmothers per family. Since there is currently no biological way of doing so (though another grant proposal in preparation will ask for funds to look into the prospect of cloning grandmothers, using modern genetic engineering techniques), the families must resort to increasing the pool by means of divorce and remarriage. Sociologists may wish to use these data to examine the effect of education on family structure from a new perspective.

While the general facts of this problem have been known, if not widely discussed, I have recently become aware of a potentially far more dangerous aspect of the whole process. This trend came to light when a student reported two family members dying prior to an exam. Examination of the numbers of deaths over the last two decades clearly showed that we are in a period of “death inflation.” When the figures for all students and all exams are pooled for each year, a disturbing outcome is seen (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: The mean FDR/100 students for all exams and all grades of students for the years 1968-1988. The best-fitting curve shows an exponentially rising curve, with the equation shown in the figure.

Three Solutions
The FDR is climbing at an accelerating rate. Extrapolation of this curve suggests that 100 years from now the FDR will stand at 644/100 students/exam. At that rate only the largest families would survive even the first semester of a student’s college career. Clearly something will have to be done to reverse this trend before the entire country is depopulated. Three possible solutions come to mind:

1. Stop giving exams. At first glance, this seems to be the simplest answer to the problem. Like many simplistic solutions, however, it fails to consider the full ramifications of such a course. Without exam results, all medical schools would be forced to close their doors, having no way of identifying worthy students. The resultant dearth of physicians in the next generation would throw so many other professionals (tax accountants, malpractice attorneys, golf pros, etc.) out of work that the economy would go into a nosedive. Regretfully, we cannot recommend this solution.

2. Allow only orphans to enroll at universities. This is an attractive idea, except for the shortage of orphans. More could be created, of course, but this would replicate the very problem we are trying to avoid, i.e., excessive family deaths.

3. Have students lie to their families. Students must never let any of their relatives know that they are at university. (Initial field tests show that keeping just the grandmother ignorant is neither feasible nor safe for the rest of the family.) It is not enough merely to lie about exams; if the family doesn’t know when the exams are, they may then worry constantly and this may lead to even higher death rates. The only solution is that the family must never be aware that the student is even enrolled at a university. Students must explain their long absences by pretending they are in the armed forces, have joined some religious cult, or have been kidnapped by extraterrestrials. All of these alternate explanations will keep the family ignorant of the true, dangerous, fact. Although it might be argued that such large-scale deceptions cannot be maintained for long periods, the success of many politicians suggests other- wise.

What I Recommend
It will take time to discover whether any of these solutions are feasible. In the interim, the problem is clearly far too important to be ignored. Following the US government’s lead on so many similar, potentially catastrophic problems (global warming, ozone layer depletion, and ocean pollution), I propose that a commission be established to study the problem in more depth. While the state is deciding on the make-up of such a committee and what its charge should be, I would urge all members of the academic community to start keeping their own records. If faculty throughout the world were to send me summaries of their own knowledge about this matter, I could compile a follow-up report for publication in a year or two.

(Title illustration by Peaco Todd)

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the November-December 1999 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the German superstar bear, Knut. He rose to stardom when his mother abandoned him at birth. A keeper at the Berlin Zoo stepped in and raised the cub from childhood, feeding him from a bottle, cuddling him, playing with him and otherwise rearing the little one. The issue really came into the public attention when PETA and other animal rights groups argued that the cub should have been left to die, as it was nature’s course and these activists believed animals shouldn’t be kept in zoos anyway.

Knut passed away on March 19 and while activists are still crying foul, blaming the zoo for Knut’s death, his fans will remember the adorable little bear that passed away far too soon -at only four years old. The zoo will be performing an autopsy, but results have not yet been released. In the meanwhile, we can console ourselves by remembering Knut kindly through this great memorial over at Cute Overload.

On a more positive note, the circle of life always continues and as the star of Berlin’s zoo passes on, Rotterdam recently introduced their newest addition to the public for the first time. Little Vicks (seen above) was born on December 6 and is every bit as cute as little Knut once was.

Rob Walker of The New York Times wrote about the cyberafterlife of blogger Mac Tonnies (who wrote Posthuman Blues), and the multitude of businesses that sprung up to take care of your web accounts after your death:

Finding solace in a Twitter feed may sound odd, but the idea that Tonnies’s friends would revisit and preserve such digital artifacts isn’t so different from keeping postcards or other physical ephemera of a deceased friend or loved one. In both instances, the value doesn’t come from the material itself but rather from those who extract meaning from, and give meaning to, all we leave behind: our survivors.

The most remarkable set of connections to emerge from Tonnies’s digital afterlife isn’t among his online friends — it is between those friends and his parents, the previously computer-shunning Dana and Bob Tonnies. Dana, who told me that her husband now teases her about how much time she spends sending and answering e-mail (a good bit of it coming from her son’s online social circle), is presently going through Posthuman Blues, in order, from the beginning. “I still have a year to go,” she says. Reading it has been “amazing,” she continues — funny posts, personal posts, poetic posts, angry posts about the state of the world. I ask her if what she is reading seems like a different, or specifically narrow, version of her son. “Oh, no, it’s him,” she says. “I can hear him when I read it.”

Link – via metafilter

Custodia Amancio, daughter of the resuscitated Brazilian woman, said: “We are happy to know my mother is alive and unhappy with the lack of respect due her. We are still not sure if we will sue the municipality and hospital.

“She continues in the intensive ward treatment ward and we are praying that she will improve quickly.”

Ms. Dores suffers from blocked arteries and Alzheimer’s disease. Link -via Fark

“It’s so environment specific,” said Dr. Richard L. Jantz, Professor Emeritus and Director of the Forensic Anthropology Center at the University of Tennessee. “In east Tennessee, it’s not humid in the summer and it doesn’t get that cold, but in the southwest, it’s hot and dry all the time and things proceed differently.”

Cold weather generally slows the rate of decomposition, while heat, direct sunlight, and high humidity all accelerate it. A buried body, exposed to fewer elements, will decompose more slowly than one on the surface, but acidic soil and high soil moisture can work to speed up the process. The California University of Pennsylvania body farm, to be located in the southwestern corner of the state in a humid continental climate, will be subject to hot, humid summers (with an occasional heatwave); cold, snowy winters; and regular precipitation throughout the year. These climatic conditions, distinct from those in Texas, North Carolina and Tennessee, will likely affect corpses in undocumented ways and provide ample opportunity for new research.

Over 100 people each year donate their bodies for research on the farms. Read more about body farms at The Atlantic. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science

Leslie Nielsen, the star of the movie Airplane! and the TV series Police Squad! has died from complications of pneumonia at a hospital in Florida. Originally from Regina, Saskatchewan, Nielsen appeared in over 200 movies and TV shows in a career spanning six decades.

After Airplane! became a hit, the film’s directors — Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker — wanted to take the film’s slapstyle style of comedy to TV. They asked Nielsen to play the lead role in their new series “Police Squad!”

In the show, Nielsen played Frank Drebin, a stereotypical police officer modeled after characters in earlier police TV series. The show lasted only six episodes but earned Nielsen an Emmy nom for lead actor in a comedy series.

Six years later, Nielsen reprised his role for a feature-length version of the show, Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad, as well as two sequels.

Other credits include 1956′s Forbidden Planet, the 1960s TV series Peyton Place, Dr. Kildare and The Bold Ones: The Protectors.

Nielsen was 84. Link

Apparently, the pack of [powder] caffeine suggested taking no more than 1/16 of a teaspoon, but Bedford reportedly took spoonfuls of the stuff, so I wouldn’t start worrying that your morning coffee addiction might help you end up on the wrong side of living. Bedford reportedly took the dosage of caffeine at a party, and one friend recounts seeing him profusely sweating and throwing up blood only about 15 minutes after the dosage was taken. Pretty horrifying.

Link

Previously on Neatorama: 30 Strangest Deaths in History

Thankfully, inventor Jeff Dannenberg took care of the problem with this nifty and patented invention:

An apparatus and method for generating post-burial audio communications from surviving friends and loved ones in a casket by providing a burial
casket, and providing an electronic audio communication system for placement in said casket to automatically electronically generate post-burial communications in said casket.

This way, you can continue wish the dead "Happy Birthday," "Merry Christmas," "Happy Anniversary" until the end of time. Or until the battery runs out, whichever is first.

Link – Thanks Martin g!

Previously on Neatorama: Patently Silly Animal Patents | Top 10 Strangest Anti-Terrorism Patents

Add this to the list of why I’m afraid to go spelunking:

Drowning, poisonous gas inhalation and electrocution are perils of journeying through a supercave. Tabor says there are more than 50 ways for a person to die during these explorations.

There’s also a danger of developing an illness known as "the rapture" — an extreme reaction to darkness and depth. Those who have suffered from it describe it as being similar to an anxiety attack while on methamphetamines.

"At some level, everyone’s brain will start to say, ‘I don’t belong here. This is a very dangerous place.’ It’s an ancient primordial instinct and it just says, ‘You have to get me out of here, right now,’" Tabor explains.

Guy Raz of NPR’s All Things Considered has a fantastic interview with James Tabor about his new book Blind Descent, which describes the quest to find the deepest cave on Earth: Link

The name Fredric Baur may not ring any bells, but you know his most famous creation. In 1966 Baur invented the Pringles can so Procter & Gamble could ship its new chips without using bags. Baur was so proud of the achievement that he told his children he wanted to be buried in the iconic can. When he died in 2008 at 89, they honored his wishes by placing his ashes in a Pringles can before burying them. According to his son Larry, Baur’s children briefly debated what flavor canister to use before settling on original.

Link

Courtney Purvin got a shock when she visited Facebook last month. The site was suggesting that she get back in touch with an old family friend who played piano at her wedding four years ago.

The friend had died in April.

“It kind of freaked me out a bit,” she said. “It was like he was coming back from the dead.”

Facebook, the world’s biggest social network, knows a lot about its roughly 500 million members. Its software is quick to offer helpful nudges about things like imminent birthdays and friends you have not contacted in a while. But the company has had trouble automating the task of figuring out when one of its users has died.

That can lead to some disturbing or just plain weird moments for Facebook users as the site keeps on shuffling a dead friend through its social algorithms.

Jenna Wortham of The New York Times has the story: Link (Photo by Brandon Thibodeaux / NY Times)

The mausoleum of Buganda kings in Kasubi, Uganda is both an innovative burial site and an architectural marvel. Built with all natural materials and balancing on wooden poles stuck firmly in the ground, this UNESCO world heritage site is a must see for tourists.

Kabaka Muteesa I was born in 1837 at the Batandabezaala Palace. He ascended the throne upon the death of his father in October 1856. He built himself a palace on the Kasubi Hill in 1881, and was buried there in a tomb when he died in 1884. Interestingly enough, he was the first of his line to be buried with his jawbone. Traditionally, the jawbone was placed in a shrine because it was believed to contain the spirit of the deceased.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.

Aaron Jamison, a colon-cancer patient, expects to die in only a few months. Because of the costs associated with his care and expected cremation, he was quite worried that his wife would go into debt. So he did something he thought would solve the problem: sell ad space on his urn.

Thanks to good ol’ capitalism, he was able to raise more than his original $800 goal, as well as a pair of tickets to the Ellen show.

One advertiser is familiar: PETA bought an ad to push their agenda, even beyond the grave.

PETA will pay $200 for the space on Jamison’s urn. The ads will read “I’ve Kicked the Bucket-Have You? Boycott KFC” and “People Who Buy Purebred Dogs Really Burn Me Up. Always Adopt.”

Link – via mediabistro | Aaron’s blog

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

Another paper appearing in the same issue of Current Biology describes two mother chimpanzees carrying their dead infants in the Bossou colony in Guinea. Although this behavior has been observed in chimps and other primates before, the researchers, led by Dora Biro, a research fellow in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, documented the carrying behavior for 68 days in one of the instances—far longer than had been previously described.

Of note, Biro’s group reported, is that documented deaths of infants in that particular colony (of which there were three) always resulted in “extended carrying,” though it is not universal that mothers carry infant corpses for weeks—or months—after death. This difference “raises questions about the potential role of observational learning in promoting chimpanzee mothers’ prolonged transport of deceased young,” Biro and colleagues wrote.

These differences in handling death might also be a part of demonstrated cultural differences among chimpanzee groups, Anderson says.

Link | Image: NIH

The following is an excerpt from The Sherlock Holmes Handbook
by Ransom Riggs

Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem. Art by Sidney Paget (1893)

“I owe you many apologies, dear Watson, but it was all-important that it should be thought I was dead, and it is quite certain that you would not have written so convincing an account of my unhappy end had you not yourself thought that it was true.”

- Sherlock Holmes, “The Empty House”

Any consulting detective as successful as Sherlock Holmes is sure to rack up an impressive list of powerful enemies, and sometimes—as Holmes decided was the case in “The Final Problem”—the best way to escape their vengeance is to fake one’s own death. This is by no means an option for the faint of heart. Not only is it a cruel thing to inflict upon those who care for you, but it requires an exceeding amount of bother to execute the deed properly. Pray that you never have to embark upon the steps outlined here!

1. Design a persuasive death scene. The best kind—and your only option, really—is a death that leaves no recognizable body behind. Explosions or fires are good choices, provided you plant a skeleton in the wreckage that may plausibly be identified as your own. Water-related tragedies in which the corpse is unrecoverable are also ideal, as was Holmes's choice in “The Final Problem”—he made it appear as though he’d tumbled over the lofty Reichenback Falls, the treacherous bottom of which authorities didn’t even bother to search for his remains. Holmes’s footprints led up to the precipice and disappeared, leading all concerned to conclude he had fallen to his death—when in fact he merely climbed over a nearby ledge, where he hid until the scene was deserted and he could make a stealthy escape.

2. Skip town. As long as you remain near your old familiar haunts or anyone who might recognize you, you’re in danger. Get as far as possible from your home and the scene of your “death,” as quickly as you can. When Holmes miraculously returns to London in “The Empty House,” he tells Watson about the exotic places he’d lived in the intervening three years: Tibet, Persia, Mecca, and Egypt, among other distant locales. Those were extreme choices, to be sure, but extraordinarily safe ones—the chances of his meeting someone there whom he had known prior to his “death” were low indeed.

3. Assume a new identity. Though your body lives on, your former identity must die. Grow facial hair, change your walk, and develop a new accent to help bury obvious traces of your former self. While traveling far and wide, Holmes went undercover as a Norwegian explorer named Sigerson, whose exploits and discoveries were fantastic enough to make international headlines. Yet he was never recognized as Holmes himself, so convincing was this disguise.

4. Arrange access to a supply of money. Travel is expensive, and you’ll no longer have access to bank accounts or lines of credit established under your real name. You can always bring cash with you or deposit money into an anonymous offshore account, but keep in mind that making any sudden, last-minute transfers or withdrawals into that account before your death is extremely suspect behavior. If you’re able to plan your death significantly in advance, make gradual, monthly transfers over a period of several years to avoid suspicion. Less advisable was Holmes’s technique: He revealed himself to his brother Mycroft, who became Holmes’s sole confidant and source of funds. Had Mycroft been compromised in some way, Holmes’s secret would’ve been revealed, and his life put into considerable danger. Which brings us to the next point:

5. Reveal yourself to no one. The wrenching heartache endured by your loved ones is your enemies’ most convincing proof you’re really dead. Should their grief-stricken ululations seem forced or overly theatrical, someone is sure to smell a rat. This profound separation from friends and relations will undoubtedly be the most trying aspect of your ordeal, as even cold and logical Holmes admits---“Several times during the past three years I have taken up my pen to write to you,” he apologizes to Watson—but such cruel alienation is necessary. Holmes explains why: ”I feared your affectionate regard for me should tempt you to some indiscretion which would betray my secret.”

6. Wait until your enemies are at their weakest to return. With time, the fires of your enemies’ vengeance will cool, and their guard will fall. They may themselves die or be jailed (for such are dangers of the criminal life) and when they are at their most defenseless, as Holmes judged his to be shortly before his dramatic resurrection, it’s time to return home.

7. Minimize the shock to your friends and family. When Holmes finally revealed himself to Watson, he does it in such a shocking way—which Holmes himself later confesses was “unnecessarily dramatic”—that poor Watson, a veteran of war and a man of sound constitution, faints on the spot. Imagine the effect such an appearance would have on the elderly or the anxious, and do your all to introduce yourself to them gradually. Save surprising flourishes for your enemies!

__________

The article above is excerpted from The Sherlock Holmes Handbook: The Methods and Mysteries of the World's Greatest Detective by Ransom Riggs.

There are many guides and handbooks written over the years, but I dare say that this is one of the most fun (and most useful, if you want to become a world-famous detective).

The Sherlock Holmes Handbook: The Methods and Mysteries of the World's Greatest Detective, published by Quirk Books and written by our pal Ransom Riggs - a lifelong Holmes aficionado and regular contributor to mental_floss magazine and blog - features the skills that would-be sleuths should know.

Need to decode ciphers and analyze fingerprints? Check. Disguise yourself and outwit a criminal mastermind? No problem. For avid Holmes fans, history buffs, and armchair sleuths of all sorts, The Sherlock Holmes Handbook will satisfy "Baker Street Irregulars" of all ages.

There are many practical reasons to marry a dead spouse. For example, when an unmarried woman has no children to take care of her in old age, she can be "married" into another family. If a son died before he has descendants, his parents can arrange a ghost marriage to provide a "wife" who remains chaste, as a pretext to adopt a grandson to continue the family line. Another reason is to give the deceased a "spouse and companion" in the afterlife.

How is a ghost marriage performed? Singapore Paranormal Investigators has the story:

Next, the priest empowered the East Gate with a lighted joss paper folded in the shape of a cone, which is also known as the "fire brush". Soon after this, the priest struck the paper gate three times with the sword and declared the gate to be opened at his order. At the same time, the family members were to shout out the name of the deceased. Finally, the priest declared, "From the East Gate, out you come" The whole atmosphere became very tense as the ceremony was going on. [...]. After the "destruction" of all the gates, the priest took a paper effigy out from the centre of the squared shape model. This meant that the spirit had been rescued from the gates of hell.

The paper effigy was placed in front of the altar by the priest. Beside the paper effigy, there was another effigy which was much taller and larger in size. Madam Tham continued to explain to SPI, "The paper effigy which was just rescued from hell represents the current state of the spirit, she carries the illness and sufferings she had when she was alive. The much larger paper effigy next to her represents the healthier form. The priest will soon heal her spirit and she will regain her original healthy form again."

Since then, Oscar has doubled his predictions to 50.  But the staff of the hospice, particularly Dr. David Dosa, want the world to know it’s not as ominous as it may sound.  The experience shared between them, patients, and family members is nothing short of remarkable, although Oscar’s methods are surely more natural than supernatural.

Dosa said there is no scientific evidence to explain Oscar’s abilities, but he thinks the cat might be responding to a pheromone or smell that humans simply don’t recognize.

(He) recounts one instance when staff were convinced of the imminent death of one patient but Oscar refused to sit with that person, choosing instead to be on the bed of another patient down the hallway. Oscar proved to be right. The person he sat with died first, taking staff on the ward by surprise.

Dr. Dosa hopes to educate people about terminal illness, with a little help from Oscar’s story.  ”I wanted to write a book that would go beyond Oscar’s peculiarities, to tell why he is important to family members and caregivers who have been with him at the end of a life.”

Link Photo credit: Dina Rudick/Globe Staff

The London Beer Flood of 1814

If you’re going to go out, you might as well go out doing something you love. You hear that saying a lot, but I doubt even the most die-hard beer-drinker would have enjoyed drowning in 232,000 gallons of suds during the London Beer Flood.

The year was 1814, and a very old vat at Meux’s Brewery containing 135,000 gallons of fermenting porter finally decided to give in to old age. One of the metal hoops surrounding the vat snapped; the resulting noise was heard up to five miles away. As if that much on  and as if that wasn’t bad enough, it knocked over a bunch of other vats, causing a grand total of nearly 1.25 million liters of beer to spill out onto Tottenham Court Road and other surrounding streets. The gush was so massive and powerful that two houses were entirely destroyed. At a nearby pub – which had probably previously enjoyed their proximity to Meux’s Brewery – a wall caved in, killing a teenage girl who worked there.  The Brewery was located in a poor part of town called St. Giles Rookery, which was a bunch of tenements and low income housing.  Entire families lived in basements of these buildings, and when the beer suddenly rushed into through windows and walls, people were unable to get out and drowned. All in all, eight people were killed that day. Another person is said to have died from alcohol poisoning the following day.

People capitalized on the tragedy, though – many of the residents ran out to the streets with pots and pans to salvage whatever free alcohol they could get their hands on. And shockingly, some people took to exhibiting their dead friends and family for money.  Obviously this was quite the freak accident and people outside of the area were curious. To raise a little money, enterprising citizens decided to show the corpses for a fee. The police had to put a stop to this practice when too many gawkers crowded into one house, which was structurally unsound from the flood. The floor collapsed, dumping the lot of them into a basement that was still half-full of beer. 

Despite paying for the funerals of the drunkenly departed, the Meux Brewery was still sued for neglecting their equipment, especially when it came to light that an employee had previously alerted a boss to a crack in the vat that eventually erupted.  However, the judge presiding over the trial declared the whole tragedy an Act of God, finding the company free of fault. Something tells me the ruling would be a little different today.

The Great Molasses Flood

You think drowning in beer is bad? At least you could attempt to swim through the beer. Trying to fight through a sea of molasses would be all but futile.

And that’s exactly what happened in 1919, when a vat of the sticky stuff exploded at the Purity Distilling Company in Boston. The tank was 50 feet tall, 90 feet in diameter and held 2.3 million gallons of molasses. Much like the vat of beer in London, the tank just gave out. First-hand accounts from people in the area said the rivets popping out of the tank sounded like a machine gun being fired. And then came the wave – a solid, 15-foot-tall swath of molasses, 160 feet wide and moving at an astonishing 35 miles an hour. When you consider that molasses is the epitome of “slow,” 35 miles per hour is nearly unthinkable.

It happened at 12:30 p.m., just as a bunch of workers at the factory were taking lunch. They were among the largest group of fatalities, which also included two 10-year-old children and a 65-year-old woman who was just sitting on her porch when the entire house was smashed on top of her. Two entire blocks were practically flattened by the tsunami of syrupy sweetness – buildings in the immediate vicinity were completely knocked clear of their foundations and fell to rubble in a matter of seconds. When it settled, the molasses was waist deep, making it almost impossible for rescuers to wade through and try to save survivors.

Sadly, this disaster definitely could have been prevented. The tank was hastily constructed thanks to the increasing demand due to the war – back then, molasses was used in gunpowder. The foreman who oversaw the construction of the tank had no background and apparently couldn’t even read a blueprint, according to multiple sources. He was in such a hurry he didn’t even bother to test the tank for leaks with water when it was complete, as was standard practice. The vat was immediately filled with molasses, and you’d better believe it started leaking almost immediately. It leaked so much that neighborhood kids could stop by, fill up cans with syrup, and take it home to their mothers. In response to complaints about the leaky monstrosity, the company had the vat painted brown so the leaks wouldn’t be so noticeable. Pretty responsible, huh?

The company tried to make the public believe that the “sudden” explosion was the result of dynamite deliberately planted by anarchists, but the public didn’t believe it – and neither did the judge and jury. It took nearly six years of investigation, but the report found without a doubt that the company had been extremely negligent. U.S. Industrial Alcohol was ordered to pay the families of the 21 victims a total of $1 million. Boston smelled of molasses for decades afterward; some residents say it still permeates the air on the right day with the right wind.

Photo from http://edp.org/molasses.htm.

The process of freezing to death is presented in horrifying detail in this classic article. It’s not just a matter of getting cold and dying. For example, just before they freeze, people with hypothermia tear their clothes off in a fit of what’s called "paradoxical undressing."

At 85 degrees, those freezing to death, in a strange, anguished paroxysm, often rip off their clothes. This phenomenon, known as paradoxical undressing, is common enough that urban hypothermia victims are sometimes initially diagnosed as victims of sexual assault. Though researchers are uncertain of the cause, the most logical explanation is that shortly before loss of consciousness, the constricted blood vessels near the body’s surface suddenly dilate and produce a sensation of extreme heat against the skin.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by McJohnny.

In the last 22 months, Ralph B. White’s meticulously logged schedule shows trips to the mountains of Nepal, the Australian outback, the China-Mongolia border, a Rwandan volcano, Iceland, Benin and the waters off Zanzibar. [...]

Thanks to [Ralph's friends at the Adventurer's Club], tiny portions of White’s remains, carefully measured out in plastic bags, have put in enough posthumous miles to rival King Tut. Instead of a bucket list, he’s got an ash log. It’s six pages long.

"Rather than have people mourn him, he wanted to give people incentive to go have adventures," said Rosaly Lopes, who was engaged to White when he died and is the keeper of the ashes.

Though White covered a lot of the Earth during his life, said Krista Few, his daughter, most of these scatterings have delivered his ashes to new territory. "The competition is what is the most bizarre place we can take Ralph?"

Christopher Reynolds of The Los Angeles Times has the story: Link