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These two photographs of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il’s funeral procession were taken only seconds apart, but the top photo was taken by Japanese press outlet Kyodo News, and the bottom one was provided to journalists by North Korea’s state news agency. North Korea is no stranger to photo manipulation; in this case it serves only the purpose of making the procession look more “perfect.” The details are at the New York Times photography blog. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credits: Associated Press, via Kyodo News; Korean Central News Agency, via European Pressphoto Agency)
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The family of a man named Gerald marked his passing into the undiscovered country by setting off 320,000 firecrackers. I can’t think of a better way to go. What extravagant send-off would you like to have?
Link via Geekologie
Cremation is becoming increasingly common in the United States, but it’s usually done in an enclosed facility, apart from the public or even mourners. An exception to this norm is provided by an organization in the small town of Crestone, Colorado. The Crestone End of Life Project now offers open air funeral pyres. Since starting three years ago, they’ve had eighteen such funerals:
Ancient Vikings lit funeral pyres to honor their dead, and it is accepted practice among Buddhist and Hindu religions. But the practice is largely taboo in the U.S.
The pyre harkens to references in the Christian and Hebrew Bibles equating rising smoke with the ascent of the soul, said David Weddle, a religion professor at Colorado College. It can be seen as honoring a natural cycle, reducing the body to ash and the elements of which it is composed. It also can be a protest against traditional funerals, which some view as a denial of death, Weddle said.[...]
It takes up to four and a half hours for a body to burn completely. Since there’s no way of separating human ashes from those of the wood the family receives about five gallons of ashes.
Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: AP/Ivan Morelo
Before Melvin Baker died at the age of 79, he asked that during his funeral, he be carried in the front bucket of a digger. He had driven one most of his life, and wanted to leave this world in one. So his former boss arranged for an operator to pick up the casket with a digger and carry Baker’s body from his home, to the funeral, and then to the crematorium:
Melvin had originally worked for Keith Bell’s father Jim. Keith remained a family friend and after chatting with his family was happy to make the wish come true.
He said: ”Melvin ended up driving the diggers for us and told me he wanted to make his final journey in one.
”When he first brought it up I thought he was joking but kept on going on and on about it.
”After he died, I dreaded bringing it up with his family, but Jean just said ‘we’ve got to do it for him, Keith, he went on about it all the time’.
Link via Jalopnik | Photo: SWNS.com
British Company, And Vinyly, will press your charred remains into your very own hyper-personalized spinning analog musical platter. The starter kit comes with your own generic gravestone-style cover art, 24 minutes of audio of your choosing, and 30 copies of your final release.
The company was founded by Jason Leach, who co-founded the techno group and record label Subhead in the 1990s. I’d like to have my ashes pressed into Psycho Killer. I can just picture the mourners at my funeral getting their groove on to the beat of The Talking Heads.
Funeral homes in Wellington, New Zealand, have been hit by an unusual thief, dubbed the "Grim Eater" for reasons that will soon become obvious. From The Dominion Post:
A fake mourner who repeatedly gatecrashed Wellington funerals was so keen on the food that he brought along tupperware containers to fill up and take home.
The "grim eater" attended up to four funerals a week during March and April before he was stopped.
Harbour City Funeral Home director Danny Langstraat said the company eventually grew concerned enough to take a photograph of the man and distribute it to its branches. "He was showing up to funeral after funeral, and without a doubt he didn’t know the deceased."
The man, thought to be aged in his 40s, went to different churches and venues around the eastern suburbs, including Miramar, Rongotai and Kilbirnie. "We saw him three or four times in a week. And certainly he had a backpack with some tupperware containers so when people weren’t looking, he was stocking up."
The man was "always very quiet and polite, and did as the rest of the mourners did in paying his respects".
The man in question was later revealed to be a local artist named Reese Tong: Link (Photo: Kent Blechynden/The Dominion Post)
When Puerto Rican man David Morales Colón died, he wasn’t displayed in a casket at his wake, but astride his motorcycle:
Yesterday and today, callers who stopped to pay their final respects to the late Mr. Colón got a bit of a surprise. Instead of the traditional presentation of the body in a casket, Mr. Colón’s corpse, dressed in casual duds and sunglasses, was instead posed in a very lifelike position atop his Repsol-liveried Honda CBR600 F4. According to Puerto Rico’s Primera Hora newspaper, the motorcycle was given to the victim by his uncle, and upon Mr. Colón’s untimely demise, family members delivered the bike to the funeral home specifically for this unusual wake.
Link via Geekologie
Fifty five years ago, the world’s most brilliant scientist, Albert Einstein, died of heart failure. Today, the death of such eminent figure would’ve sparked a media circus – but back then, his funeral was a private affair. No one knew of the existence of any photos of Einstein funeral until today:
His funeral and cremation were intensely private affairs, and only one photographer managed to capture the events of that extraordinary day: LIFE magazine’s Ralph Morse. Armed with his camera and a case of scotch — to open doors and loosen tongues — Morse compiled a quietly intense record of an icon’s passing. But aside from one now-famous image (above), the pictures Morse took that day were never published. At the request of Einstein’s son, who asked that the family’s privacy be respected while they mourned, LIFE decided not to run the full story, and for 55 years Morse’s photographs lay unseen and forgotten.
Gallery: Link – Thanks Ben!
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Strange Facts About Albert Einstein
Faking your death is not simple or to be taken lightly. A few people thought it was the easy way out of a difficult situation, or just a cool stunt to pull off. Read about the woman who faked her death because she found it too hard to break up with her boyfriend, or the guy who wanted to see how many people would come to the funeral, or the one who disappeared for years because of a mistaken idea. Link -via Gorilla Mask
The family of 59-year-old Ademir Jorge Goncalves of Santo Antonio da Platina, Brazil identified his body after a fatal traffic accident. The funeral was held the next day, which is customary in Brazil. Imagine their shock when Goncalves himself appeared at the funeral service!
What family members didn’t know was that Goncalves had spent the night at a truck stop talking with friends over drinks of a sugarcane liquor known as cachaca, his niece Rosa Sampaio told the O Globo newspaper. He did not get word about his own funeral until it was already happening Monday morning.
A police spokesman in the town of Santo Antonio da Platina said Goncalves rushed to the funeral to let family members know he was not dead.
“The corpse was badly disfigured, but dressed in similar clothing,” said the police spokesman, who talked on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorized to discuss the case. “People are afraid to look for very long when they identify bodies, and I think that is what happened in this case.”
The victim has since been identified and the remains sent to the correct family. Link -via reddit
(image credit: Flickr user Hipolito Luiz)
Edgar Allan Poe died 160 years ago, but did not have a proper funeral, especially for such a respected author.
Poe’s cousin, Neilson Poe, never announced his death publicly. Fewer than 10 people attended the hasty funeral for one of the 19th century’s greatest writers. And the injustices piled on. Poe’s tombstone was destroyed before it could be installed, when a train derailed and crashed into a stonecutter’s yard. Rufus Griswold, a Poe enemy, published a libelous obituary that damaged Poe’s reputation for decades.
But on Sunday, Poe’s funeral will get an elaborate do-over, with two services expected to draw about 350 people each _ the most a former church next to his grave can hold. Actors portraying Poe’s contemporaries and other long-dead writers and artists will pay their respects, reading eulogies adapted from their writings about Poe.
Instead of digging up and reburying Poe, a mockup was constructed and will lie instate for visitation and a wake before the funeral this weekend in Baltimore. Link -via Digg
After he “left for the great data bank in the sky,” Alan was memorialized by his family in the most dignified manner possible: inside a 1990s-era SPARCstation CPU case inscribed with his name, the years of his life, and the phrase “Beam me up Scotty, I’m done here.” Those who attended the funeral said goodbye to Alan in a way fitting for the cubicle lifestyle:
His friends and family were able to leave their final good-byes on post-notes. Anyone who wanted to keep their words private could just slip their note into the case through the floppy slot. All notes will be sealed in plastic and placed within the case. There has been one complication. His daughters like the look of it so much they aren’t now sure if they want to bury him.
Link via Gizmodo | Image: flickr user sam 3.14
It takes a true friend to wear a dress to a funeral -if you’re a man. Barry Delaney of Dundee, Scotland wore a lime green minidress to the funeral of a soldier killed in Afghanistan to fulfill a pact the two had made.
Private Kevin Elliott and his friend, Barry Delaney, had agreed that whoever survived the other should wear a dress to the dead man’s funeral. Mr Delaney duly fulfilled the pledge as a tribute to Private Elliott, who was killed aged 24 while on foot patrol in the southern province of Helmand on August 31.
Mr Delaney wept on his knees at the graveside in Dundee as shots were fired during the military funeral. His dress plans are believed to have been known about in advance by other mourners.
Elliot, who had fulfilled his hitch and could have left the army, decided instead to fight in Afghanistan at the last minute. Hundreds turned out for the funeral. Link -via Fark
This has got to be one of the most poignant things I’ve ever read. When 7-year-old Asa Hill died after a car accident, his parents honored the young boy’s lifelong wish that they get married. And married they did, right after their child’s funeral:
The Rev. Joel Miller of The Unitarian Universalist Church of Elmwood, where the service was held, was unsure at first when the idea of a wedding was proposed by the couple and their family.
"I asked twice, ‘We’re doing a wedding?’ This was new for me. I never did a funeral service and a wedding ceremony at the same time, and normally wouldn’t, but they have known each other since they were teens," Miller said. "And they had been providing for Asa, and they made a home together for all of Asa’s life. … It was clear they were following through on something they had been talking about for some time."
Hill and Ghirmatzion have been best friends since they were 15 and have been together for almost half of their lives. After Asa was born, marriage had always been something that they considered but, according to Hill, both felt that a wedding was "superficial and not necessary."
Asa, however, was insistent that they make their union official. "Asa really wanted us to do it, and every time he would ask us
we would say, ‘Yes, we’ll get married,’ " said Hill. But the couple never did get around to figuring out the logistics for a ceremony.While holding his lifeless son in his arms at the hospital, Hill was moved to finally officially propose to his lifelong partner. "Rahwa was overwhelmed at that moment and just looked at me. When the family sat down to plan the funeral service, she said ‘Let’s get married.’ And everyone broke down at the table," he said.
Jean Shin of CNN has the moving story: Link
Insurance fraud is not new, but this one is unusual: "necro-phonies" Faye Shilling and Jane Crump will be arraigned on charges of staging fake funerals for fake people to defraud insurance companies!
When staging the funerals, Shilling, a phlebotomist, and Crump, an employee at a now-defunct Long Beach mortuary, allegedly filled caskets with various materials to make it appear they contained actual corpses, documents show.
After the funerals, the women and their associates filed bogus documents with the county saying the remains had been cremated and scattered at sea, prosecutors said.
The insurance policies were worth $50,000 to $450,000, and the women had already collected on some as large as $250,000, officials said.
Maya says a few solemn words about Lucky the goldfish before flushing him down the toilet, even though her mom keeps cracking up.
– via arbroath
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.
The remains of a 14th century teenager, believed to have been beheaded on charges of witchcraft and buried in unconsecrated ground, has been laid to rest in a proper funeral…700 years after her death.
The girl, named Holly by archaeologists because her remains were found beneath a holly bush, had had her head laid at her side, a sign that she might have been suspected of witchcraft.
Dr Paul Wilkinson, director of the Kent Archaeological Field School, said the decapitation – which it was believed would deny eternal life – meant Holly was ‘shamed’ and was either a teenage witch, a criminal or had committed suicide.
A crowd of more than 200 mourners – who had responded to an appeal to give the suspected witch a respectable funeral – gathered to pay their respects to a teenager whose identity remains a mystery.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Pirate Jenny.
