Neatorama » grave

24 Hour Tombstones

Miss Cellania — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:49:07 +0000

Time is tight if you are just starting to make Halloween decorations, but this one can be ready in a day. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has instructions for making your own concrete tombstone! It might not be fancy enough for an actual grave, but it is sturdy and customizable for Halloween. Link

Vampire Found in Italy

Miss Cellania — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:46:47 +0000

An exhumation of a mass grave of plague victims in Venice, Italy yielded the skeleton of a woman who was probably considered a vampire in her time. She was buried with a brick in her mouth. The skeleton was found by Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence.

At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by “vampires” which, rather than drinking people’s blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.

The belief in vampires probably arose because blood is sometimes expelled from the mouths of the dead, causing the shroud to sink inwards and tear. Borrini, who presented his findings at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver, Colorado, last week, claims this might be the first such vampire to have been forensically examined. The skeleton was removed from a mass grave of victims of the Venetian plague of 1576.

Link -via Digg

(image credit: Matteo Borrini)

Ancient Pot Stash

Miss Cellania — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:14:39 +0000

A 2,700-year-old grave unearthed in the Gobi Desert near Turpan, China revealed the world’s oldest marijuana stash! The grave belonged to a blue-eyed Caucasian man buried with a number of valuable items.

Scientists originally thought the plant material in the grave was coriander, but microscopic botanical analysis of the bowl contents, along with genetic testing, revealed that it was cannabis.

The size of seeds mixed in with the leaves, along with their color and other characteristics, indicate the marijuana came from a cultivated strain. Before the burial, someone had carefully picked out all of the male plant parts, which are less psychoactive, so Russo and his team believe there is little doubt as to why the cannabis was grown.

Nearly two pounds of pot were found in the grave. No, it’s not fresh enough to get anyone high. Link -Thanks, Jorge Garcia!

(image credit: David Potter/Oxford University Press)