The Scientific Explanation Behind Spontaneous Human Combustion

One of the more bizarre ways to die is spontaneous human combustion. This is when a person's body is found to be burned while the surroundings, and often the person's extremities, are not burned at all. Dozens, and maybe hundreds, of cases were recorded during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, so much that Charles Dickens included the phenomenon in his book Bleak House (shown above). Those cases were sensationally covered in press reports, and were often exaggerated for effect. But spontaneous human combustion is a real thing, although rare. 

It's not something that the rest of us should be afraid of. It never happens in public, and never in the animal kingdom. There are certain similarities in the documented cases that give scientists a clue. Forensic pathologist Roger Byard said that spontaneous combustion doesn't happen in animals because animals don't “wrap themselves up in blankets and drink whiskey and smoke.” Read about the particular sequence of events that lead to spontaneous human combustion at Popular Science. -via Strange Company