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

Max Hirschberg missed the last dogsled out of Dawson, Yukon because he was recovering from tetanus. So he rode a bicycle for two months to get to Nome, Alaska in order to join the Klondike gold rush in 1900. Hirschberg was 19 years old when he started the trip.

The day I left Dawson, March 2, 1900 was clear and crisp, 30° below zero. I was dressed in a flannel shirt, heavy fleece-lined overalls, a heavy mackinaw coat, a drill parka, two pairs of heavy woolen socks and felt high-top shoes, a fur cap that I pulled down over my ears, a fur nosepiece, plus fur gauntlet gloves.

Along the way, Hirschberg suffered from exposure, snowblindness, and a broken bicycle chain. He came close to drowning. His money was gone. Still, he made it to Nome. Link -via Metafilter

(image found at Center Scene)

You may recall the Dalek Pumpkin from 2006, the Snap-o-Lantern from 2007, and the Dark Detecting Jack-o-Lantern from 2008. The fertile minds at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have announced their Halloween pumpkin project for 2009, and it’s a winner!

The Rovin' Pumpkin' is a simple robotic pumpkin, and a close cousin of the Snap-O-Lantern. Silently, it sits on your porch-- camouflaged amongst the humble squashes.

After a minute, its green eyes start to glow, and it creeps... moving about one foot to the left... and stops. The eyes go dark again. It fades into the darkness. And it waits.

After several minutes and several steps, it reverses direction, and begins to creep the other way. Hopefully before it falls off of your porch.

The Rovin’ Pumpkin is made from Lego parts, a small motor, LEDs for eyes, and a pumpkin. Instructions and a video are included in the article. Link

Many religious cults are based on apocalypticism, the belief that the world is going to end. Check out ten such beliefs, their founders, and followers. One such cult is the Panacea Society.

In 1792, part-time fortune teller Joanna Southcott started collecting “divine revelations” and had them sealed in a box with strict instructions to open it only for Jesus. Her followers called themselves Southcottians and were mostly early-19th century Spiritualists. Southcott dramatically announced that she was pregnant with the messiah, Shiloh, whose birth would kill all but her followers. However, Southcott was a 64-year-old virgin who showed no signs of pregnancy. To Southcott’s credit, she began doubting her beliefs when she failed to give birth but died before she was able to do anything about it. The sudden power vacuum among the Southcottians brought out all sorts of leadership, all of whom claimed they could psychically communicate with Southcott’s box, and transformed the Southcottians into a bizarre cult that refused to bury Southcott’s corpse, believing that she would be resurrected. They renamed themselves the Panacea Society under the belief that they had healing powers, and still believe that Shiloh will descend from heaven to reboot the world at a later date.

There are nine other cults profiled at Ty.rannosaur.us. Link

You can learn a lot from science fiction. For example, you should not try to bring someone back from the dead because they will try to kill you. Proof comes from seven different stories that send chills down our spines.

Pet Sematary: Any dead creature buried in the ancient Micmac burial ground comes back to life, just not quite the way you put it in. After losing his young son Gage, Louis buries his son in the graveyard. Sure enough, Gage comes back — and promptly murders his mother.

That's only one of ten reasons not to resurrect dead bodies. Link -via Gorilla Mask

Scans of the human brain show how neurons fire in different patterns when we are asleep, drugged, experiencing seizures or headaches, and when the brain is damaged. The image on the left is the brain of someone who is asleep. The right shows the brain of a person in a drug-induced sleep. http://www.newsweek.com/id/216558 -via the Presurfer

The Rockin’-R-Ranch in Columbia Township, Ohio hosts a haunted house and conducts haunted hayrides during October. This year, they also hosted a vampire wedding! Jack Holsinger was carried in a coffin to the alter where he met his bride Connie Spitznagel. Both were dressed as vampires. The best man appeared as pirate Jack Sparrow and the maid of honor was decked out as the Bride of Frankenstein.

Minister Greg Kopp got into the spirit of things as well. The couple vowed to love each other, haunt with each other and howl at the moon together till the end of time.

They promised to forsake all other ghouls and goblins and grow in love and “other body parts” until - you guessed - death parts them.

Instead of a first kiss, Holsinger was ordered to bite his new bride on the neck.

Many of the wedding guests were also dressed as vampires or other Halloween characters. Patrons of the haunted house were welcomed to the wedding as well. Link -via YesButNoButYes

(image credit: Alicia Castelli/The Chronicle-Telegram)

Neiman Marcus always has some over-the-top offerings for Christmas -after all, that’s the only reason some folks look at the catalog. This year, how about a cupcake car for only $25,000? Designed by artist Lisa Pongrace, the cupcake runs on electricity and has a top speed of seven miles per hour. Your purchase will be decorated in your favorite flavors. Link -via Buzzfeed

Angry farmers took to the streets to protest low food prices in Brussels, Belgium. They dumped milk into the streets and threw eggs. One pictures shows a farmer aiming streams of milk directly from a cow’s udder onto policemen.

The protest organizers, the European Milk Board, said that more than 1,000 tractors and 5,000 people took part on behalf of “more than 80,000 dairy farmers”.

The group said milk prices are below 75 percent of production costs. Another European farm union organization, Copa-Cogeca, says that milk prices have plummeted 30 percent in a year and that dairy producers will lose up to 14 billion euros before the end of the year if nothing is done.

See the awesome full version of this cropped picture at the New York Times. Link -via Buzzfeed

(image credit: Georges Gobet/Agence France-Presse)

Creative Cloud has a collection of newspaper scans with the biggest headlines of the past 100 years. Here you have a chance to see the news the way people saw it on the days (or the day after, in most cases) many world-changing events happened, from the sinking of the Titanic to the election of the latest president of the United States. Link -via the Presurfer

Police in Gunbalanya, Northern Teritory, Australia arrested and detained a two meter long female crocodile. The charge? Loitering!

Police said they found it loitering near a fence, trying to look innocent.

Brevet Sergeant Adam Russell said intrigued residents had gathered around to watch the arrest - but any dreams he had of nabbing the gnasher in style were promptly voted down.

"I wanted to jump on it Steve Irwin style," he said. "But (the rangers) wouldn't let me."

After three days in the clink, during which the croc endured a hosing-down every few hours, the prisoner was turned over to a crocodile farm. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26165898-13762,00.html -via Arbroath

Businesses all over look for memorable names. Many go with puns, since a funny play on words will stick in your mind. Tanks A Lot is a blog full of punny business names, like restaurants named Beau Thai, Thai Ranosaurus, Thai Foon, or Tongue Thai’d (wonder what kind of food they serve?) or eyeglass stores named Specs Appeal or You and Eye. Link

The annual United Nations human development index, released today, names Norway the best country in which to live. The list of 182 countries is based on 2007 statistics on life expectancy, literacy, school enrollment, gross domestic product, and other criteria.

The top ten countries listed on the index are: Norway, Australia, Iceland, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Switzerland and Japan.

The United States ranks 13th, down one spot from last year.

China wins the most-improved award, moving up to number 92. Niger was at the bottom, and Afghanistan came in second to last. Link -via Digg

Listen to French artist Thomas Bloch demonstrating a glass harmonica, or armonica, at the Paris Music Museum. From Wikipedia:

Benjamin Franklin invented a radically new arrangement of the glasses in 1761 after seeing water-filled wine glasses played by Edmund Delaval at Cambridge in England in 1758.[6] Franklin, who called his invention the "armonica" after the Italian word for harmony, worked with London glassblower Charles James to build one, and it had its world premiere in early 1762, played by Marianne Davies.

In Franklin's treadle operated version 37 bowls were mounted horizontally on an iron spindle. The whole spindle turned by means of a foot pedal. The sound was produced by touching the rims of the bowls with moistened fingers.

Link

Hey baseball fans! As we head into post-season play, test your memory of past World Series with today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. Do you know how many World Series titles each of twelve players earned? Keep in mind that some went all the way with more than one team. I scored 7 of 12, so any real baseball fan should beat that! http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/36140