How frail is man–how short life’s longest day!
Here lies the worthy Potter, turned to clay!
Whose forming hand, and whose reforming care,
Has left us full of flaws. Vile earthenware!
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Jan. 15, 1831
In China you can send money to your dead relatives. “Hell banknotes” are burned in a traditional ceremony, after which dead ancestors can use them to bribe the king of hell for a shorter stay.
They’re starting to use credit cards.
Kermit the Frog spoke at ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s funeral.
In western Namibia, there’s a deadly strip of beach where the Namib Desert runs right up against the South Atlantic Ocean. Shipwrecked sailors who landed there found themselves trapped between heavy surf on one side and hundreds of miles of desert on the other. Many starved to death right there on the beach.
It’s called the Skeleton Coast.
When he wasn’t escaping straitjackets, Harry Houdini spent a lot of time debunking spiritualists.
Shortly before his death, he made a pact with his wife, Bess: If possible, he would contact her from the other side and deliver a prearranged coded message.
When he died, Bess lit a candle beside his photograph and kept it burning for 10 years, holding séances every Halloween to test the pact. Harry never spoke.
In 1936, after a final attempt on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel, Bess put out the candle.
“Ten years is long enough to wait for any man,” she said.
Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz is looking remarkably fit for his age. The Prussian knight died in 1702 and his body hasn’t decayed.
No one knows why. He wasn’t embalmed. A legend says it’s God’s punishment for an oath he broke while living. Scientists think he lost a lot of blood before dying and that the local soil lacked materials that would promote decay. But that doesn’t explain why other bodies nearby did rot.
Tupac Shakur died on Friday the 13th.
The Belgian village of Passchendaele before and after the Third Battle of Ypres, 1917. Aerial photography showed 1 million shell holes in one square mile.
After the battle, the following notice was found in a dugout full of dead British soldiers. It was signed by their Australian commander:
Clemenceau said, “War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.”
National Geographic photographer Reid Blackburn’s car after the eruption of Mount St. Helens, May 18, 1980. The lava would have been about 680°F when it reached him.
In all, the eruption equaled 27,000 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs. It killed 57 people, 1,500 elk, 5,000 deer, and 11 million fish.
When a film crew was dropped by helicopter on the mountain five days later, its compasses spun in circles.
Sam Patch (1799-1829), “The Yankee Leaper,” earned his epithet — in his 30-year lifetime he jumped from the following points:
That last one attracted a crowd of 8,000 — Upper Falls is 99 feet high. The first attempt went fine, but on the followup he dislocated both shoulders and drowned. His grave marker says “Sam Patch — Such Is Fame.”
