April, 2009
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April 2, 2009 Today’s Severe Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Police in Allendale, South Carolina, are investigating whether a funeral home fit a 6-foot, 5-inch man into his coffin by severing his legs. The wife of James Hines reportedly said the funeral home told her that her husband’s coffin was long enough. A former Cave Funeral Services employee has alleged since James Hines’ death from skin cancer in 2004 that Hines was too tall for his coffin and that the funeral home took extreme measures to make him fit. Officials exhumed Hines’ body Tuesday, Allendale County Coroner Hayzen Black said, and a fair amount of “undesirable evidence” was found, although he could not comment further. The coroner’s office handed the case over to law enforcement officials for a criminal investigation. Ruth Hines, widow of the dead man, said that the allegations and exhumation of Hines’ body are difficult for her. “I’m just going through quite a bit,” she said. “It’s like starting all over again, and it’s left me with hurt and numbness. According to the measurements on the casket, and the funeral director, we asked him, ‘Was this suitable for his length?’ and he said, ‘Yes that will be perfect,’” Ruth Hines said. Culled from: CNN
Okay, so who else hears that ever-so-slightly racist old children’s song “Crazy Old Man From China” in their head when they read this story? You remember it, right? My mother
she told me to put him to bed My mother
she told me to bury him deep My mother
she told me to chop off his feet |
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April 22, 2009 Today's Gaseous Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Between October 26 and 31, 1948, a severe temperature inversion caused poisonous gases such as sulfuric acid and nitrogen dioxide to become trapped in the stagnant air of the Donora mill town in the Monongahela River Valley in Pennsylvania. Released from various steel works and a zinc plant, whose sulfuric emissions had wiped out most vegetation within a half-mile, 20 people were killed and thousands stricken with respiratory and heart problems.
Culled from: The Huffington Post
I thought this was a good fact for Earth Day considering this was one of the events that helped launch the environmental movement which culminated in the Clean Air Act in 1970. |
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April 23, 2009 Today's Beak-like Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Undoubtedly the most vicious form of whipping was that practised in Russia using the knout or knoot. This fearsome weapon was introduced into the country by Ivan III (1462-1505), many different versions being used. One type consisted of a lash of rawhide, sixteen inches long with a metal ring at its end to which was secured a second lash nine inches long. That in turn also had a ring at its extremity, to which was attached a few inches of hard leather, ending in a beak-like hook.
The reformer John Howard was present at a knouting on August 10, 1781: "The two criminals, a man and a woman, were conducted from prison by about fifteen hussars and ten soldiers... The woman was taken first, and after being roughly stripped to the waist, her hands and feet were bound with cords to a post made for the purpose, a man standing before the post to keep the cords tight. A servant attended the executioner, and both were stout, well-built men. "The servant first marked his ground, and struck the woman five times on the back. Every stroke seemed to penetrate deep into her flesh, but his master, thinking him too gentle, gave all the remaining strokes himself, which were evidently more severe. "The
woman received twenty-five strokes, the man sixty... Both seemed just
alive, and afterwards they were conducted back to prison in a little
waggon. I saw the woman in a very weak state later, but could not find
the man any more." Culled from: The Book Of Execution
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April 24, 2009 Today's Infectious Yet Truly Morbid Fact! In
1895, New York pediatrician Henry Heiman infected a 4-year-old boy whom
he called “an idiot with chronic epilepsy” with gonorrhea
as part of a medical experiment. Culled
from: EMR
Services Of Canada Blog |
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April 25, 2009 Today's Buried Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Relatives
of Eunice Workman had no idea where the elderly woman had gone when
they reported her missing seven years ago. They finally found her—under
a pile of debris in her own home. Workman's daughters were cleaning
out the two-story north Oakland home when they discovered the body.
Her remains were in a second-floor bedroom. Workman had lived in the
house for a decade before she went missing. Culled
from: MercuryNews.Com Hmmmm... Now, this is just me, but... if my mother lived in a house with that much debris in it and she went missing, I think I would do some "sniffing around" to find her. Wouldn't you? |
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April 26, 2009 Today's Litigious Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Will
Keith Kellogg built a corporate empire with Kellogg's cereals. When
none of his children turned out to be worthy successors, he focused
on John L. Kellogg, Jr., his grandson. Will Keith adored his grandson,
followed his Cub Scout career, and from as early as the age of 14, groomed
him to take over the company. John Jr. worked in the company lab on
a project to puff corn, just as Kellogg's had already puffed rice to
create the popular Rice Krispies. When the research work started to
show promise, John Jr. tried to sell the corn puffing process to his
grandfather, who deeply resented the young man trying to hawk something
to him that was developed in a company lab on company time. John Jr.
quit in a rage and started his own company, Nu-Korn, to try to market
cheese-covered corn puffs. His business faltered the following year
and then he tried to sell the puffing process to archrival General Mills
in 1937. In yet another legal round for the Kelloggs, grandpa sued grandson,
who was then 26 years old and newly married, with his wife expecting
their first child. During the litigation, John Jr. - squeezed by mounting
bills - committed suicide by "swallowing a shot gun," as a
former company exec put it. Whatever his motive or his guilt, Will Keith
Kellogg at his death in 1951 left almost all his money to the nonprofit
Kellogg Foundation, which helps children worldwide. Soon after Will
Keith's death, the company finally introduced Kellogg's Corn Pops. Culled
from: An
Underground Education Remember when they were called Sugar Corn Pops, in a more honest time? I do...'
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April 27, 2009 Today's Blood-Curdling Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Two
German air force sergeants are facing a court martial after trying to
mass produce sausages made with the blood of their comrades. The two
men, who are based at Fürstenfeldbruck, a fighter squadron headquarters,
near Munich had already trialed a traditional receipe using their own
blood. But they were caught trying to recruit fellow servicemen and
family members to ensure a constant flow of raw materials. One of the
soldiers posted pictures of himself on a popular German website siphoning
off his blood and adding it to a recipe for the traditional Blotwurst
sausage using onions, bacon, spices and breadcrumbs. The incident only
came to the attention of senior officers after one of their fellow soldiers
reported the fact that he had been asked to donate some blood for the
scheme. The man is reported to have said: "I have been asked to
give blood for sausage-making and I want to know if this is against
regulations." The sergeants, aged 25 and 29 and identified only
as B and G, were suspended immediately last December. The recipe for
the sausage, which apparently came from one of their grandmothers, was
found in the belongings of one of the men after they were arrested.
It
read: "Make sure the blood is fresh and the bacon cubes diced finely
with a nice proportion of fat to lean. Do not use too many breadcrumbs
but if the blood starts to curdle stir in a teaspoon of wine vinegar."
The
men are reported to have told investigating officers that they both
had an "interest in cookery". Culled
from: News.Scotsman.Com As if sausage wasn't disgusting enough... |
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April 28, 2009 Today's Carbonized Yet Truly Morbid Fact! The
biggest volcanic eruption ever recorded in human history took place
nearly 200 years ago on Sumbawa, an island in the middle of the Indonesian
archipelago. Mt. Tambora's explosion was 10 times bigger than Krakatoa
and more than 100 times bigger than Vesuvius or Mount St. Helens. Approximately
100,000 died in its shadow. An enormous cloud of gas released by the
eruption created a veil over the earth. This resulted in the "year
without summer" in 1816 when hundreds of thousands of people died
due to famine and disease brought on by the markedly cooler temperatures.
For
more than two decades, Haraldur Sigurdsson, a volcanologist, has been
gathering information from the Indonesian island. While he was digging,
Sigurdsson discovered artifacts and remains carbonized when Tambora
erupted. He calls his excavation site "The Lost Kingdom of Tambora"
— a find he also refers to as "The Pompeii of the East."
"I have studied deposits in Pompeii and Herculaneum, from the great
destruction of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. [It's] the same mode of destruction,
the same mode of death. But [the] difference here [is] that the human
remains are much more carbonized—almost entirely carbonized,"
Sigurdsson says. "The bones are a piece of charcoal," he says.
That tells scientists that it was a much bigger explosion — with
much higher temperatures. The explosion was hot enough to melt glass,
and it happened so fast, Sigurdsson says, that people living on the
island had no chance to escape. The carbonized remains of one woman
recovered at the site confirm this. "She is lying on her back with
her hands outstretched. She is holding a machete or a big knife in one
hand. There is a sarong over her shoulder. The sarong is totally carbonized,
just like her bones," Sigurdsson says. "Her head is resting
on the kitchen floor, just caught there instantly and blown over by
the flow." Culled from: NPR |
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April 30, 2009 Today's Virtually Exterminated Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Before
the invasion of non-natives, California was a virtual paradise for the
people living there. A pleasant climate, a variety of plants, and plenty
of fish and game made life fairly easy for the natives. The tribes bartered
and intermarried with each other and violent conflict of any kind was
relatively rare. But once the Spaniards arrived in California, life
as the natives knew it was over. They were enslaved by the Spanish,
then by the Mexicans, and finally they were virtually exterminated by
the Caucasians. The Native Americans of California were hunted down
and slaughtered like animals. Thousands were assassinated or lynched
for no reason other than the color of their skin. For instance, in the
spring of 1863, a group of ranchers from Butte County lost some of their
horses and immediately blamed the loss on Native Americans. They captured
the first Native Americans that they found and hung them from a large
oak tree in Helltown. The next day, the horses - which had merely wandered
off to forage in the hills - came walking back to their barns. Until
the mid-1970's, a Yuba City tavern proudly displayed a large photo of
dozens of Native Americans hanging by their necks from a tree, like
a macabre Christmas tree. Culled
from: California
Justice: Shootouts, Lynchings and Assassinations in the Golden State This fact was taken from the above referenced "California Justice" by David Kulczyk, which I recently finished reading. It was a fascinating collection of lynchings, shootouts, and assassinations that occurred in California spanning the 1850's to the modern era. As a native Californian, I recognized many of the communities discussed, which gave the book an added interest, but the morbid tales are interesting enough to appeal to those who have never visited the state. Even more interesting are the historic lynching photographs that accompany many of the stories. Horrifying and fascinating. (More morbid book selections can be found at The Library Eclectica.) Incidentally, back to this particular fact, Helltown is located very near Paradise, California - the town where I spent my "formative" years. Being familiar with the area, I somehow think that the modern residents might not be particularly appalled by the actions of their forebears, if you know what I mean... I just got back from a trip back "home" where I took many photographs to document my wretched (okay, sometimes nice, but mostly wretched) life there. I took a drive up past Helltown and came across a rather creepy memorial to a murdered man, complete with a can of Coors as an offering.
Perhaps you can see why I moved away from the area? Oh, and for those of you interested in more of my depressing and trivial, and trivially depressing, musings - my full "Where I'm From" series is located here.
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