May, 2009
|
May 4, 2009 Today's Philosophical Yet Truly Morbid Fact! When
the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly was hanged in 1880 his final words were,
"Such is life." Culled from: Death: A History Of Man's Obsessions and Fears |
|
May 5, 2009 Today's Horrifically Painful Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Long the fate of witches and heretics, burning to death is torture. Hot smoke and flames singe eyebrows and hair and burn the throat and airways, making it hard to breathe. Burns inflict immediate and intense pain through stimulation of the nociceptors - the pain nerves in the skin. To make matters worse, burns also trigger a rapid inflammatory response, which boosts sensitivity to pain in the injured tissues and surrounding areas. As burn intensities progress, some feeling is lost but not much, says David Herndon, a burns-care specialist at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. "Third-degree burns do not hurt as much as second-degree wounds, as superficial nerves are destroyed. But the difference is semantic; large burns are horrifically painful in any instance." Some
victims of severe burns report not feeling their injuries while they
are still in danger or intent on saving others. Once the adrenalin and
shock wear off, however, the pain quickly sets in. Pain management remains
one of the most challenging medical problems in the care of burns victims.
Most people who die in fires do not in fact die from burns. The most
common cause of death is inhaling toxic gases - carbon monoxide, carbon
dioxide and even hydrogen cyanide - together with the suffocating lack
of oxygen. One study of fire deaths in Norway from 1996 found that almost
75 per cent of the 286 people autopsied had died from carbon monoxide
poisoning. Depending on the size of the fire and how close you are to
it, concentrations of carbon monoxide could start to cause headache
and drowsiness in minutes, eventually leading to unconsciousness. According
to the US National Fire Protection Association, 40 per cent of the victims
of fatal home fires are knocked out by fumes before they can even wake
up. Culled
from: New
Scientist Poor carbon monoxide gets such a bad rap. It sounds like a damned good friend to me. |
|
May 7, 2009 Today's Deaf and Dumb Yet Truly Morbid Fact! In 1735 at Nottingham assizes an alleged murderer, apparently deaf and dumb from birth, was unable to plead, and was pressed to death. The judges believed that the accused had only pretended to be dumb, as was discovered - too late for the prisoner to plead - to be the case in Ireland in 1740. Mathew Ryan was accused of highway robbery at Kilkenny assizes. A moving description of the incident was published in The Percy Anecdotes (vol VIII, 1823): "The
judges on this desired the prisoner to plead, but he still pretended
to be insensible to all that was said to him. The law now called for
the peine forte et dure; but the judges compassionately deferred
awarding it until a future day, in the hope that he might in the meantime
acquire a juster sense of his situation. When again brought up, however,
the criminal persisted in his refusal to plead: and the court at last
pronounced the dreadful sentence, that he should be pressed to death.
The sentence was accordingly executed upon him two days after in the
public market-place of Kilkenny. As the weights were heaping on the
wretched man, he earnestly supplicated to be hanged; but it being beyond
the power of the sheriff to deviate from the mode of punishment prescribed
in the sentence, even this was an indulgence which could no longer be
granted to him." Culled from: The History Of Torture |
|
May 9, 2009 Today's Muffled Yet Truly Morbid Fact! When
English prison reformer John Howard visited the prison in Hanover, Germany,
in 1778, he found each prisoner secured to the walls by chains around
their ankles, their wrists manacled to each end of a two-foot long bar
of iron. And on going to Munich he inspected La Prison de la Cour. This
he found to incorporate fifteen cells, each about twelve feet by seven.
An adjoining room was, conveniently, the torture chamber within which,
on a raised platform at one end, stood a table draped with black fringed
cloth. Behind the table were placed six black chairs for the magistrates
and secretaries, while the rest of the room contained instruments of
torture, some stained with blood. Shutters to muffle victims' cries
covered the windows, and two crucifixes mounted on the wall doubtless
brought some little solace to those poor wretches being put to the question.
Culled
from: Rack,
Rope and Red-Hot Pincers Somehow, I think that Mel Gibson would give anything to be one of those magistrates overseeing the torture, don't you? |
|
May 17, 2009 Today's Piggish Yet Truly Morbid Fact! In
1896, Dr. Arthur Wentworth turned 29 children at Boston's Children's
Hospital into human guinea pigs when he performed spinal taps on them,
just to test whether the procedure was harmful. Culled
from: Natural News Oh, come on - children don't have developed nervous systems - they'll hardly feel it. And they won't remember it anyway. Sheesh! |
|
May 18, 2009 Today's Crazy Yet Truly Morbid Fact! "It
was pretty bizarre," said neighbor Ramon Rodriguez. Rodriguez was
one of the first to discover 34-year-old Angelo Mendoza on April 28,
2009 after police said Mendoza bit an eyeball out of his 4- year-old
son's face and ate it. "The guy was crazy. Real bug-eyed; he had
to be on drugs," said Rodriguez. Court documents said neighbors
checked on Mendoza's son, Angelo Jr., after they noticed the father
acting nervously and fleeing from his east Bakersfield apartment in
his wheelchair. Inside, they found little Angelo naked and bleeding.
Police said the boy had numerous bites to his hands and his eyes were
swollen shut. Doctors said the boy's left eye and muscle were completely
missing. His other eye was mutilated beyond repair. The boy told them,
"My daddy ate my eyes out." Rodriguez said meanwhile Mendoza
approached him at a neighbor's vacant house down the street. Rodriguez
said the boy's father wheeled himself into the front yard and asked
Rodriguez to play with him and a pet dog. He was wearing boxers and
a sweater. When Rodriguez refused, Mendoza got off his wheelchair and
dragged himself into a back yard, where he found an ax. By then Mendoza
had stripped naked. He chained himself to a tree in the back yard and
began hacking at his leg with a pickax while yelling incoherently. "He
told me to look into the sun and pray with him. I was kinda scared for
a minute," said Rodriguez. Then Rodriguez jumped on Mendoza and
wrestled the ax away. As soon as I grabbed the ax he tried to bite me,
and I had to hold him down with my knee. There was dry blood around
his mouth. I don't know if it was his own, but I'm pretty sure it was
his son's now that I hear the story," said Rodriguez. The police
report said Mendoza appeared to be under the influence of PCP. Rodriguez
said had he known about little Angelo, the outcome would have been different.
"I would've just let him cut his leg off. What happened to his
son is not right. I would've left him alone," said Rodriguez. Mendoza
was arrested on charges of torture, aggravated mayhem, and cruelty to
a child. The toddler is now in the custody of Child Protective Services.
Mendoza is due in court May 20. His bail is set at $1 million. Culled
from: turnto23.com When will people learn not to smoke PCP? As soon as I heard the story years ago of the man who cut his own face off and fed it to his dogs, I knew that stuff was NOT to be messed with... now THIS! Poor kid. Maybe the father thought he was The Sandman? |
