October 1, 1996
Christopher Houck was struck and killed as he chased
his runaway cowboy hat in heavy traffic on Texas Highway 225. Must
have been his finest hat...
October 2, 1996
The execution of John Evans, who died on the electric
chair in April of 1983, was a particularly "difficult" affair. After
the first jolt of electricity, sparks and flames erupted from the
electrode attached to his leg and smoke and sparks came out from under
his hood. Doctors checked and found a heartbeat so another
jolt of electricity was administered with the result of more smoke and
burning flesh. Again, the doctors found a heartbeat. Ignoring the
pleas of Evans' lawyer, a third jolt was administered. The execution
took 13 minutes and left Evans' body charred and smoldering.
October 3, 1996
One particularly strange side show freak was "Mortado"
- the human pincushion. He found a doctor willing to bore holes into
his hands and feet and he would place fake blood pellets into these
holes and be crucified as the shocked public looked on. He also
rigged a chair that would shoot water out of the holes in his hands
and feet and he dubbed himself "The Human Fountain".
October 4, 1996
In Paris in the 1700's, times were desperate and,
consequently, one out of every seven Parisians was a beggar. Due to
the intense competition among beggars, some individuals began to go to
extremes to mutilate themselves or make themselves look diseased, so
as to arouse pity and, hopefully, money from the passing citizens.
The strangest and most extreme of these practices was hiring a
physician to perform a horribly painful operation which produced what was
called a "denatsate". First, the mouth was extended by having slits
cut from each of the corners to the lobe of the nearest ear. Next, the
gums were removed while the teeth were carefully left in place. The
final touch was the complete slicing away of the nose so as to leave a
gaping hole in the center of the face. The result was a ghastly,
skull-like countenance which horrified people so much that they would
pay just to get the denatsate out of their site. Voila! - instant
cash!
October 5, 1996
The funeral procession for the Ayotollah Khomeini
consisted of over a million people and was 21 miles long. For this
reason, they used a helicopter to carry his coffin over the crowd, down to
where his grave was going to be. However, the crowd started pushing and
shoving so much in their attempts to touch the body that they knocked the
Ayotollah down into the dirt. They placed him back in the box and flew
him off: no burial for him that day. Nevertheless, eight people were
crushed to death in the excitement.
October 6, 1996
Douglas and Dana Ridenour dreaded the idea of getting
old, so they decided to treat themselves to a $50,000 spending spree and
then commit suicide. They made a videotape of their plan and sent it to
Mr. Ridenour's brother, who received it two days after Mr. Ridenour shot
his wife, his dogs, and then himself.
October 7, 1996
During the Viet Nam War, the U.S. expended 39,424
pounds of ammunition per fatality at a cost of $2,436,657 per each
enemy death. Now, there's an example of American know-how at
work!
October 8, 1996
Dennis R. Widdison of Newark, England committed
suicide in 1987 by pounding 5-inch nails into his own skull with a
hammer.
October 9, 1996
A possible medical explanation for the phenomenon of
vampirism is a condition called porphyria. Porphyria sufferers are
sensitive to light; they may grow excessively long hair; their teeth
may elongate and become orange colored. Porphyria symptoms are
allegedly alleviated by injections of heme, a compound found in human
blood, and aggravated by exposure to garlic.
October 10, 1996
In June of 1966, Thomas Guy Cleveland, a 19-year-old
Northridge CA resident, was killed when he attempted to sneak into
Disneyland along the monorail track. Cleveland scaled the park's
sixteen-foot high outer fence on Grad Nite and climbed onto the Monorail
track, intending to jump or climb down once inside the park. Cleveland
ignored a security guard's shouted warnings of an approaching Monorail
train and failed to leap clear of the track. He finally climbed down onto
a fiberglass canopy beneath the track, but the clearance wasn't enough --
the oncoming train struck and killed him, dragging his body 30
to 40 feet down the track.
October 11, 1996
Death via the gas chamber is a particularly
excrutiating affair. The process is begun when cyanide pellets are
dropped into shallow pans of sulfuric acid mixed with water. The gas
fumes rise quickly but death is usually painfully slow. The victims
begin to gasp and wheeze then they thrash, scream, and cry. Often
they struggle so violently they break free of their straps. Their
faces turn purple, their tongues stick out, they drool. Needless to
say, witnesses often find this manner of execution rather distressing.
What an ugly way to go...
October 12, 1996
A woman in Brooklyn who lived with her five grown
children became ill with a brain tumor. Being a religious woman, she
stopped taking her medication and told her children that God would
make her well. Her kids kept taking care of her, washing her and
changing her clothes, and waiting for God to make her well for about a
year and a half after she died. It's a strange world we live in,
isn't it?
October 13, 1996
Thomas Edison helped to develop the electric chair in
order to prove the deadly dangers of Alternating Current electrical
systems. You see, he was in direct competition with Westinghouse,
whose AC system was becoming the preferred method of electrical
production, thus threatening Edison's Direct Current (DC) system with
irrelevance. Realizing that he was losing the war, Edison began holding
demonstrations in which he would electrocute large numbers of cats and
dogs by luring the animals onto a metal plate wired to a 1,000 volt AC
generator. Fortunately, this act of cruelty did not work to sway the
public to his side and the more economical and efficient AC became the
electricity standard. However, the legacy of Edison's Machiavellian
maneuver was the development of the electric chair.
October 14, 1996
14-year-old Martine Blot of Paris was killed by a man
who fell on her as he jumped from the tower of Notre Dame Cathedral to
commit suicide. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong
time!
October 15, 1996
The preferred method of execution for women in the
olden days was the extremely torturous method of being burned at the
stake. This method was supposedly suitable for women because the sentence
could be carried out with them keeping all their clothes on. Also, being
tied to the stake kept them from jumping around in an unseemly, unladylike
manner. This philosophy was best stated by legal commentator William
Blackstone: "As decency due to the sex forbids the exposing and publicly
mangling of their bodies, their sentence is... to be burned alive." Women
were burned until 1789.
October 16, 1996
In 1969, nine people died on a river in Zambia when
their boat was hit by rampaging hippopotamuses.
October 17, 1996
Leslie Merry of London, England was killed at the age
of 56 by a turnip thrown from a passing car in a drive-by pelting.
October 18, 1996
The method of disposing of a body can be a very
crucial decision in any murderer's life. For instance, Raymond Vargas
killed a girl on the Williamsburg Bridge. Instead of throwing the
body in the river, like you might think, he goes and gets his
girlfriend. They buy a dollar's worth of gasoline, return to the
remote site, and attempt to burn the body. Of course, bodies don't
burn very well since humans are mostly made of water. The body is
found and Vargas is arrested.
October 19, 1996
In one of the more incredibly stupid examples of
accidental (it is assumed) death, a man attached a JATO (Jet Assisted
Takeoff Unit - actually a solid-fuel rocket) to his Chevy Impala and
went for a joyride in the desert. Unfortunately for him, he hit a
curve... quite literally. The crushed metal remains of his car (which
resembled an airplane crash) were found imbedded into the side of a
cliff rising above the road. It was determined that he was going
between 250-300 mph when he came to that curve. The brakes on the car
were completely burned away from attempting to stop.
Update: Morbid
Facts Patron Kevin Schieberl writes: "The MFdJ for 10-19-96 about the
JATO driver's unintentional suicide is a hoax. As I originally read that
story several years ago, it occurred in Arizona, but the Arizona Highway
Patrol says it never happened. Maybe, though, it really did happen and
the driver was a distant Kennedy cousin...
October 20, 1996
A Long Island man claimed he stabbed another guy 72
times and ran him over with a car "in self-defense". Unsurprisingly,
he was convicted of murder.
October 21, 1996
After James Dean's fatal car crash, his smashed
Porsche was exhibited privately around Los Angeles as a warning of
reckless driving. Fans were charged 25 cents to view the death car,
50 cents to sit behind the wheel, and 50 cents to touch the
bloodstained steering wheel. The car was later broken into small
pieces which were sold as momentos.
October 22, 1996
During a firing squad execution, five gunmen stand
just 20 feet away the condemned. Only four of the guns get real
bullets; the fifth is a blank. Due to this, none of the
executioners are certain that they were responsible for the death. I
guess this makes them feel better about it. Talk about
rationalization!
October 23, 1996
Oscar Wilde's last words were, "Either this wallpaper
goes or I do!"
October 24, 1996
A 1986 Florida survey found that bicycle fatalities
had tripled since 1981, when a tough new drunk-driving statute began
forcing alcoholics to ride bikes.
October 25, 1996
Charles I, King of England (1600-1649), was beheaded
then buried at Windsor Castle in the same vault as Henry VIII. For
many years the coffins were lost but they were rediscovered in 1813
and an autopsy was secretly performed by the royal surgeon, Sir Henry
Halford. He secretly stole Charles' fourth cervical vertebra, which
had been cleanly sliced by the axe. For the next 30 years, he loved
to shock friends at dinner parties by using the vertebra as a salt
holder. The bone was returned to Charles' coffin at Queen Victoria's
command.
October 26, 1996
Attila the Hun died during sex.
October 27, 1996
After English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley died of drowning
in 1822, his body was cremated on the Italian beach where it had
washed up. During the burning, Lord Byron asked Edward Trelawny for
the skull, but Trelawny refused. They were surprised to see that
Shelley's heart didn't burn and so, despite the heat, Trelawny thrust
his hand into the furnace and snatched up the relic. (His hand was
racked by continual pain for many years thereafter.) The heart was
eventually given to Percy's widow, Mary Shelley, who preserved it in a
silken shroud and carried it with her wherever she went. When their
son, Percy, died the heart was placed in a silver case and buried with
him.
October 28, 1996
The Geek was the most frightening of the circus
sideshow freaks. They even frightened the other freaks. You see, a
geek was an unfortunate individual (often a derelict drunk or drug
addict with no other financial options) who was placed into a cage and
billed as a "wild man" (or woman) or a "missing link". While
horrified marks would look on, the Geek would make a variety of
unpleasant noises and eat virtually anything offered - warm and still
breathing. They would bite the heads off chickens and swallow them.
The greatest of all Geeks was Veronica Shant. Unlike many others, she
loved her job and devoured chicken, field mice, and garter snake heads
with joy... and in the process caused much vomiting among the
marks.
October 29, 1996
During the late Roman Empire, there was a fad among
the upper classes of having at least one dwarf among their servants.
Eager hunters scoured the countryside for dwarfs to buy or steal, but
the natural supply soon ran out. Eventually, techniques were
developed whereby dwarfs could be created out of normal babies.
First, the babies were given food which was deprived of as many
growth-encouraging nutrients as possible. If they survived this
fragile period, they were then fed a diet which consisted almost
exclusively of brandy. Between drinks, they were soaked in vats of
alcohol "in order to shrivel tissue and cartilage". Naturally, many
babies died from this treatment but their murderers made a tidy profit on
those who survived.
October 30, 1996
When Glenn R. Williams started squabbling with his
uncle over who should get the dark meat at their family's Thanksgiving
dinner, the uncle blew him away with four shots from a 22-caliber
rifle. (Now, now - what sort of example is that to set for the
children?)
October 31, 1996
Our modern celebration of Halloween is a descendant of
the ancient Celtic fire festival "Samhain" (pronounced "sow-in") which
was also known as "All Hallowtide". This was a festival marking the
end of harvest and the beginning of winter. During this time it was
believed that faeries were particularly active and could be rather
malevolent and spiteful. The concept of "trick or treating" began
when some clever folks decided to dress up as faeries and go from
house to house begging for treats. If anyone did not comply, it would
result in practical jokes being played on the occupants. An offering
of food or milk was frequently left on the doorstep so that the
householder could attain the blessings of the "good folk" for the next
harvest. These imitation faeries would sometimes carry turnips carved to
represent faces, which is the origin of the modern jack-o-lantern.
 |
 |
 Vulgarities... |