April 17, 2009

• Death Triva (No, I’m not Suicidal, but my computer seems to be)

  Because I am feeling slightly morbid today, possibly due to the frequent crashes of my OS, I have prepared for you this collection of death related trivia. Enjoy!
  
  (PS, if this keeps up, I may not be able to post for a while… This post would have been made in two installments if my computer had cooperated yesterday, so sorry for the length.)
  
  

  • Each year, more people are killed by teddy bears than by grizzly bears.
  • A death erection (sometimes referred to as “angel lust”) is a post-mortem erection which occurs when a male individual dies vertically or face-down with the cadaver remaining in this position. If an individual dies vertically such as in a hanging, the blood will settle in the legs and pool at the feet. The blood which remains in the torso attempts to move to a lower position due to gravity, and the blood in the waist (which cannot move down due to the legs being full) causes the penis, consisting of erectile tissue, to fill with blood and expand.
  • The practice of burying the dead may date back 350,000 years, as evidenced by a 45-foot-deep pit in Atapuerca, Spain, filled with the fossils of 27 hominids of the species Homo heidelbergensis, a possible ancestor of both Neanderthals and modern humans.
  • There are at least 200 euphemisms for death, including “to be in Abraham’s bosom,” “just add maggots,“ and “sleep with the Tribbles.”
  • No American has died of old age since 1951.That was the year the government eliminated that classification on death certificates.
  • Within three days of death, the enzymes that once digested your dinner begin to digest you.
  • Burials in America deposit 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid—formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol—into the soil each year. Cremation pumps dioxins, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide into the air. So much for a “green” burial.
  • Queen Victoria insisted on being buried with the bathrobe of her long-dead husband, Prince Albert, and a plaster cast of his hand.
  • In Madagascar, families dig up the bones of dead relatives and parade them around the village in a ceremony called famadihana. The remains are then wrapped in a new shroud and reburied. The old shroud is given to a childless couple in order to conceive.
  • During a railway expansion in Egypt in the 19th century, construction companies unearthed so many mummies that they used them as fuel for locomotives.
  • In 19th-century Europe there was so much anecdotal evidence that living people were mistakenly declared dead that cadavers were laid out in “hospitals for the dead” where  attendants awaited signs of putrefaction.
  • Eighty percent of people in the United States die in a hospital.
  • More people commit suicide in New York City than are murdered.
  • It is estimated that 100 billion people have died since humans came into being.
  • On average, right-handed people live 9 years longer than their left-handed counterparts.
  • A murder is committed in the US every 23 minutes, which makes about 22852 murders each year.
  • On average, people fear spiders more than they do dying. However, you are statistically more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
  • Cockroaches can live for nine days without their heads, at which point they die of starvation.
  • In Erwin, Tennessee an elephant was once hanged for murder.
  • After being decapitated, the average person remains conscious for an additional 15-20 seconds.
  • Mourning your dear departed cat? The ancient Egyptians used to shave their eyebrows to show the depth of their mourning.
  • An old wives’ tale claims that if a woman is buried wearing the color black, she’ll come back to haunt the family.
  • The burial wreath was designed more to encircle the spirit of the dead person, thereby preventing them from returning from the grave, than to look pretty.
  • In 1931, Henry Ford decided to preserve his friend, Thomas Edison’s last dying breath. He kept it in a bottle.
  • When Pyrenees beekeepers die, someone has to go around and splash every single one of their bees with black ink.
  • An old superstition stated that if the doors in the house were locked, the soul of a dying person couldn’t get out.

  
  

  There may not be thousands of ways
  we deal with the dead, but…
  

  
  

  Wealthier Vikings were placed in ships filled with food, jewels, weapons, food and even sometimes servants or animals for their comfort in the afterlife. The boats were interred in the ground, set alight, or sent out to sea.
  
  In contrast to western funerals, cremation ceremonies among the Hindus of Bali are quite festive. Carnival-like floats parade down local streets accompanying the body to a charnel ground, where it is transferred into a ceremonial bull receptacle and set alight.
  
  Reserved for members of the upper classes, mummification in Egypt involved the removal of all organs including the brain, which was pulled through the nose by a hook. The brain was discarded, but many of the organs were preserved in canopic jars. The body was dehydrated with natural salts and stuffed with dry materials like sawdust before being wrapped in linens.
  
  Tibetan Buddhist Sky Burial is a form of exposure practiced in Tibet. Tibetans call the practice jhator, which means giving alms to the birds, and they’ve been doing sky burial since at least the 12th century, according to the Tibetan Book Of The Dead. The bodies, wrapped in white cloth, are bought to the burial site. The monks unwrap the bodies and using an axe, proceed to dismember them to assist the birds in their meal. When the body is dismembered, the vultures swoop in and squabble over the pieces. When all the flesh is gone, the bones are smashed to bits with mallets, mixed with flour and other ingredients, and fed to smaller birds.
  
  Indigenous tribes in many parts of the world determined that the best way to dispose of the dead was to put them in elevated areas. Groups in Australia, British Columbia, the American southwest and Siberia were known to practice tree burial, which involved wrapping the body in a shroud or cloth and placing it in the crook of a tree to decompose. Exposure on raised platforms was another common practice. In Australia, there are two main burial stages. First the corpse is left on a raised platform and covered with leaves and branches until the flesh has rotted away (a process which can take months). When nothing but bones are left, they are taken from the platform and painted with red ochre. The bones are either placed in a cave until they become dust or inside a hollowed out log. In some cases, they are carried around by relatives for up to a year. This is sometimes followed by total destruction or abandonment of the deceased’s property, and for a time no one is allowed to say the name of the deceased.
  
  Zoroastrians believe the body is impure and shouldn’t pollute the earth after death through burial or cremation. The deceased are brought to a ceremonial “tower of silence”, usually located on an elevated mountain plateau, and left exposed to the animals and elements. When the bones have been dried and bleached by the sun, they are gathered and dissolved in lime.
  
  Among some cultures, it was possible to start your funeral arrangements before death, though sometimes it was involuntary. Self-immolation (or Suttee) was a traditional Hindu ritual practiced in India, whereby a grieving widow would voluntarily (or not so voluntarily) lie beside her husband on his funeral pyre. Thankfully, this practice was outlawed by the occupying British in 1829, and again in 1956, and yet again in 1981. Third time’s the charm?
  
  Buddhist Self Mummification was practiced until the late 1800s in Japan, but has been outlawed since the early 1900s. For the first 1000 days, they would change their diet to just nuts and seeds to reduce body fat. Then the priests would eat only a small amount of bark and roots from pine trees, for another 1,000 days to reduce water in the body. Finally, they’d drink a special tea made from the (Poisonous!) sap of an urushi tree, causing explosive diarrhea and vomiting but having the added benefit of lining the guts against maggots. At the end of this 2000 day ritual, the priest was sealed into a small, stone room just big enough to sit in the lotus position. If the priest had successfully mummified himself, he would be revered as a Buddha.
  
  You can purchase your own space burial, though the cost depends on just how far out into space you want to end up. You can have your ashes sent into low orbit for a while for as low as $695, but getting a spot on a deep space Gemini Module can run up to $60,000. The first space burial was performed in 1997, from an aircraft carrying a modified Pegasus rocket and contained the ashes of twenty-two people (including Timothy Leary and Gene Roddenberry). Sadly it re-entered the atmosphere in 2002. This form of “burial” has become a symbolic gesture for the deceased who had an interest or career in space. In Timothy Leary’s case, he actually requested it. Of course, if you can’t quite afford a burial among the stars, you can always have your loved one’s ashes turned into fireworks with a company called Angels Flight!
  
  You can also now send your corpse on a tour of museums with plastination. Developed by German scientist Gunther von Hagens, his popular “Body Worlds” exhibits showcase the controversial preservation technique, which involves dissecting the body into bits, embalming it with a hardening fluid and posing the body in various ‘educational’ positions. Personally, while I’d prefer some permanence in my mode of “burial,” I’d like something a little less grotesque. There are now companies which will convert your ashes into a diamond (LifeGems), or a company in Georgia (Eternal Reefs, Inc) which will mix your loved one’s ashes with concrete to help restore reefs. Want something a little closer to home and less expensive than diamonds, Memory Glass is a cremation keepsake company that suspends your loved one’s ashes in a solid glass globe or pendant. The globes require very little of the ashes, so it’s possible to have several of these made, allowing each family member their own unique memorial. Another company, Art in Ashes, will take a teaspoon of cremation ashes and mix it into paint, using the paint to create one-of-a-kind artwork to memorialize your loved one.
  
  Finally, though the story of Walt Disney’s quest for immortality through cryogenics was an urban legend, cryonic science is a reality. It is currently only legal to perform on those who have actually been pronounced dead. Participants are stored in a liquid nitrogen solution to prevent decay until a  time when death becomes a reversible phenomenon. However, I’ve heard nitrogen damages the cells, so resurrection is pretty unlikely unless they also manage to repair the damaged DNA.

  Of course, for a completely biodegradable burial, a Swedish company called Promessa will freeze-dry your body in liquid nitrogen, pulverize it with high-frequency vibrations, and seal the powder in a cornstarch coffin. They claim this “ecological burial” will decompose in 6 to 12 months.

  
  
  

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  April 16th
  (yesterday)
  

  
  

  This is the fifth day of the Cerealia.
  
  

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  The god Apollo was worshiped by his faithful cult in ancient Greece during an annual festival called the Hiketeria.
  
  

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  On this date in the year 1946, Pagan author Margot Adler was born in Little Rock Arkansas. Her Wiccan handfasting on June 19, 1988, was the first Neo-Pagan Wedding to appear in the New York Times’ society pages.
  
  

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  It was customary to begin weeding the crops today.
  
  

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  The 2nd day of Payni is a Holiday of Ra and His Shemsu (followers).
  

  
  
  

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  April 17th
  (today)
  

  
  

  This is the sixth day of the Cerealia.
  
  

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  Dedicated to Machendrana, the ancient and powerful Indian God of rain, an annual religious event called the Chariot Festival of the Rain God is held in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal. Beginning today, the festival continues for approximately eight consecutive weeks.
  

  
  
  

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  • 12:11 pm
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