February 2012
29 posts
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Minister praises plan to heat swimming pool from... →
A money-saving plan to heat a swimming pool with energy from the cremation of dead bodies has been backed by a senior Government minister.
Sir George Young, leader of the House of Commons, said the proposal to warm a Worcestershire leisure centre with heat from a nearby crematorium was a “groundbreaking scheme”.
He said the Government is considering whether the plan could be duplicated...
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Is it wrong to make money from a tragedy? →
Shortly after singer Whitney Houston’s death earlier this month, Sony Music raised the price of two of her albums on the UK version of iTunes. The change prompted a backlash and the company later reversed the decision and declared that they were “mistakenly mispriced”. In a difficult business environment, should the company have seized the commercial opportunity?
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What happens if you find human remains in your... →
When a set of bones was discovered at a property in Dorset this month, experts confirmed they were “bones of antiquity”. But what happens when you find human remains in your back garden?
Imagine you have got the builders in and they are digging up your garden.
Then suddenly work stops, and the contractors tell you they have uncovered a set of bones.
This is what happened to a woman...
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Melting down hips and knees: the afterlife of... →
As people live longer and medical technology improves, more and more of us will have a surgical implant before we die. We are also getting cremated in larger numbers - and so there is often some expensive metal left among the ashes. Where does it go?
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"The Deadly Nevergreen": Public Hangings at Tyburn →
theossuary:
Article from The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice on the “Tyburn Tree,” notorious site for public hangings in what is today London:
Beginning in the 18th century, Tyburn became a battleground between the surgeons who needed to procure corpses for dissection and the mob who fought ferociously to protect the dead from this indignity.
Read the whole thing.
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Nicolas Cage: I'm Not a Vampire →
Booo. I’d find him much more interesting if he were.
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Watchtheossuary:
This is insanely neat. I love the pleased expression at the end.
Skeleton stop motion video by museumoflondon on Flickr:
Laying out a skeleton in anatomical postion
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Mummy Pictures: Secrets of Stunning 19th-Century... →
archaeologicalnews:
A mounted human head strikes a brain-teasing pose—just one of eight forgotten but stunningly preserved 19th-century Italian mummies whose secrets of preservation have only recently been unraveled.
Working in the town of Salò, anatomist Giovan Battista Rini (1795-1856) “petrified” the…
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Project 12:31
In 1993, a convicted murderer was executed. His body was given to science, segmented and photographed for medical research. In 2011, we used photography to put it back together.
(Photograph by Frank Schott)
This is absolutely AMAZING. Seriously. Check out the website for the full story and more incredible images.
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Brush with the Black Death: how artists painted... →
From 1347 to the late 17th century, Europe was stalked by the Black Death, yet art not only survived, it flourished. So why are modern Europeans so afraid of epidemics?
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Irish Iron Age bog bodies... →
Eamonn Kelly lectures on Irish Iron Age bog bodies. It’s an hour long, so consider yourselves warned!
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Wealthy drop big bucks beyond grave →
They say you can’t take it with you when you die, but that’s not necessarily true for the wealthiest Americans — like Donald Trump.
He announced this week he might build a 1.5-acre cemetery next to his high-end golf course in Bedminster, where members pay a lifetime fee of as much as $300,000. If they want to stay beyond that, they most likely will pay a membership fee that includes...
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The world’s largest museum collection of brains is... →
There’s only one place in the world where you can view row after row of brains afflicted by mad cow disease, Alzheimer’s, and alcoholism. It’s Lima’s Museo de Cerebros, home to the largest collection of gray matter that can be viewed by the public.
More than 3,000 samples of diseased brains and fetuses have been assembled by neuropathologist Diana Rivas for the Brain...
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The Art of the Obituary →
As obituaries editor of the Telegraph, I’m often asked if I find my job depressing. “Doesn’t it get you down?” people say in hushed, sympathetic tones, as though we were huddled together in the plushly upholstered confines of a Mayfair undertakers. “I mean, dealing with that relentless tide of death…” At which point I trot out a line well worn by those in my particular area of journalism:...
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Piltdown Man: British archaeology's greatest hoax →
archaeologicalnews:
In a few weeks, a group of British researchers will enter the labyrinthine store of London’s Natural History Museum and remove several dark-coloured pieces of primate skull and jawbone from a small metal cabinet. After a brief inspection, the team will wrap the items in protective foam and…
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Do the dead outnumber the living? →
The population of the planet reached seven billion in October, according to the United Nations. But what’s the figure for all those who have lived before us?
It is often said that there are more people alive today than have ever lived - and this “fact” has raised its head again since the UN announcement about the planet’s population reaching a new high.
The idea helps...
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Dead bodies stored in cupboards on the Tube →
The bodies of people who commit suicide on the London Underground network are often stored in cleaning cupboards and store rooms until an undertaker can collect them, a new documentary has revealed.
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Top five regrets of the dying... →
A nurse has recorded the most common regrets of the dying, and among the top ones is ‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard’. What would your biggest regret be if this was your last day of life?
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January 2012
73 posts
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Death becomes her... →
The dramatic shift in the demographics of a business whose public face has long been that of a dark-suited, soft-spoken man – often one who grew up on the second floor of his family’s funeral parlor.
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New York cemetery allows pets and people to be... →
Anne Albert plans to spend eternity in the Peaceful Valley section of the Middle Island, N.Y., cemetery she’s chosen, next to her husband, their four dogs, four cats, two horses and a rabbit named Cutie.
New rules to be issued in the spring by the New York State Division of Cemeteries will allow Albert to pursue her wish — to have her cremated remains buried in Regency Forest Pet Memorial...
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Skeletons found in Dorset mass grave 'were... →
archaeologicalnews:
A mass grave in Dorset containing 54 decapitated skeletons was a burial ground for violent Viking mercenaries, according to a Cambridge archaeologist.
The burial site at Ridgeway Hill was discovered in 2009.
Archaeologists found the bodies of 54 men who had all been decapitated and placed…
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Vultures skeletonise corpse for the sake of... →
oldowan:
Ever entertained the idea of leaving your body to science? Even if you have, you can scarcely have considered the strange fate of one donated corpse that has just been revealed in the journal Forensic Science International: a donor’s body was left in a Texan wilderness so that vultures could scavenge and “skeletonise” it - and distribute the remains far and wide.
This wasn’t for...
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Life and death in 17th century London →
A new exhibition at the Royal Society in London features some of the most remarkable treasures from 350 years of book collecting, including a rare volume that looks at causes of death in 17th century London.
The exhibition includes John Graunt’s 1679 work Natural and Political Observations…upon the Bills of Mortality, which provides this unique insight. Entries in the fold-out tables of...
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Researchers collect DNA from men with possible... →
archaeologicalnews:
MEN with Viking surnames filled the meeting room of New Earswick Folk Hall and queued to help research into the ethnic origins of the British people.
Academics were collecting DNA from men with Viking names to see if they are directly descended from the Scandanavian traders and seaman who…
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The Hidden Graves of the Holocaust →
A short piece on BBC Radio 4 - available on iPlayer for the next seven days.
Jonathan Charles is given unique access to the team of British forensic archaeologists carrying out the first coordinated scientific attempt to locate the remains of Holocaust victims at the site of Treblinka’s death camp.
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Q&A: Why Kids Kill Parents →
A fascinating article about the disturbing statistics involved in parricide *mental note: NEVER have children*
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Survival’s Ick Factor →
oldowan:
Disgust is the Cinderella of emotions. While fear, sadness and anger, its nasty, flashy sisters, have drawn the rapt attention of psychologists, poor disgust has been hidden away in a corner, left to muck around in the ashes.
No longer. Disgust is having its moment in the light as researchers find that it does more than cause that sick feeling in the stomach. It protects human beings...
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France returns 20 Maori heads to New Zealand in... →
Preparing the biggest homecoming yet of its kind, authorities in New Zealand on Monday received 20 ancestral heads of Maori ethnic people once held in several French museums as a cultural curiosity.
Since 2003, the South Pacific country has embarked on an ambitious program of collecting back Maori heads and skeletal remains from museums around the world. Yet the program has run into significant...
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Introducing the 'iGrave': the GPS device that lets... →
American funeral directors have unveiled the first ‘iGrave.’
It uses GPS satellite tracking to allow relatives to find their loved ones in a natural burial site.
Everyone buried at The Preserve, a 1.5-acre natural burial site in Lafayette, Indiana, receives a GPS transmitter disk in the center of their casket, or in the grave if there is no casket.
The battery powered devices last...