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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