Now, this is some funny stuff.
God Visits Local NC Church
I love what the preacher said, "You'd think the Creator of the Universe would give us some warning, then we could put it in the bulletin, not that I'm complaining."
Forerunner to the machine gun, the Gatling gun was invented by Dr. Gatling in 1862, but the factory burned down before it could be produced for the war. He hoped that the creation of a gun that could fire 350 rounds per minute would be reduction of armies and less loss of life. Instead, this efficient killing machine, or rather its upgrades, was responsible for millions of deaths in World War I, as soldiers were sent over the top, into “no man’s land” and into the face of heavy machine gun fire, decimating nearly every offensive assault and leading to the stagnant entrenchment warfare that dominated the early stages of the war, before the invention of the tank. (It was called this so that spies would think they were creating a new type of “fuel tank”! The name stuck…)
Read more...Tim Berners-Lee, who created the first internet browser (1990) and the term World Wide Web, decided that if he patented it, it would never take off. He got the idea from attempting to organize his notes along the lines of a Victorian encyclopedia his parents had, called Enquire Within. He wrote hypertext software that allowed him to link ideas using text as a jumping off point to data held elsewhere. Of course, all his friends told him “it’ll never take off.”
Read more...Paris, France’s Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 Paris Centenniel Exposition, but was destined to only stand 21 years. Artists and other critics who called it a giant lamppost wanted it demolished immediately despite its popularity with visitors. However, in 1907 it was found to be an excellent transmitter of radio waves, which even reached America. It's functionality as a giant antenna saved the tower.
Read more...Thomas Edison was a proponent of direct current (DC), while George Westinghouse preferred alternating current (AC), which could be transmitted over greater distances. Thomas Edison hoped to defeat AC by showing how dangerous it could be, so in 1890 he created the first electric chair in secret, using animals (dogs, cats, etc) for tests, eventually holding public demonstrations. Westinghouse and AC won in the long run, due to ease of transport, and the electric chair became a new execution method. Edison wanted to call this “ampermort” or “dynamort”, a college liked “electricide”, and others thought “Westinghoused” (likely to disparage that name!) We seemed to have settled on “fried”. (oh, sorry: electrocution)
Read more...Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was a diet freak disgusted with America’s bad eating habits. In 1900, he ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium and promoted good digestion (along with daily enemas and celibacy, bragging about “remaining celibate for forty years of married life” – they didn’t ask his wife about it!) He decided to create a “health food” available by mail order, and with his wife and brother came up with toasted corn flakes. The most effective ad campaign for them told people “please don’t buy it because we can’t produce enough”
Read more...The island of Martinique is overlooked by a volcano, Mount Pelée. When it started smoking three days before 1902 elections, the local Governor Louis Mouttet feared it could hurt his election, so he blockaded the city and even visited the mountain to show that it was “safe”. However, on election day it erupted, and sent ash traveling 100 miles an hour through the city and killed all but two people within two minutes, including the governor. One survivor was a condemned man waiting underground to be executed the next day; Auguste Cipris had his sentence commuted, and toured with the Barnum and Bailey circus in a replica of his cell.
Read more...The fifth game of the 1918 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs was held up over an hour as players refused to play unless given more money for the series. The owners appealed to their patriotism: the stands were filled with veterans from the Great War. The players gave in, and the owners played the “Star Spangled Banner” as a tribute to the soldiers. It was the first time this had ever occurred, and was the headline in the papers the next day. The song was not yet even the national anthem. Oh yeah, for sports fans: Boston won the series, their last of the century, and since they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees (for $250,000, so the owner could finance a Broadway play, which failed), this became known as “The Curse of the Bambino”. The Red Sox wouldn’t defeat the curse until the next millenium, in 2004. (Several players got traded there on purpose, pitcher Curt Schilling publicly stating that “I’d like to help get rid of the curse, because it doesn’t exist.”)
Read more...Far prior to the Cold War, even before the World War II alliance, the US and Russia had a short and minor war. In 1918, the Allies feared the rise of communism, and with the Great War winding down, the US and Great Britain mounted an Allied Expeditionary Force to invade Russia, landing on the north shore near Archangel. With a paltry force of around 6000 men, the A.E.F. wasn’t large enough to become very effective and was easily turned away by the Russians (the U.S. lost less than a thousand before withdrawing), who had withdrawn from the war after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, so they had an entire army at their disposal. Whether Bolshevik supporters or not, all Russians will fight against invaders, as everyone should know by now. In fact, “partisans” (read guerilla fighters) did more damage to the withdrawing French army during the Napoleonic Wars than the original fighting did during the actual invasion. Over ninety-percent of the retreating French army did not make it back to France, being easily picked off from the forests and treetops by Russians with hunting guns. This forced the army into a tightly packed unit, easily shelled by artillery – Napoleon fled quickly with a small detachment and scurried back to France well ahead of the army. Estimates are that over a million invaded Russia, about 10,000 returned! When he reached the Elbe River, he asked the ferryman if any deserters had come back. He replied, "no, sir, you're the first."
Read more...President James Garfield was shot walking through a train station on his way to a college reunion in July of 1881. He was shot by a disgruntled lawyer denied a diplomatic post.
Doctors could not find the bullet, and turned a 3-inch wound into an infected 20-inch cannonball hole and they punctured his liver!. Garfield struggled all summer and died in September, and they found the bullet in an autopsy in a non-life threatening location. Sometimes, “no medicine is the best medicine.”
Assassin Charles Guiteau based his defense on blaming the doctors, but was convicted and hung anyway.
While in office, Lincoln held séances in the White House and was a student of psychic research. Lincoln’s ghost has been often been seen in the White House, including by Holland’s Queen Wilhemena in 1945. Lincoln’s personal secretary was named Kennedy. John F. Kennedy’s personal secretary was named Lincoln. Richard Nixon used to have “private conversations” with Lincoln’s portrait during his troubled years when his administration all faced criminal charges.
Read more...Try, try again but don’t stop the car for directions!
World War I almost didn’t get its catalyst. On June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and wife Sophie, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, visited Bosnia, the streets of Sarajevo were filled with admirers and assassination conspirators. One threw a bomb at the car that the Archduke batted away. Later he spontaneously wanted to visit the aide injured by the bomb in the hospital, but the driver didn’t know the way. He came to a bridge, stopped as an official said “that’s the wrong way”, and was about to turn around when one of the failed conspirators, standing nearby and consoling fellow conspirators about their failure, spotted the car. Gavrilo Princip, only 19, shot both Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, who tried to put herself in front of her husband. Both died within minutes, sparking “The Great War”, which killed over 10 million. Ironically, the war continued long enough without U.S. involvement that it was able to “get fat” by selling arms to both sides before entering the war near the end when the outcome was not in doubt. The U.S. lost less than 50,000 soldiers.
Invented in 1857, and called a “pantelegraph”, Italian Giovanni Caselli was a priest who thought that telegraphs could also reproduce pictures. His device recognized ink on the page to be copied, causing a signal to write at the other end. It took six years to perfect, and consisted of pendulums, wires, and batteries. By 1868, it was sending over 100 faxes per hour. After the Prussian invasion of 1870, it ceased to be operated, and wasn’t thought necessary until over a hundred years later! (By the way, “fax” stands for facsimile, which some think means “fax a mile”!)
Read more...This was too funny to pass up, a special Inauguration day campaign to "Shave the Date", organized by Kristen Chase, who said "take pride in knowing you've rid your world of bush, once and for all."
Here's the original story at Salon.com:
Shave the Date Campaign
That was Bill Maher's take, when he lamented on a Sept. 19 episode of "Real Time With Bill Maher," "Bring back a little pubic hair. Not a lot. I'm not talking about reviving that 1973 look that says I'm liberated ... and I'm smuggling a hedgehog. I just want a friendly, fuzzy calling card that tells me I'm not going to get arrested."
Author of the Salon article, Lisa Germinsky, says, "So while some women shave themselves silly on Jan. 20, I plan to enter this new era with a tailored modern mini-bush and a reclaimed sense of womanhood. Maybe, if the bikini line theory plays out, we'll all go back to the Telly Savalas sooner or later. But the promise of a new America under an Obama administration gives me greater optimism. I envision a country where we can one day have it all -- a booming economy, national security, a healthy respect for sexuality and even a little bush. I say, Yes we can."
A buddy of mine caught Rachel Maddow (on CNN?) yesterday saying this:
"Obama is not being compared to earlier U.S. Presidents like George Jefferson or Ben Franklin."
Holy Toledo! Illiteracy rules, even on CNN, apparently.
It now appears there are at least 67 computers missing from the nation's nuclear weapons labs. Of course, they like to stress "nothing classified is missing", which means that it's highly likely there has been a theft of classified info. We'll only know after the fact, like 911, how our security and intelligence failed us again.
Here's the story at Usa Today:
Missing Computers
New Delhi's government has a rat catching department - only, it hasn't caught a single rodent in more than a decade. There are currently 97 rat catchers on the municipal payroll, all working for the Rat Surveillance Department, a decades-old agency that last saw any action in 1994, when a plague outbreak killed 56 people in areas of nw India, The Hindustan Times reported. Each rat catcher earns about 3,500 rupees a month for catching (about $80), but there are no records of any rodents ever being caught. (Sounds to me like they're qualified to be corporate executives here in the U.S. of Capitalism!)
[From Seinfeld: "Do not go to India, they still have the plague, for God's sake"]
When the U.S. went into space, the ‘experts’ at NASA decided we needed an anti-gravity ballpoint pen that worked under weightless conditions. About SIX MILLION dollars later, we had one. The Russian astronauts simply used pencils! These work on friction, not gravity.
Source: Wikipedia
USS Scorpion (SSN-589) was a nuclear submarine of the United States Navy lost at sea on June 5, 1968. While a public search did not yield any clues as to its location, Dr. John Craven, the Chief Scientist of the U.S. Navy's Special Projects Division, decided to employ the Bayesian search theory in order to establish its location. This involved formulating different hypotheses as to its location and using a probability distribution to combine the information and find the point of highest probability. The different hypotheses were taken from various independent sources, such as mathematicians, submarine specialists, and salvage men. The point Craven found ended up being 220 yards from the actual position of the sunken vessel. (Wikipedia)
Connected theory, see: The Wisdom of Crowds
In the film Kalifornia, Brad Pitt plays a killer whose 'boots aren't laced all the way to the top' (from Anthony Weller), who says “We’ll move to California; there the first month’s rent is free, state law. So we’ll just keep moving each month until we build up a nest egg.”
He kills his trailer park landlord in anger, shooting him in his Cadillac. He then takes a bulldozer, digs a hole big enough to bury the entire car. (and no one notices all the commotion at night!)
The pilgrims sailing to America on the Mayflower were blown off course, and rather than turn and head south for Virginia as originally intended, they put ashore in Massachusetts because they were running low on beer. Water was considered suspect, due to contamination and disease, and one of the first things the pilgrims built up after landing was a brew house.
One pilgrim, named Samuel Adams, used triple hops in his brew, and it's still tasty today. A German brewer named Augustus "Augie" Busch, used twice as much water and was smart enough to buy the advertising rights to all sporting events, including witch hunts, tar-and-featherings, tea parties, pig races, mule pulls, and Sadie Hawkins day, when women who caught men could force them into marriage Still popular in the South, was held annually at UGA when I went to college, and yes, us 'necks like agressive women, we get tired of being expected to be the chaser. (and of course, the race started with the traditional "Go you hairy dawgs!")
When George Washington was boarding the rowboat to cross the Delaware, he had to nudge 300-lb Colonel Henry Knox aside to make room, with these immortal words, “Shift that fat ass, Harry, but slowly or you’ll swamp the damn boat!” To me, these are much more inspiring fighting words than “full speed ahead” or “I regret that I have but one life to give.”
By the way, Washington was not the first President. John Hanson of Maryland was elected unanimously in 1781 by Congress after adopting the Articles of Confederation. He served one year, as did six others, before Washington became the eighth president, but the first under the new Constitution.
from Arizona Daily Star
A short clip of a pornographic movie cut into a Comcast broadcast of the Super Bowl in homes in and around Tucson.
Officials at Comcast confirmed that its signal was interrupted during the Super Bowl, but the company is still working to figure out how porn broke into its cable feed.
Engineers at Comcast will be working throughout the night to determine what happened, said Kelle Maslyn, a Comcast spokeswoman.
The Star newsroom erupted with calls from irate viewers shortly after 7:30 p.m. who said that the porn cut into the broadcast just after Cardinals player Larry Fitzgerald scored a touchdown on a pass from Kurt Warner to give the Cardinals the lead with less than two minutes in the game.
Callers said that a clip showing a woman unzipping a man's pants broke into the standard definition feed reaching analog TV sets. Comcast's high definition feed was not affected, and Maslyn did not know how many homes were affected.
[Apparently there was even more scoring than we realized]
[Typical waste of money by americans with too much? or a worthy use of your life savings? - lol.. the Jman]
A Florida couple had their dog (golden retreiver) Lancelot's DNA frozen, then cloned after he died. They now have the 10 wk old clone, named Lancelot Encore -- cost: $150,000! Guy Adami on Fast Money said, "they could've bought 200 dogs for 750 each, kept the one that looked like Lancelot and given away all the others"
Better yet- find one that looked like that and give the other 149k to a local soup kitchen or food relief service for FLA HURRICANE victims.. oh well, my bias is showing... I like th idea of cloning, esp if we find an animal IMMUNE to something like the plague, or a human that can't get AIDS..
Here's the story on MSNBC: Florida Couple Clones Dog
It IS an awfully CUTE dog! who wouldn't want one?
Other good names: Lancelot Redux (like a movie), Lancelot II (like a horse or king), Lanc-a-clone, Looksalot Like Lancelot
ps2 - Geron (GERN)owns the rights to cloning, someone had to pay them royalties I hope - they cloned Dolly the Sheep or their technology did, the first cloned 'famous' animal (they had cloned mice in tests).. not much different than procreation really, since any animal has different memories and experience regardless of their DNA --- but it makes a good PR story -- grab yer kids DNA now in case something happens to one!
Source: Plausible Denial by Mark Lane
We all remember the day in 1963 and the scamful Warren Commission later with bogus evidence and suspicous witnesses (two of whom could barely see 10 feet but made ID's of Oswald in a distant window), but no one even noticed when the CIA admitted contracting the Mafia for the hit during an 80’s trial, “Howard Hunt vs. Liberty Magazine”. Liberty-owned Spy magazine implicated Nixon "plumber" Howard Hunt in the assassination using photos of him in the crowd there; Hunt's own family suspected him and said he was not in Washington at all that week. They were goading Hunt into a libel suit so they could, as defendant, subpoena CIA witnesses.
Eight former CIA heads testified, including one George Bush (and the one who signed for and collected the physical evidence for the CIA in Dallas, later censored and funneled in part to the Warren Commission), who admitted “the CIA has a policy to take out tyrannical leaders worldwide, including here”. Robert Kennedy had laid off 90% of the CIA personnel, vowing to "crush the power of the secret intelligence community." The CIA, fearful of losing the cold war, decided if JFK went, so would Robert, and contracted the Mafia for the job, who hired hitmen from Europe in case they were caught.
There were three shooters as everyone suspected, and none was Oswald; he was eating lunch during the entire incident, as many co-workers testified. The shooters were all from Marseilles, France. According to A&E's documentary "The Men Who Murdered JFK": one is now dead, another in prison, the third is unknown. The one in prison would testify if the third would also, be he remains anonymous and free.
Even more interesting to me is that Oliver Stone's film "JFK" came out after this trial, yet none of it was included in his film, as if that film was a diversionary cover-up of the real trial involving Hunt and the CIA. Did Stone perhaps put out disinformation for the CIA?
The Roman calendar was based on the moon, so every year it came up ten days short and also had ten months, beginning on March 1. An Egyptian astronomer that Caesar met through Cleopatra showed him a calendar based on the sun, which gave us the twelve month year. I always wondered why October (oct meaning eight) was the 10th month, November (novem meaning nine) the 11th, and December (dec meaning ten) was the twelfth. There used to be eight through ten but when Caesar added two months he stuck them in front of these, and started the new year on January 1 rather than March.
Wait a minute – isn’t 52 weeks divisible by 4 weeks per month = 13 months? So why don’t we have 13 months, each with four weeks? We can still add back the stupid leap day. Oh yeah, the “wheels of capitalism” pretend that they need quarters or four equal 13-week periods… Well, they still could have four quarters, they just wouldn’t end perfectly at month’s end. The year that Caesar changed the calendar, he caused a 455-day year, called “the year of confusion”. [That was also the year they invented annual salaries!]
Interestingly, 1642 yrs later, the slightly incorrect calculations had led to the date actually being about ten days off, and Pope Julian, after listening to advisors, simply “lopped off ten days”, by having people go to bed on October 4th and wake up on October 15th. Some cities rioted, thinking he’d stolen ten days from them (likely employers paying annual salaries!), but peasants in the country hardly noticed and life continued as before.
We now lose a day only once every three thousand years. I favor the even earlier calendar, Phoenicians I believe, of 12 months, 30 day each with FIVE days left over at the end for celebrating, called "Holy Days", our source for the word holidays.
The Olympics were halted in 394 a.d. by the Christian emperor Theodosius, who said they were a “pagan celebration” (Zeus favored the hammer throw). They were revived in 1892 by a Frenchman who wanted the French to become more fit in case they had another war with Germany – gee, what were the odds of that?
Judging from history, I don’t think being able to win a fencing medal helped much in either world war, and they didn’t have an Olympic “grenade toss” or “dodge the bullets” event, although the biathlon made sense: ski your butt off then shoot holes through the enemy!
U.S.D.A. (or is it FDA when its approaching medicine?)
Acceptable “defect levels” of foods. “You are what you eat”. You just can't make this up!
Asparagus – 10% infested with beetle eggs; 40 thrips or 5 insects in 100-gram samples
Chocolate – up to 60 insect fragments in 100-gram sample
Coffee beans – up to 10% insect infested, damaged, or molded
Fish – 5% of fillets or fish with “definite decomposition” over 25% of the area, or 20% with “slight decomposition” over 25% of area (“awww…it’s all just slight”)
Hops – average of 2,500 aphids per 100 grams (free protein in the beer)
Pepper – 1% insect infested; 1 mil. of excreta per pound
Popcorn – one rodent pellet or hair per 6 10-oz samples, 20 gnawed grains per lb. or 5% by weight
Spinach – 50 aphids, thrips, mites or 8 leaf miners in 100-gram sample
Strawberries – mold count of 55% in half the samples
Tomato paste (added to pizza & sauces) – in 100 gram samples: 30 fly eggs, or 15 eggs and one larvae (that’s a maggot!), or two larvae, or mold count averaging 40% (only 30% in pizza sauce) “Make that pepperoni, sweet peppers, and two maggots”
Food in name only: mushrooms - contain nothing but phosphorous which eats six times its weight in calcium - so take calcium tablets with mushrooms or just avoid: they’re grown in vats of cow manure in the dark, that can’t be too healthy - plus it’s a fungus, like Athlete’s foot or Jungle rot! Forget wild mushrooms, many have died painfully who gathered “edible wild mushrooms” – why take the chance? Fungus is not a food group!
Toxic food: nutmeg, anything burnt (carbon monoxide) – both are non-biodegradable, cause liver damage, and accumulate in the body. Charred hot dogs or marshmallows on a stick are not advised, and many have died who used green Oleander branches, which leeches poisonous juices into the meat, and into desert water! Know your plants, or get planted yourself! Oleander and foxglove, or digitalis, are two common poisonous plants in many yards.
These are all un-proven un-scientific laws that seem to apply to modern civilized man. This will never be complete as we create more every day. We all know "If things can go wrong, they will." (Murphy's Law). Here are some you probably didn't know.
Parkinson’s Law – Tasks will take at least the amount of time allotted.
The 80/20 Rule – Twenty percent of the participants are responsible for eighty percent of the action (ie, stock market, sexual promiscuity, spending, wealth accumulation).
The Law of Diminishing Returns – The first 90% of a project takes 10% of the time, the other 10% takes the remaining 90% of the time (aka the Ninety percent rule).
Nonreciprocal Law of Expectations – Negative expectations yield negative results, positive expectations yield positive results (aka, “self-fulfilling prophecy”).
The Unspeakable Law – As soon as you mention something, if it’s good, it goes away; if it’s bad, it happens.
Hanlon’s Razor – Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
Howe’s Law – Every man has a scheme that will not work.
The Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences - Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
Zymurgy’s First Law of Evolving System Dynamics – Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is with a larger can.
Etorre’s Observation – The other line always moves faster.
Law of Selective Gravity – An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
Maier’s Law – If facts do not fit the theory, they must be disposed of.
Boren’s First Law – When in doubt, mumble.
Barth’s Distinction – There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don’t.
Andy Warhol’s Law of Fame – In the future, each person will be famous for an average of fifteen minutes.
Jane Austen’s Rule of Romance – 90% of all women better show more affection than they really feel. (from Pride and Prejudice)
The Intelligence Policy of Disinformation – If a government says it’s not doing something bad, it probably is; if it says it IS doing something good, it probably isn’t (aka, “speaking with a forked tongue”, “talking out of both sides of your mouth”).
Everett Dirksen’s Law of National Debt - “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money” [the late Illinois (R) Senator].
The Mythical Man Month – The more people you add to a project, the more time will be spent on communication and less on actual work.
The Law of Middle Management – a middle manager is someone who comes to work late if you come early, and who comes to work early if you come late. [Note: middle means “caught in the middle”, employees on one side, executives on the other].
Roger Ebert’s (movie critic) Law of the Infallible Tree – In movies, whenever the hero climbs a tree [“Rambo”, “Robin Hood”], a bad guy will eventually stand underneath that same tree. He also has the Fruit Cart Law: If you see a fruit cart in a movie, someone's gonna run over it.
Solomon’s Rule of Domestic Bliss – Let a woman change her mind often because she’s going to anyway. (and with 800 wives, who cares anyway?)
Benjamin Franklin’s Rule of Riding – When riding a horse, sit heavy and tight; when riding a man, sit loose and light [from Poor Richard’s Almanack, a bestseller found in nearly every home in colonial America].
Conway’s Law – In every corporation, there’s one person who knows exactly what’s going on; that person must be fired.
Green’s Law of Debate – Anything is possible if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Stewart’s Law of Retroaction – It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.
First Rule of History – History doesn’t repeat itself but historians repeat each other.
Oliver’s Law of Location – No matter where you go, there you are.
Glyme’s Formula for Success – The only rule for success is sincerity; once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
Harrison’s Postulate – For each and every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
We'll never get off this world alive - Jim Morrison
Agathocles (Syrian tyrant, 300 b.c.) – choked on a toothpick (they had toothpicks back then? I didn’t know they even had teeth as adults!).
Alexander the Great (Macedonian emperor) – caught a fever during two days of drinking and carousing, died at 33. (Never really recovered from an arrow wound suffered in India).
Alexander (king of Greece, 1920) – bitten by his pet monkey, died from blood poisoning.
Allman, Duane (U.S. rock guitarist) – died while riding his motorcycle in Macon, GA, when a truck pulled out in front of him on a downhill slope; Allman couldn’t stop and slid underneath the truck, hitting his unprotected head several times. (Allman died only 2 blocks from where Macon heavyweight contender William L. Stribling died in a motorcycle accident in 1935 just wks after losing to Dempsey on a 15th round knockout and before a rematch). Ironically, fellow band member Berry Oakley also died from a motorcycle accident a year later, at home in bed from a brain hemmorrage following the accident.
Archimedes (Greek mathmetician, discovered water displacement by weight, “Eureka!”, the value of pi, calculus, and the lever) – was so absorbed while writing geometrical problems in some dirt that he did not hear an invading Roman soldier demanding that he stand, who then “ran him through” with his sword.
Attila, the Hun - died of a chronic nosebleed on his wedding night; makes you wonder if she punched him in the nose.
Bacon, Francis (English philosopher, writer) – stopped in the snow to perform a freezing experiment on a chicken (by stuffing it with snow), caught a “chill” and died later. Bacon was the real author of Shakespeare's plays, see my Word Humor blog.
Bennett, Arnold (English writer) – drank a glass of water in Paris to demonstrate its safety and died from the typhoid it contained (“I love Paris in the springtime” – Cole Porter).
Bentham, Jeremy – famous English moralist and law-reformer; believed that every famous man should be mummified and “each can become his own statue”. His effigy, dressed in his favorite suit and hat, sits in a glass case at University College, London, with his mummified head on the floor between his feet, where he’s been “his own statue” since 1832.
Bonaparte, Jerome Napoleon (last American Bonaparte) – tripped over his wife’s dog’s leash, died from the injuries. (they were living in New York City)
Claudius I (Roman emperor) – choked on a feather; his physician was trying to induce vomiting after being poisoned by his wife.
Clementine V, Pope – autopsies of the Pope are forbidden by law (“what happens in the Vatican stays in the Vatican”), but recently scientists were allowed to x-ray the sarcophagus of Pope Clementine, and found a ten-inch nail driven into his skull. Perhaps he fell onto this nail while sleepwalking, perhaps it fell from above and embedded itself full-length into his brain as a “divine act”; we’ll never know the instigator, only the cause. (Autopsies are forbidden because so many Popes have been murdered, and “it gives the church a bad name” if revealed publicly)
Crassus, Marcus (Roman politician) – Parthian soldiers poured molten gold down his throat. Now that’s a waste of precious metal, when molten iron would have sufficed.
Duncan, Isadora (U.S. dancer) – her long scarf became tangled in the rear wheel of her car and broke her neck. Try duplicating that, amateurs!
Fierro, Rodolfo (Mexican general) – riding with Pancho Villa, Rodolfo took a shortcut, his horse fell into quicksand, and the gold Rodolfo was carrying sank him to his grave (another waste of precious metal – do you suppose they dug it out?).
George, Duke of Clarence (English nobleman) – Richard III had him drowned in a barrel of wine.
Ishmaelo, Yousouf (Turkish wrestler) – carried all his gold in a money belt, was returning home on an ocean liner which collided with another vessel near Nova Scotia. Yousouf refused to discard his belt, which carried him down to his watery grave.
John I (King of England, 1216 a.d.) – died from overeating lampreys. (Got too “eel” as a result)
Maturin, Rev. Charles Robert (Irish clergyman) – finding the clergy did not make enough money to suit his needs, he wrote many romantic novels with titles like The Fatal Revenge and The Wild Irish Boy, and lurid Gothic horror novels; he pasted a wafer to his head while writing which meant “do not disturb”. He was so absent-minded that he turned up for parties on the wrong date, often wore unmatched shoes, and would forget waiting dinner guests while the food became cold. Eventually he got his medicines mixed up and this led to his death at 42.
May, Thomas (English historian) – rather obese, used to “tie up his chins”, and one day he ate too much and choked to death from the cloth around his throat.
Montagu, Edward Wortley (English son of Lady Mary Montagu) – claimed to be an Ottoman Prince, a result of an affair between his mother an “a sultan of Turkey”. Was said to be the first Caucasian to enter Constantinople turbaned and speaking Arabic. His wealthy father bestowed his fortune on his sister Mary instead of Edward, and he eventually settled in Venice. While dining on tiny birds called ortolans, a bone became lodged in his throat, could not be removed, led to an infection and his death at age 63.
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (German composer) – likely poisoned by a lover’s jealous husband (he had over twenty female piano students); one admitted as much and killed himself a week after Mozart died, saying “what have I done - I’ve allowed jealousy to kill a musical genius.” (Next time, poison the wife, dude! There’s “lots of fish in the sea”, but only one Amadeus…)
Otway, Thomas (British playwright) – reduced to begging from hunger, he got a guinea, bought a roll and choked on the first bite.
Pinkerton, Alan (founder of the famous detective agency) – bit his tongue, died of gangrene.
Rasputin (Gregori Efimovich, Russian ‘holy man’) – survived numerous poisonings (he consumed small doses regularly), two shootings, finally was bound and tossed into the Neva River.
Schumann, William (German composer) – an infected tooth led to brain poisoning.
Scriabin, Alexander (Russian composer) – self-proclaimed “second Messiah”, attempting to “save the world with music”, Scriabin got a pimple which became infected, then died from blood poisoning.
Socrates (Greek philosopher) – condemned to death for “insulting the gods” by teaching the immortality of the soul, he drank a cup of hemlock (given by a weeping jailer) after partying with all his friends and relatives. Did he sing, “one for my honey and one more for the road”?
Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilyich (Russian composer) – the depressed composer threw himself into the cholera laden Neva River, and even though rescued, died later in bed.
Valens, Richie (U.S. recording artist) – lost a coin flip to ride in a van or fly (he was afraid of flying) with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper to a wintertime concert in Iowa; the plane crashed in a cornfield, killing all three. “Aw, baby, that’s what I like” – sang the Big Bopper, in "Chantilly Lace". Later, Georgia singer Otis Redding died at 26 in Wisconsin flying to a winter concert when the plane missed the fogbound runway and landed in a nearby swamp.
Vlad, the Impaler (Transylvanian count) – the notoriously sadistic and bloodthirsty count, who preferred impaling or skinning his victims, was eventually killed by local citizens (who stormed his castle at night carrying torches, no doubt!).
Whitson, John (English adventurer) – fell off a horse and impaled his head on a nail outside of a blacksmith’s shop, at age 72. (Nice aim – try that again, 100 times)
Woodhull, Victoria (Mrs. John Biddulph Martin) – this “free love” advocate, born in a shack in Homer, Ohio, was the first American woman to run for President and the first woman to run a stock brokerage; formerly a famous “spiritualist” and healer who counted Cornelius Vanderbilt among her famous lovers. She thought she could “cheat death” by not sleeping in a bed, so for the last 4 years of her life slept in an armchair in her living room in England (where she retired with her last husband), where she was eventually found, having passed away in her sleep.
Zeuxis (Greek painter, 5th cen. b.c.) – laughed so hard at his own painting of a hag that he broke a blood vessel and died (“Laughter is the best medicine”). The more sensible artists painted classic nudes instead and there are no reported deaths as a result.
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