5 People Who Died During Sex: And 100 Other Terribly Tasteless Lists Paperback (24 page)

3

JAMES BOSWELL (1740–95) The friend and famous biographer of Samuel Johnson wrote a series of seventy essays in the
London Magazine
offering advice to fellow hypochondriacs and suggesting ways they might

“distract” themselves from their morbid preoccupation.

A heavy drinker and regular VD sufferer, he died of a fever at age fifty-five.

4

QUEEN VICTORIA (1819–1901) Summoned her

court physician up to six times a day. He was surprised to receive a telegram from the queen while he was away on his honeymoon, informing him, “The bowels are acting fully.” Died in her sleep at age eighty-two.

5

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1820–1910) After her return home at the end of the Crimean War, she took to her bed, where she more or less remained for the rest of her life. Died of natural causes at age ninety.

6

IMMANUEL KANT (1724–1804) The German

philosopher spent a lifetime meticulously recording details of his “Diatetik”—a strict diet intended to ensure
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[Ten Ex-Hypochondriacs]

long life—and his bodily fluids. He died after prolonged illness at age eighty.

7

ROBERT BURNS (1759–96) Suffered ill health all his adult life. Died of bacterial endocarditis secondary to chronic rheumatic heart disease at age thirty-seven.

8

CHARLES DARWIN (1809–82) Took to his bed for months at a time with an awe-inspiring list of ailments, including gastrointestinal pain, nausea, vomiting, sleeplessness, headaches, and giddiness. Died of heart disease at age seventy-three.

9

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (1809–92) Queen

Victoria’s favorite poet, he succeeded William Wordsworth as poet laureate in 1850. Plagued by imagined illness, Tennyson didn’t write a line of poetry for ten years but sought a cure through hydropathy, a method of “treatment” in which the patient is doused with cold water. Died of natural causes at age eighty-three.

10

LEO TOLSTOY (1828–1910) Sexually active into his eighties, he died of a chill shortly after leaving his wife at the age of eighty-three.

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Wher 10

e There’s a Will:

Ten Last Testaments

1

The most generous last will and testament of all was left by Ecuadorian Indian endo-cannibals—cannibals who eat and are eaten by members of their own family. Their wills gave express details of which body parts were to be eaten by which lucky relatives. As soon as the will was read, the funeral became a banquet as the corpse was roasted, cut into pieces, and consumed by grieving relatives. The head was generally kept until it was ripe with maggots; then the brains were eaten with spices.

2

William Shakespeare left his wife Anne Hathaway his

“second-best bed.”

3

Ernest Digweed, a teacher from Portsmouth, England, died in 1976, leaving his entire assets of $43,000 to Jesus Christ in the event of his second coming. If Christ has not appeared to claim his bequest by 2056, the whole amount will revert to the state.

4

One of the strangest acts of philanthropy ever was the last will and testament of the London miser John Camden Neild, who left his fortune of $9.5 million (about $50 million in today’s value) to Queen Victoria, who was already one of the richest women in the country. She kept every penny while continuing to harass the government for more money. Her relatively poverty-stricken uncle, King Leopold of Belgium, wrote to congratulate her on her windfall, noting “Such things only still happen in England.”

5

In 1862, Henry Budd leaves $386,000 in trust for his two sons on the condition that neither grows a moustache.

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[Ten Last Testaments]

6

In 1975, the Mrs. Martin van Butchell, the wife of a London dentist, repaid her husband for years of marital misery with a spiteful will that decreed that her fortune pass to a distant relative “the moment I am dead and buried.” The resourceful dentist, however, kept the money by simply leaving her body well above ground.

Van Butchell persuaded a skilled embalmer to fit her out with a new pair of glass eyes and filled her veins with oil of turpentine and camphorated spirit of wine. She was then dressed, propped up in the drawing room, and put on public display from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. from Monday to Saturday. The rush to see the corpse was so great that van Butchell was forced to restrict viewings to private appointments only. He remarried and, not surprisingly, his second wife, Elizabeth, took an instant dislike to the ex-Mrs. van Butchell and ordered her out of the house.

Reluctantly, the dentist gave the mummy to a museum.

By about a century later, it had disintegrated into a

“repulsive-looking object.” It was only in 1941—166

years after her death—that she was finally laid to rest when the museum took a direct hit from a German incendiary bomb.

7

When the mistress of the nineteenth-century French novelist Eugène Sue died, she willed him her skin with instructions that he should bind a book with it. He did.

8

The philosopher Jeremy Bentham thought that burying the dead was a wasteful business. He suggested that everyone should be embalmed and preserved as his or her own commemorative bust or statue: He called them
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[Ten Last Testaments]

“auto-icons.” The possibilities, Bentham posited, were endless: Portraits of ancestors could be replaced by actual heads, “many generations being deposited on a few shelves or in a modest-sized cupboard.” When Bentham died, he put his money where his mouth was by leaving his body to medical science, to be dissected, embalmed, dressed in his own clothes, and placed in a glass case. His head was replaced by a wax version, however, when it took an unfortunately grim expression during the embalming process. Bentham’s physician, Dr. Southwood Smith, kept the body until his own death in 1850, when it was presented to University College, London.

9

When D. H. Lawrence died, in accordance with his last wishes his wife Frieda had his ashes tipped into a concrete mixer and incorporated into her new mantelpiece.

10

In 1910, a Swede, Olav Olavson, in exchange for a lump sum, willed all rights to his body to the Karolinska Institute for medical research after his death. The following year, Olavson had an unexpected and massive windfall and tried to buy himself back. The Institute refused to sell and went to court to verify its claim. The court upheld the claim; and, as Olav had since had two teeth pulled without seeking its permission, the Institute was also awarded damages.

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Ten 10

Royal Deaths

1

AGATHOCLES, FOURTH-CENTURY KING OF

SICILY Believed to have been paralyzed by a poisoned toothpick, is laid out on his funeral pyre alive.

2

KING JAMES II OF SCOTLAND While he inspected one of his own cannons, it exploded and a piece of shrapnel sliced the top of his head off.

3

EMPEROR MENELIK II OF ETHIOPIA In 1913,

convinced that he could cure illness by eating pages from the Bible, he had a stroke and died while attempting to eat the entire Book of Kings.

4

CHARLES VIII OF FRANCE Fatally cracked his head on a low wooden beam while entering a tennis court.

5

FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES, HEIR TO

GEORGE II Caught a slight chill and died suddenly a few weeks later at age forty-four. His death was said to have been aggravated by an old cricketing injury.

6

KING ALEXANDER I OF GREECE Died of blood

poisoning after being bitten by his pet monkey.

7

CZAR PETER III While under house arrest following a palace coup, he was strangled. However, according to the official announcement, he died from “an acute attack of colic during one of his frequent bouts of hemorrhoids.”

8

EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN I OF MEXICO

Shot by a local firing squad of Mexican revolutionaries.

Maximilian begged his executioners to shoot him cleanly so that he could die with dignity, but they were poor
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[Ten Royal Deaths]

shots and their bullets blew off most of his face. Parts of his body were allegedly auctioned to souvenir hunters.

9

EMPRESS ELIZABETH OF AUSTRIA Stabbed to

death in Geneva by an Italian anarchist, Luigi Lenchini.

The killer later confessed that he had nothing at all against the empress and had actually set out to kill King Umberto I of Italy but hadn’t been able to afford the extra fifty lire he needed to travel to Rome.

10

KING ALEXANDER AND QUEEN DRAGA OF

SERBIA Overthrown by a Serbian army coup. Finding the king and queen hiding in a palace-bedroom wardrobe, soldiers sprayed them with bullets, hacked them to pieces with swords, bashed in their skulls with rifle butts, and then tossed their corpses out the window into the gardens below. A few of the queen’s relatives who got in the way were slaughtered for good measure.

272

It’s Y

10

our Funeral: Ten Reasons

Why You May Wish You Had

Died in Ignorance

1

According to the medical profession, the five most reliable methods of diagnosing death are: (a) Pouring freezing water in your ear

(should provoke an eye-movement in the living) (b) Poking something into your eye

(“testing the corneal reflex”)

(c) Poking something down your throat

(“testing the gag reflex”)

(d) Grinding knuckles into your sternum

(“testing the pain reflex”)

(e) Squeezing your testicles (see d).

If none of these techniques elicits a response, you are probably deceased.

2

A corpse left above ground in warm weather will be reduced to a skeleton in about nine days. The rate of decay varies, because fat people decompose more quickly than thin people: The extra flab retains body heat, which speeds up the bacterial process that breaks down body tissue.

3

As your corpse dissolves, your skin color may change from green, to purple, to black. Rigor mortis starts in your feet and travels upward.

4

Embalmers use Superglue to prevent your mouth from falling open. A coating of softened wax is also applied to both the upper and lower lip to prevent cracking and flaking.

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[Ten Reasons Why You May Wish You Had Died in Ignorance]

5

To avoid any possibility of insects entering your body via your nose, your nostrils are deeply packed with cotton wool that is saturated with a liquid insecticide.

6

The putrefaction process releases gases that can make the body swell to two or three times its normal size in twelve to eighteen hours, and the pressure of accumulating methane can cause internal organs to be forced out of the lower orifices. Embalmers always check your abdominal and thoracic regions for any signs of distension or bloating caused by gaseous buildup, then relieve pressure by opening an anal vent.

7

Fingernails and hair do not continue to grow after death.

This myth arose from the illusion created by skin retracting around the hair and nails, which makes them stand up and stick out more prominently.

8

Until the 1950s, coffins were hardly ever made to measure. If your body didn’t fit your coffin, the undertaker would normally break your ankles and bend your feet back.

9

The cremated remains of most adults will weigh between 2.5 and 8 pounds. The difference is due to bone size, not live weight.

10

Because of the high water content of the average human adult, cremation is tricky even with modern furnaces.

Modern crematoriums are equipped with electrically operated crushing machines designed to pulverize
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[Ten Reasons Why You May Wish You Had Died in Ignorance]

unburnt bones. In some undeveloped countries, however, bodies are first wrapped in layers of animal fat to aid combustion. In India, many families can’t afford enough fuel to do the job properly, and half-burned bodies are often thrown into a river.

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Ten P

10

ostmortem Adventures

1

Mark Gruenwald, the Marvel Comics editor who helped create Captain America, requested that his ashes be mixed with ink and printed into a comic book after his death. His remains were accordingly printed into a special edition poster of Squadron Supreme in 1996.

2

In 1999, the cremated remains of
Star Trek
creator Gene Roddenberry and LSD advocate Dr. Timothy Leary were launched into space on a Spanish research satellite.

3

Ed Headrick, the man who invented the Frisbee, requested that his ashes be cast into a series of limited-edition discs.

4

Elizabeth, the wife of the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, died in 1862, accidentally overdosing on the laudanum she was taking for neuralgia. Rossetti was grief-stricken and, as a token of his love, had a pile of his unpublished manuscripts wrapped in her long, golden hair and buried with her in her coffin. Seven years later, however, he had a change of heart and decided he wanted them back. Up came Elizabeth, and the poems were dusted off and published to great critical acclaim.

5

The guillotine held a morbid fascination for the French medical profession, who marveled at the speed of execution and speculated whether or not the brain would continue to function after decapitation. Some thought that the razor-sharp blade struck the victim so cleanly that they lost their heads before they knew anything about it, a theory fueled by dozens of stories about
276

[Ten Postmortem Adventures]

victims who continued to protest after they had lost their heads. Eyewitnesses recorded that when the head of Jean Paul Marat’s assassin, Charlotte Corday, was held up and slapped by the executioner, it showed unmistakable signs of anger. French doctors were allowed to carry out various experiments on severed heads, including pinching the cheeks, sticking things up the nostrils, holding lighted candles near the eyeballs, and even shouting the victim’s name very loudly in the ear of the severed head. In 1880, experimenters pumped the blood of a live dog into the head of the murderer Menesclou. It was recorded that the head responded with a look of