death

Article

Kim Jong Il, the Director He Kidnapped, and the Awful Godzilla Film They Made Together

Late Sunday, the Associated Press reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has died of heart failure. He was 69. The following story about the former dictator originally appeared in mental_floss magazine back in... READ ON

Article

True Romance: Elderly Couple Dies Holding Hands

There are plenty of stories of loving, elderly couples dying within a few years or even months of one another, but an hour apart is pretty impressive. That's what happened when Norma and Gordon Yeager recently passed away. The couple, who had been married for 72 years, were rushed to a hospital after they had been involved in a car accident. Hospital workers put Norma and Gordon in an ICU room together, where the couple continued to hold hands even after losing consciousness. In fact, Gordon's heart... READ ON

Article

Become a Part of Your Favorite Album

Talk about sealing your record. A new company is offering music lovers the opportunity to have their ashes pressed into a copy of their favorite record. You have to wonder if it's easy to get the death album mixed up with your prior copy. After all, you'd hate to be donated to the thrift store after death, wouldn't you? At least you can get 30 copies, so hopefully most of your remains will stay with those you care about. Imagine if a rock star did this with his final release. Can you imagine how much... READ ON

Article

Underwater Grave Sites

Most scuba divers like to enjoy the beauty and majesty of the world under the waves, but some people like to explore areas that are a little more morbid. Enter the world of grave divers. Many of these divers explore whale skeletons and other ocean life that is in the process of being absorbed into the sea, where it will feed a number of ocean scavengers and continue the life cycle. But many of the explorers go out of their way to discover human remains left in sunken ships and in buried caves and cities... READ ON

Article

Love Notes From A Dying Child

When five year old Elana Desserich was diagnosed with brain cancer, she wanted to leave her parents something special. Elana began writing hundreds of love notes for her family and hid them around the house for her parents to discover after she passed on. Her mother, Brooke Desserich, said "It just felt like a little hug from her, like she was telling us she was looking over us." The family is now publishing all of the notes in a book called Notes Left Behind. They are donating all profits to a... READ ON

Article

Evaluating Death in the 18th Century

We've all heard the horror stories of people being buried alive and leaving claw marks in the coffin, but doctors-of-old did work hard to ensure their patient was in fact dead. Unfortunately, the technology was a little spotty at best—to evaluate a patient's death, doctors would often resort to strange measures, including burning a patient's arm, pulling her tongue or literally blowing smoke in her butt. These tests led to the creation of some rather terrible jobs in the morgue. Over at Boing... READ ON