Mental Floss

DEATH

















From ‘six-foot bungalow’ to ‘pine overcoat,’ there have been some creative euphemisms for coffins over the ages—and some terms that were surprisingly (and uncomfortably) direct.

Mark Peters








Resurrectionists raiding a cemetery to provide a cadaver for dissection, 1887.

In this excerpt from Simon Read’s book ‘Scotland Yard,’ detectives try to determine if the men who turned up at a medical college with a fresh corpse are body snatchers—or murderers.

Simon Read
Tollund Man on display at the Silkeborg Museum, Denmark.

The bodies of Iron Age Europeans are so well preserved in peat bogs that they’re sometimes mistaken for modern murder victims.

Kristina Killgrove