Buried Alive

Excerpted from Snopes.

Okay, so it was (and still is) possible to be buried alive or to meet your maker on a post-mortem table. The prospect is chilling, and numerous people have gone to great lengths to make sure it doesn’t happen to them. The practice of ‘waking’ the dead (having someone sit with the deceased from the time of death until burial in case he ‘wakes up’) began out of this concern. Especially in bygone days when a number of illnesses could cause the sufferer to slip into a coma and thus make it appear all life functions had been snuffed out, the danger of overly hasty interment was real. (Edgar Allen Poe’s macabre short stories, most notably “Premature Burial,” certainly helped increase such fears among the general populace.)

Some went so far as to specify in their wills they wanted special tests performed on their bodies to make sure they were actually dead. Surgical incisions, the application of boiling hot liquids, touching red-hot irons to their flesh, stabbing them through the heart, or even decapitating them were all specified at different times as a way of making sure they didn’t wake up six feet under. Some opted for being buried with the means to do themselves in, and guns, knives, and poison were packed into coffins along with the deceased.

The screams of a young Belgian girl who came out of a trance-like state as the earth fell on her coffin so upset Count Karnice-Karnicki, Chamberlain to the Czar and Doctor of the Law Faculty of the University of Louvain, that he invented a coffin which allowed a person accidentally buried alive to summon help through a system of flags and bells. Patented in 1897, this hermetically-sealed coffin had a tube, about 3.5 inches in diameter, extending to a box on the surface. The tube was attached to a spring-loaded ball sitting on the corpse’s chest. Any movement of the chest would release the spring, opening the box lid and admitting light and air into the coffin. To signal for help, a flag would spring up, a bell would ring for half an hour, and a lamp would burn after sunset. Similar “life-signalling” coffins were patented in the United States.

Those old-fashioned devices might sound quaint and out of place in modern society, but concern over live burial has prompted the redirection of newer technologies to take the place of red flags and whistles. 

In 1995 a $5,000 Italian casket equipped with call-for-help ability and survival kit went on sale. Akin to bleeping devices which alert relatives to an elderly family member’s being in trouble, this casket is equipped with a beeper which will sound a similar emergency signal. The coffins are also fitted with a two-way microphone/speaker to enable communication between the occupant and someone outside, and a kit which includes a torch, a small oxygen tank, a sensor to detect a person’s heartbeat, and even a heart stimulator.

Those worried about premature burial would do well to consider Point #10 of “Short Reasons for Cremation,” a 12-point pamphlet circulated in Australia at the turn of the century: Cremation eliminates all danger of being buried alive.

From SimonTemplar

Virtual Reality World Trade Center Tour

A doll depicting members of a Nazi SS combat division is photographed with all the accessories. (CP PHOTO/Richard Lam)

VANCOUVER (CP) – Virgin Megastores said dolls depicting members of the Totenkopf Division are no longer being stocked in its Vancouver store. While members of the division fought in Normandy in 1944, it was originally formed at Dachau, Germany, site of the first concentration camp outside Munich. The Totenkopf continued to guard camps until the end of the Second World War.

Plan-B co-president Chris Borman said the Totenkopf figures were picked because “they’ve got the coolest gear. It makes for a cool figure.”

Borman said his grandfathers had fought in Europe for his “right to make whatever I want.”

Other figures in the doll series include several Waffen SS figures .

On May 26, 1940, a company of the Canadian Royal Norfolk Regiment surrendered to the 2nd Totenkopf Infantry Regiment under the command of SS Obersturmfuhrer Fritz Knoechlein.

The Canadians were lined up in the meadow along a barn wall. When the 99 prisoners were in position, two machine guns opened fire, killing 97 of them.

Lego robot plays Super Mario Bros…and wins

In an ongoing effort to rid the world of productive robots, three college students have crafted a Legobot that can beat the first level of Super Mario Bros. 

Using Legos and a basic circuit board, Matt Sesno, Ben Rowe, and Tim Dooley built a robot made of Legos that is capable of playing Super Mario Bros., the first Mario-based platform game for the NES, and even beating the first level.

Dog Found

According to research by Russian scientist Gennady Cheurin and his team at the Centre for Ecological Safety and Survival in Yekaterinburg, too much swearing can make men impotent and women develop male characteristics including facial hair and extra muscles.

Cheurin said that his team had sworn at a glass of water for several hours and then poured it over wheat seeds. Only 48 per cent of those seeds which were watered with the “foul” water sprouted as opposed to 93 per cent of seeds watered with holy water taken from natural springs.

Cheuring said: “We then looked at heavy swearers and others who never used bad language, and found whenever men use these words in their daily life, this immediately leads to sexual dysfunctions, i.e. impotence. If a woman uses these words in her daily speech, she slowly begins transforming into a man, getting more hair and muscles.”

Corrupt Cops

 According to the Los Angeles Times, a former LAPD officer already serving 15 years on drug trafficking and gun charges has admitted that he and other officers went on a robbery spree that netted hundreds of thousands of dollars between 1998 and 2001. Ruben Palomares, 34, and his gang robbed cash, drugs, guns, and other items in robberies that were staged to look like police raids and sometimes turned violent.

Palomares and crew dressed in police uniforms, drove police cars, and flashed their badged during the robberies, he said. They shot at least two men with stun guns, beat another man with a billy club, and tortured yet another man by burning him with a cigarette lighter and sticking a gun in his mouth. The robberies netted at least 700 pounds of marijuana and 100 pounds of cocaine, according to the court documents.

The robbery crew included at least five LAPD officers, Palomares said.

His attorney told the Times Palomares had become a born again Christian and is trying to make amends for his misdeeds, but under the plea agreement, Palomares can win sentence reductions only if he snitches out his fellow thieves.

Jesus has been named No1 black icon of all time.

Ethnic paper New Nation asked experts to list the 100 most important figures in black history.

They put the Son of God – traditionally portrayed as white – at the top of the list.

Church of England spokesman Lou Henderson added to the confusion, saying: “In fact Jesus was a Palestinian Jew.”

From u_d1rt1ed_up_my_s0ul:

Pet Peeve of the Day:  Politics.. just politics.

Some of you have read my previous posts about my dear friend Doug that is currently serving over in Iraq.  I recently asked him if his unit had received their absentee ballots to vote.  The response I got today was disheartening.  He told me that they never received absentee ballots, BUT…

They were allowed to vote for president via a “check yes or no” format.  They were given strips of paper that had both Kerry and Bush’s names on them and they were to check the person of their choice, place the strips of paper in an envelope and mail them off to Baghdad to be counted.

Jet drops bomb on hiking trail

ASSOCIATED PRESS

FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. – Military officials are investigating why a jet fighter accidentally dropped a 25-pound practice bomb on a hiking trail a mile from its intended target in southeastern Pennsylvania.

No one was injured when the grapefruit-sized, cast-iron bomb fell on the trail Oct. 13 during a training mission for a pair of A-10 Thunderbolts. The bomb created a crater about 6 inches wide in the trail along an abandoned rail line in Schuylkill County.

At least one hiker was close enough to hear the thud.