Internet junkies (which includes an increasing majority of humanity these days) now have one less reason to fear death: Sites like Eternalspace.com can preserve their online lives forever.
Virtual cemeteries and online memorials are springing up around the Internet, from companies that use funeral homes as middlemen. A virtual grave site can be purchased for a loved one, followed by digital amenities and individual accessories, such as a mausoleum, flowers, and religious icons (for $5 and up).
Entrepreneurial ideas like these have sprung largely from the role that Facebook and other social networks have nabbed when a death occurs in social circles. People often use social networks to let others in the network know of a friend’s passing, or distribute details of a funeral, for example. Facebook can also declare a deceased person’s page as in a “Memorial State,” which restricts access to approved family members and friends. Facebook usually requires an official death notice or news item before making the change.
(more…)
If you’re not feeling lucky, don’t venture into Wyoming, Utah, or Colorado. These states have some of the highest mortality rates caused by natural disasters, according to a new “death map” that plots where Mother Nature takes her heaviest tolls.
From 1970 to 2004, natural disasters killed some 20,000 people in the U.S. Surprisingly, the deadliest events aren’t the ones that make the headlines. More people died from heat/drought (19.6 percent), sizzling summers (18.8 percent), and freezing winters (18.1 percent) than earthquakes, wildfire, and hurricanes combined (less than 5 percent). And who would’ve thought that lightning accounted for 11.3 percent of deaths from natural hazards? The strikes were especially concentrated in the New England and southeastern states.
(more…)
The remains of an elderly man found in a Polish cathedral in 2005 have now been confirmed to be that of Copernicus, the 16th century astronomer famous for displacing Earth from the center of the universe. A team of Polish researchers have matched DNA extracted from a tooth and a femur bone to that of a strand of hair found in one of Copernicus’ old books.
For all his revolutionary ideas, Copernicus was never particularly famous during his lifetime, at least not enough to have a marked grave. (He didn’t publish his heliocentric treatise De revolutionibus until 1543, the year of his death, for fear of persecution.) Scientists knew he was one of the anonymous burials in a cathedral in Frombork, Poland, but they didn’t know which one. So they used radar to scan all the bodies to find one about 60 to 70 years old, the astronomer’s age when he died. The DNA evidence confirms that they got the right body.
(more…)
More than two dozen dolphins bit the dust in the U.K. on Monday by intentionally beaching themselves, and possible explanations for this bizarre behavior have been flying around ever since.
The morbid scene happened in Cornwall, the far southwestern tip of England. One of the leading researchers, Vic Simpson of the nearby Wildlife Veterinary Investigation Centre, said the dolphin disaster could have been a mass suicide, reminiscent of some kind of cryptic cult. According to the Daily Mail, some Cornwall residents helped a few of the 26 dolphins back into the water, only to see the suicidal marine mammals intentionally beach themselves again. The dolphins had inhaled mud that clogged their lungs and stomachs, but Simpson could offer no reason why they would do this, other than some kind of crazed panic.
(more…)
A hair trail has now shed light on a two-centuries-old historical question.
Napoleon Bonaparte, the famous dictator of France, died in exile on the island of St. Helena in the southern Atlantic Ocean. While doctors at the time cited stomach cancer as the cause of death, some historians believe that arsenic did him in—high levels of the toxic substance were found in hair samples after he died. But not so fast, says a team of Italian scientists—the arsenic in Napoleon’s hair probably didn’t kill him.
(more…)
May has been a good month for detergent sales in Japan. Unfortunately, it’s also been a good month for gas masks.
The growing trend in Japan of committing suicide by cooking up a noxious brew of household chemicals has become a disaster for anyone caught upwind. People aren’t just killing themselves anymore; they’re making their neighbors sick as well.
(more…)
You eschew cars and planes, eat insects instead of meat, dedicate yourself to recycling, avoid plastic, and install CFLs in every socket within reach—but what about your carbon footprint after death?
Standard coffin burials are known environmental hazards, involving high levels of hazardous chemicals and metals at every step. The body is first embalmed with formaldehyde (arsenic and mercury, thankfully, are no longer used), then placed in either a wood coffin (covered in varnishes, sealers, and preservatives) or a metal coffin (full of lead, zinc, copper, and steel). In America, the casket is then placed inside a concrete liner before burial in the ground—using enough reinforced concrete every year to construct a two-lane highway from New York to Detroit.
(more…)
