Newsflash: we're all going to die. But here are 20 things you
didn't know about kicking the bucket.
By LeeAundra Temescu
DISCOVER Vol. 27 No. 09 | September 2006
1 The practice of burying the dead may date back 350,000 years, as
evidenced by a 45-foot-deep pit in Atapuerca, Spain, filled with
the fossils of 27 hominids of the species Homo heidelbergensis, a
possible ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.
2 Never say die: There are at least 200 euphemisms for death,
including "to be in Abraham's bosom," "just add maggots," and
"sleep with the Tribbles" (a Star Trek favorite).
3 No American has died of old age since 1951.
4 That was the year the government eliminated that classification
on death certificates.
5 The trigger of death, in all cases, is lack of oxygen. Its
decline may prompt muscle spasms, or the "agonal phase," from the
Greek word agon, or contest.
6 Within three days of death, the enzymes that once digested your
dinner begin to eat you. Ruptured cells become food for living
bacteria in the gut, which release enough noxious gas to bloat the
body and force the eyes to bulge outward.
7 So much for recycling: Burials in America deposit 827,060 gallons
of embalming fluid—formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol—into the
soil each year. Cremation pumps dioxins, hydrochloric acid, sulfur
dioxide, and carbon dioxide into the air.
8 Alternatively . . . A Swedish company, Promessa, will freeze-dry
your body in liquid nitrogen, pulverize it with high-frequency
vibrations, and seal the resulting powder in a cornstarch coffin.
They claim this "ecological burial" will decompose in 6 to 12
months.
9 Zoroastrians in India leave out the bodies of the dead to be
consumed by vultures.
10 The vultures are now dying off after eating cattle carcasses
dosed with diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory used to relieve fever
in livestock.
11 Queen Victoria insisted on being buried with the bathrobe of her
long-dead husband, Prince Albert, and a plaster cast of his
hand.
12 If this doesn't work, we're trying in vitro! In Madagascar,
families dig up the bones of dead relatives and parade them around
the village in a ceremony called famadihana. The remains are then
wrapped in a new shroud and reburied. The old shroud is given to a
newly married, childless couple to cover the connubial bed.
13 During a railway expansion in Egypt in the 19th century,
construction companies unearthed so many mummies that they used
them as fuel for locomotives.
14 Well, yeah, there's a slight chance this could backfire: English
philosopher Francis Bacon, a founder of the scientific method, died
in 1626 of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken with snow to see if
cold would preserve it.
15 For organs to form during embryonic development, some cells must
commit suicide. Without such programmed cell death, we would all be
born with webbed feet, like ducks.
16 Waiting to exhale: In 1907 a Massachusetts doctor conducted an
experiment with a specially designed deathbed and reported that the
human body lost 21 grams upon dying. This has been widely held as
fact ever since. It's not.
17 Buried alive: In 19th-century Europe there was so much anecdotal
evidence that living people were mistakenly declared dead that
cadavers were laid out in "hospitals for the dead" while attendants
awaited signs of putrefaction.
18 Eighty percent of people in the United States die in a
hospital.
19 If you can't make it here . . . More people commit suicide in
New York City than are murdered.
20 It is estimated that 100 billion people have died since humans
began.