August 12, 2009

Today's Automated Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Robert Williams was the first man ever killed by a robot. On January 25, 1979, Williams climbed into a storage rack at the Ford Motor’s Flat Rock casting plant to retrieve a part because the parts-retrieval robot malfunctioned. Suddenly, the robot reactivated and slammed its arm into Williams’ head, killing him instantly.

The second death by robot happened just a couple of years afterwards in 1981. Kenji Urada, a 37-year-old Japanese maintenance engineer was working on a broken robot at a Kawasaki plant when he failed to turn it off. The robot’s mechanical arm accidentally pushed him into a grinding machine.

Culled from: Neatorama
Generously submitted by: Bex

Never trust a robot, I always say! It hasn't failed me yet.

August 16, 2009

Today's Nightmarish Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

It sounds like a recurring nightmare: an armed male intruder breaks into a women's dorm and with a gun and a butcher's knife, binds and gags all the residents. Then one by one, he kills them cruelly and with great brutality. All of that happened in Chicago on the night of July 14, 1966, in a dormitory that housed eight nurses who worked at the South Chicago Community Hospital. The perpetrator was Richard Speck, then 24, a drifter born in Illinois, raised in Texas, wandering from petty crime to petty crime and bar to bar. At the age of 19, he had the words "Born to Raise Hell" tattooed on his arm. His victims were all eulogized as saints, people who had committed their lives to helping others. He would be positively identified by one of his intended targets, Corazon Amurao, who survived the attack by hiding under a bed. Speck knew there were eight women in the dorm; he did not know that a friend was also staying over that night. So Amurao survived as the guest was led to slaughter. The jury found Speck guilty after a mere 49 minutes of deliberation and he was sentenced to the electric chair. In 1972, however, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death sentence unconstitutional. Resentenced to hundreds of years in prison, Speck died in 1991. No one claimed his body, which was cremated and the ashes scattered to the wind.

Culled from: Time.Com
http://www.time.com/time/2007/crimes/9.html

You may remember that Speck gained infamy after his death when a prison video came out showing him with hormone-enhanced breasts snorting cocaine, having oral sex with a fellow prisoner, and bragging about how much fun he was having in prison. Apparently, this was all a survival mechanism to make himself more desirable to his fellow inmates so they didn't kill him.

The amazing thing to me about this murder is that 8 girls could allow themselves to be so paralyzed by a gun that they would let a man tie them up one by one like that. Maybe it was a different time, but I can't imagine not jumping the guy. Eight against one, after all. (Well, actually, nine against one.) But, I guess they were hypnotized by the power of the gun. Shame.

Last Sunday (August 9th), I took a drive to the townhouse where the girls were murdered to photograph it for Chicago ghostlore author Ursula Bielski's upcoming book. (She's featuring several of my photographs in the book, and I'm quite excited about it.) It's amazing to me that the building is still standing. I wonder if the current residents know its history?

August 19, 2009

Today's Semi-Paralyzed Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

A fatal case of mass mercury poisoning occurred on the British ship HMS Triumph in 1810. The Triumph had taken on a cargo of mercury from a Spanish ship that had been driven ashore in a gale. Originally, the mercury was placed in the hold where the crew's spirit rations were kept, but there was so much of it that soon the bags were being stowed in sleeping quarters as well, such as those of the petty officers, pursers and surgeons, all of whom became badly effected from mercury poisoning. They found their tongues swelling and their mouths salivating to an alarming degree. The salvaged mercury had been held in leather bags in wooden boxes, but it was only the bags that were salvaged. Many of them had split and spilled their contents. Soon large amounts of the metal were sloshing about below decks and indeed some of the officers had it rolling about on the floor beneath theri bunks. By April 10, 1810, around 200 men on board the Triumph were suffering from mercury poisoning which caused excess salivation in some, while others were semi-paralyzed and many suffered 'bowel complaints'.

The sick were taken to other ships where they soon recovered while the Triumph itself was sent to Gibraltar to be decontaminated. Not that this was effective because a new crew also started to suffer in the same way. The ship was dispatched back to England on June 13th and then things did begin to improve somewhat, thanks to the movement of the vessel and the ventilating of the lower decks. Even so, 44 sailors and marines had to be transferred to other ships. All the sheep, pigs, goats, and poultry on the Triumph died, as did the ship's cat, a dog, the mice and rats - and a canary. Five men eventually died, two of gangrene of the cheeks and tongue. A woman passenger, who had a fractured leg and was confined to bed during the voyage, lost all her teeth and the skin on the inside of the mouth all peeled away.

Culled from: The Elements Of Murder

I just finished reading the above-mentioned book, The Elements of Murder: A History Of Poison, by John Emsley. It was a very interesting book that will provide many morbid facts in the future, although Emsley is a rather dry author and it was hard to get through parts of it. There were also times when I felt like he rushed through the interesting stuff (the tragedies) and belaboured the dull stuff (chemical formulations and other technical details), but on the whole it was a worthwhile read. I'd have to give it 3 1/2 skulls out of 5.