Decidedly Grim

Today’s Promising Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

No one knew why a photograph of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum was displayed so prominently in the studio of the promising painter Henry Alexander – and to this day it remains a mystery.  Few took the time to know the young modernist artist after he arrived from San Francisco, determined to make a name for himself in New York City.  Other artists in his building went to lengths to avoid Alexander, since he quickly made a reputation begging for money that he never repaid.  Whatever cash he got was spent on whiskey and painting supplies.  He was definitely not an orphan, and according to a surviving sister, came from Californian pioneer stock and studied in Europe.  Nevertheless, he was deemed noteworthy enough in the art scene to warrant an article about his death in the New York Times, published on May 16, 1894.  The landlord of his artist studio had padlocked the door because he had paid only three months’ rent in the prior year.  Alexander pleaded with the landlord for access to retrieve one painting that he could sell for $150, and clear up his arrears.  Apparently, Alexander did find a buyer, and instead, used the funds to go on a binge.  Alexander checked into a decent hotel, and two days after the night porter heard agonizing groans coming from his room.  When hotel staff opened the door with a pass key, they found Alexander sprawled unconscious on the floor.  An empty bottle of whisky and a drained can of metal polisher (Oxalic acid) were on the table.  The Times concluded, “Lack of funds, it is thought, caused the artist to take his life.”  Before he died (at age thirty-four), Alexander’s work was exhibited in a number of galleries, and seemed to offer promise of better things to come.  He liked to paint the interiors of churches, and his most famous piece was prophetically titled “Lost Genius”.  The acid he ingested was sold as  a product called Bar Keepers Friend, which was presumably used to polish brass and not knock off patrons who didn’t pay their tab.  Records from the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, located on 137th street and Amsterdam in New York City, indicated that a thirty-five-dollar anonymous donation was made the day before Alexander died, though no child with his surname was registered.

Culled from: Genius and Heroin: The Illustrated Catalogue of Creativity, Obsession, and Reckless Abandon Through the Ages

Facts

Today’s Mysterious Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Captain McMaugh of the steamer Algonquin may have been the last person to set eyes on the distinctive profile of the 245-foot canal streamer Bannockburn, with its three raking masts and tall funnel, on November 21, 1902. Laden with 85,000 bushels of wheat, the steamer was downbound from Port Arthur, Ontario, heading for Midland, Ontario, and fighting a strong headwind. Later that night, the steady wind became a full-blown gale and ships out on Lake Superior struggled to make headway. Days passed and the Bannockburn failed to reach the Sault locks. On November 27 it became obvious that the Bannockburn was missing. Some believed that the vessel was wrecked off Stannard Rock, where the steamer John D. Rockefeller had passed through a wreckage field. Captain McMaugh advanced the theory that the sudden, mysterious disappearance of the vessel was a result of the ship’s boilers blowing up and causing the vessel to sink almost immediately. At the time, the only wreckage positively identified was a life jacket bearing the name Bannockburn, found on the beach near Marais, Michigan. The strings were tied, suggesting that it had slipped from a body. Captain George R. Wood and his entire crew of twenty perished. The wreck of the Bannockburn has never been located, but the vessel is rumored to live on in the form of a ghost ship – likening it to the legendary Flying Dutchman, which was wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope and is said to reappear from time to time as a phantom ship. Only a few years after the Bannockburn disappeared, sailors began to report the ghostly figure of the steamer sailing past Caribou Island, still trying to reach Sault Ste. Marie.

Culled from: Disaster Great Lakes

Facts

Today’s Legitimately Prescribed Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

In early January 1998, Sonny Bono and his wife Mary took their two children (four-year-old Chianna and seven-year-old Cesare) to Lake Tahoe for a vacation at the Heavenly Resort. On January 5, they were out on the slopes of South Lake Tahoe on the Upper Orion ski run. About 1:30 P.M., the family was skiing on an intermediate slope. Four-year-old Chianna took a slight tumble, and Mary and seven-year-old Cesare stopped to assist her. Sonny told Mary he was going to go down in another direction, and then skied off the path and in among the trees – which adept skiers often do. Thereafter, no one heard anything from Sonny. But six hours later, news came that a body had been found on the mountain. Mary demanded to be taken to the site, and her worst fears proved to be true when she saw Sonny’s frozen face. He had died of massive head injuries from skiing head-on into a 40-foot-high pine tree. At the time, it was a mystery why Sonny would have done what he did on the slopes. There was speculation that he might have been high, but there was no official evidence of drug or alcohol abuse. But, as his wife would tell TV Guide magazine in November 1998, “When he died, his blood level was in the therapeutic range for Vicodin and Valium. He had taken what had been prescribed legitimately by a doctor. But you know these drugs come with a warning. DO NOT OPERATE MACHINERY or whatever.”

Culled from: The Hollywood Book Of Death

Everytime I think of Sonny Bono’s death I’m reminded of the immortal Eminem lyric: “Skibbedy-be-bop, a-Christopher Reeves, Sonny Bono, skis, horses and hittin’ some trees”.

Facts

Today’s Flatly Incredible Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

In 1863, poisoner Lydia Sherman was able to easily procure an ounce of powdered arsenic from a drugstore near her home in Harlem. The druggist who dispensed the poison would not have raised an eyebrow at Lydia’s request. Arsenic was a popular over-the-counter item at the time, sold in various forms and used – bizarrely enough – as both a pesticide and a beauty product. A homeowner whose premises were infested with rodents might deal with the problem by sprinkling his floorboards with an arsenic compound called “Rough on Rats.” At the same time, his adolescent daughter might hope to improve her complexion by dosing herself with “Bellavita Arsenic Beauty Tablets” – absolutely guaranteed (according to the newspaper ads) to eliminate “Pimples, Blotches, Freckles, Sunburn, Discolorations, Eczema, Blackheads, Roughness, Redness, and to Restore the Bloom of Youth to Faded Faces!” That American women would eagerly ingest rat poison for its supposedly cosmetic properties seems flatly incredible to us – equivalent to treating a bad case of acne by swallowing a few shots of Raid. But it was typical of those wildly unregulated, pre-FDA days, when the marketplace was flooded with medicinal cure-alls concocted of everything from cocaine and chloroform to morphine and mercury.

Culled from: Fatal : The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer

Facts

Today’s Clinking Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

On December 6, 1917 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a munitions ship (the Mont Blanc) collided with a vessel in the Narrows of the harbor, triggering a catastrophic fire and explosion that destroyed much of the city and killed over 1,600 people and injuring over 9,000. Many of the injured had been staring out the window at the burning vessel when it exploded, resulting in horrifying facial injuries from broken glass. Dr. George Cox, a local eye surgeon, operated for more than three straight days. Here is an excerpt about his efforts:

After the operating room was organized to his satisfaction, Cox walked the wards picking out an hour or two’s work. He checked first one eye and then the other by gently lifting their swollen lids, if there were any lids. “Eyelids were cut into literal fringes and in addition to removal of the ball, one often had to hunt among the swollen scalp to find material to reconstruct a set of lids. In many cases there were no more eyeballs. It was as if the ball had been laid open and then stuffed with pieces of glass or sometimes crockery, brick splinters, and on palpation, they would clink. Pieces of glass were driven clean through the eyeball and one found it necessary to feel about in the orbital tissue before dressing the case. Pieces of glass as large as an inch square or larger were found.”

Culled from: Curse Of The Narrows

Facts

Today’s the 96th anniversary of the Eastland Disaster, one of my “favorite” Chicago tragedies. Let’s talk about it with…

Today’s Capsized Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

For an hour, while passengers were boarding the steamship Eastland on this rainy but otherwise calm Saturday (July 24, 1915), the ship slowly rocked back and forth from starboard to port. The motion of the boat, which was scheduled to take employees of the Western Electric Co. on an excursion to Michigan City, Ind., did not alarm the crew.

At 7:25 a.m., the list to port became more severe. A refrigerator behind the bar toppled over with a crash, and the 2,573 passengers and crew suddenly realized that disaster was upon them. As it was being cast loose from its moorings on the south bank of the Chicago River between LaSalle and Clark Streets, the Eastland slowly settled on its side. The ship was only a few feet from the wharf, where a large crowd of horrified spectators watched, and it was in only 20 feet of water. That, however, was deep enough to drown 844 people who were trapped or trampled below decks. Although most were young factory workers from Berwyn and Cicero, 21 entire families were wiped out.

“The screaming was terrible,” one man told the Tribune, which devoted 11 pages of coverage to the disaster. “I watched one woman who seemed to be thrown from the top deck. . . . I saw her white hat float down the river, and that was all.”

Of the many Great Lakes shipping accidents, the Eastland disaster was by far the worst; the sinking of the Lady Elgin in 1860, in which 279 people perished, is a distant second.

Court decisions blamed improperly weighted ballast tanks for the disaster. But transportation historian George W. Hilton argued in a 1995 book that the international reaction to the sinking of the Titanic three years earlier ultimately doomed the Eastland, which had almost capsized in 1904 with 2,370 people aboard.

Because there were lifeboats and rafts for less than half the Titanic’s licensed passenger capacity, an international furor arose. Sen. Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin introduced a bill that required ships to have enough lifeboats for 75 percent of their passengers.

On July 2, 1915, the owners of the Eastland added three lifeboats and six rafts, weighing 14 to 15 tons, to its top deck. A boat that had already exhibited stability problems became top-heavy. Three weeks later, the next time it was loaded to capacity, the Eastland capsized.

Culled from: Chicago Tribune

Here’s a photograph I took of the site of the disaster a couple years ago. More information on the disaster can be found in the description of the image on the linked Flickr page:

Facts

Here’s another post-mortem ceramic photograph that I took at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Chicago’s southside a couple weeks back. This one has the full ‘man laying in a coffin’ treatment. This is the mortal remains of Joseph DiSanto who was born Jan. 14, 1914 and died Sept. 1, 1927.

Ghastly!

Today’s Perfectly Composed Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

On March 22, 1925, barely six years after the Grand Canyon had become a national park, Lewis W. Thompson stood on the edge of the South Rim to pose for a scenic photo proving that he had actually been to Grand Canyon.  Thompson’s position, however, proved less than ideal for a perfectly composed photo.  So he took one more step.  Into a crack.  Thompson tripped, lost his balance, tottered, then fell off the rim.  He plunged hundreds of feet to his death.

Culled from: Over the Edge: Death In Grand Canyon

I’m imaging the person taking the photograph lighting up a cigarette, walking slowly to the edge, looking down at the body, smiling, then walking slowly away…

Facts

Today’s Seated Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Ever tell an actor to “break a leg”? Be careful what you wish for.  In 1905, the Divine Sarah Bernhardt injured her knee performing the last scene of the play “La Tosca.” Sadly, the injury never healed. By 1916, gangrene had set in and the leg had to be amputated. Afterward, she continued to perform, sticking to roles that allowed her to remain seated. According to legend, circus mastermind P.T. Barnum offered Bernhardt a hefty chunk of change for the amputated leg, but she turned him down. The true whereabouts of the appendage remain a mystery.

Culled from: Neatorama
Generously submitted by: Reno Dave

Facts

Today’s Unglued Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Three people presumed dead after being swept over a raging waterfall in Yosemite National Park ignored warning signs and crossed a barricade to pose for photographs.  In addition, other hikers on the trail above the 317-foot Vernal Falls warned the group that conditions in the Merced River were treacherous.  ”People come up here and they think it’s Disneyland,” said Jake Bibee, who says he is haunted by the look of terror in one man’s eyes as he was swept over the falls clinging to his female companion.  “Everyone was screaming,” Bibee, 28, said. “People were praying. What I will take away with me forever is the look on that grown man’s face as he was floating down that river knowing he was going to die and nobody could help them.”  The Yosemite Search and Rescue unit identified the people presumed dead as Homiz David, 22, of Modesto; Ninos Yacoub, 27, of Turlock; and Ramina Badal, 21, of Modesto.  The tragedy also was watched by young children in the group that accompanied the three people on their trek.

The group of about 10 family members and friends had taken the day trip to see Vernal Falls, a treacherous drop on the swift Merced River made even more dangerous this year because of the record snowmelt now under way.  A metal barricade separates hikers from the river where it pools amid a slick slab of granite before crashing over the precipice. Signs in several languages warn people of the danger that exists when slippery surfaces and fast-moving water collide.  Bibee said he was mortified when he reached the top of the Mist Trail and found members of the group on the river side of the barricade. He had just spent a good part of his hike explaining to his companion how dangerous the wilderness can be.  One man, he said, was posing near the waterfall with a screaming young girl in his arms while a teenage girl snapped photographs.  “People became unglued on this guy,” Bibee said. “They said, you know what man, get your ass back over here.”  As the man complied, another man and woman in the group crossed the barricade and made their way to a rock in the middle of the river to pose for photographs.  “That’s when the woman started to slip,” Bibee said. “He reached for her and fell in. Then another one tried to help and she falls in the water. We literally watched them get swept over the edge of Vernal Falls.”  The couple on the rock hugged each other tightly as they disappeared over the edge.  “It was brutal,” Bibee said.  Witnesses immediately called 911 on cell phones, alerting park rangers. The search and rescue unit closed the Mist Trail on Tuesday afternoon (July 19, 2011) while searching for the bodies. The trail, used by 1,500 people a day, was reopened Wednesday as rescuers searched the banks of the river for the bodies.  The tragedy brings to six the number of people killed in water accidents in Yosemite this year. Two hikers drowned in the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir on June 29, and a hiker slipped and fell into the Merced River on the Mist Trail on May 13.

Culled from: The Associated Press

I have a friend going here soon.  I told him to be sure to get pictures of the rocky outcrop to which the foolish walked.  I’ll share, of course.

Facts