Today’s Incessant Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Derived from both the belladonna and datura plants, atropine has been employed throughout history – particularly in India – as a particularly deadly poison. In Victorian America it was used, like morphine, both as a painkiller and as a treatment for dozens of ailments: asthma, earache, night sweats, rheumatism, seasickness, tetanus, whooping cough, and many more. Its symptoms, however, are very different from – and in some cases diametrically opposite to – those produced by morphine. The mouth and throat grow parched, and the pupils widely dilated. Victims lose control of their muscular coordination and reel around like drunks. They are possessed by a strange sense of giddiness that soon passes into a wild delirium. They may babble incoherently, burst into maniacal laughter, or emit constant, anguished groans. Perhaps the most grotesque symptom of all is their incessant picking at real or imaginary objects. They pluck at their clothing – pull at their fingers and toes – snatch at invisible objects in the air. Even when they lapse into their final stupor, they continue to mutter feverishly and make constant spasmodic motions, clutching at the bedclothes or grasping at phantoms floating over their heads.
Culled from: Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer
Facts
Today’s Unmussed Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Thomas Edwin “Tom” Mix (born Thomas Hezikiah Mix, January 6, 1880 – October 12, 1940) was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies. He made a reported 336 films between 1910 and 1935, all but nine of which were silent features. He was Hollywood’s first Western megastar and is noted as having helped define the genre for all cowboy actors who followed. On the afternoon of October 12, 1940, Mix was killed in an automobile wreck in Florence, Arizona. Here is the colorful original article from the Oct 13, 1940 Reading Eagle:
Florence, Arizona, October 12 (U.P.) – Tom Mix, the shootin’est movie cowboy there ever was, died today in an automobile wreck, when his green speedster turned over on an Arizona desert highway at 80 miles an hour.
He was dead when passersby lifted him from the wreckage near here. His neck was broken.
Mix, who never was as good behind the wheel as he was at the bridle of his horse, Tony, met death near a bridge construction job. His custom-built auto swung in an arc down into a wash near a detour sign, swerved up on the other side, and whirled over. It had no top.
Construction workers and motorists pried the machine with timbers from the bridge they were building, and hauled out the body with diamond-studded belt still in place, and ten-gallon white sombrero still jammed on Mix’s brow.
He died with his high-heeled cowboy boots on. His cream jacket and cream-colored breeches were not even mussed.
Culled from: Wikipedia and the Reading Eagle
Dammit, why can’t they write fun fashion-obsessed obituaries like this anymore? I would have loved to have seen Michael Jackson’s…
Facts
Sorry I’ve been away for awhile… a combination of website issues and illness. I’ll try to get back into the daily swing of things with…
Today’s Demonstrable Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Salesman Rico Vogt choked to death in Piza, Italy, when his tie got tangled round the blades of a food mixer he was demonstrating to a crowd in a shopping centre.
Culled from: Strange Deaths
Facts
One of the saddest, sickest, most horrific things I’ve ever seen. The human race is despicable.
Gay African Man Beaten and Burned Alive By Mob
Ghastly!
I just watched the first episode of American Horror Story. Two pale, ghostly, scarred thumbs up! You should check it out if you get the chance.
American Horror Story
Sundry
You’ve longed for a Myra Hindley, Albert Fish, or Ed Gein clock to spice up your dreary apartment. And thanks to the fine artists at Serial Killer Calendar.Com, your dream has come true!
Killer Clocks
Thanks to Steve O’ for the link.
Trinkets
Today’s Chained Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
In 18th century Moscow, prisoners who had been condemned to long sentences in the salt mines of Siberia were allowed to go chained through the city’s streets, three days before their departure, crying out for food to support them on their long journey.
Culled from: Rack, Rope and Red-Hot Pincers
Facts
You may recall the three hikers who foolishly decided to wade in the swift waters above Vernal Fall in Yosemite National Park and found out to their fatal dismay that it really was a pretty bad idea? Well, they were just the latest in a string of fatalities that leads back to the star of…
Today’s Plummeting Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The first recorded death at Vernal Fall in Yosemite National Park was 16-year-old Lucille Duling, who stepped into the abyss on August 22, 1924. Lucille was enjoying her vacation at Yosemite, a giant change of scenery from that of her life in Hollywood, which was then a dusty town of orchards mixed with the emerging film industry. After a grueling climb to the head of Vernal Fall, Lucille, along with her father and her friend Riva Straub, stopped to admire the magnificent waterfall that plunges 317 feet out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The teenagers posed for photos by the guardrail, but the girls thought that they could get a more dramatic photo if they were on the other side of the River of Our Lady of Mercy. Being late summer, the river was running deceptively low and the girls had no difficulty getting across the river for their photos. Riva crossed the river without a problem, while Lucille’s father changed the film in his camera. Lucille took a different route than Riva and started to jump from rock to rock. Perhaps she slipped on the algae-covered smooth river rocks or maybe the ice-cold water numbed her feet too much; whatever the case, the teenage girl fell into the river and disappeared, only to surface in time to scream as she plummeted over the ledge to her death. The panic-stricken father ran down the trail to the base of the falls, while Riva ran to get a ranger. Lucille’s lifeless body bobbed violently around in the pool, as her father tried desperately to swim out to his daughter. They retrieved her later with a rope.
Culled from: Death In California
Facts
Today’s Honorable Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The 20th century Japanese soldier identity was forged in a thousand-year-old system in which social hierarchy was established and sustained through martial competition. For as far back as anyone could remember, the islands’ powerful feudal lords employed private armies to wage incessant battle with each other; by the medieval times these armies had evolved into the distinctively Japanese samurai warrior class, whose code of conduct was called “bushido” (the “Way of the Warrior”). To die in the service of one’s lord was the greatest honor a samurai warrior could achieve in its lifetime. Such codes of honor were certainly not invented by Japanese culture. The Roman poet Horace first defined the debt owed by the young men of each generation to their rulers – Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. But the samurai philosophy went a giant step beyond defining military service as fitting and proper. So harsh was its code that its most notable characteristic was the moral imperative that adherents commit suicide if they ever failed to meet honorably the obligations of military service – often with the highly ceremonial and extremely painful ritual of hara-kiri, in which the warrior met death by unflinchingly disemboweling himself in front of witnesses.
Time did not erode the strength of the bushido ethic. During World War II the infamous kamikaze suicide missions, in which Japanese pilots ceremoniously trained to fly their planes directly into American ships, dramatically impressed upon the West how ready the young men of Japan were to sacrifice their lives for the emperor. But it was more than a small elite group that held to the view of death over surrender. It is striking to note that while the Allied forces surrendered at the rate of 1 prisoner for every 3 dead, the Japanese surrendered at the rate of only 1 per 120 dead.
Culled from: The Rape Of Nanking
Of course, it was this “never surrender” attitude that was used by Truman as justification for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan – to force them to surrender. I think he had a point.
Facts
Today’s Clean Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
In January, 1919, New York City forensic chemist Alexander Gettler determined that a 13-year-old girl had poisoned a baby simply by using Lysol to clean its bottle.
Culled from: The Poisoner’s Handbook
Facts