Decidedly Grim

Today’s Green Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Scheele’s green was a beautiful green chemical named after Karl Scheele (1742-1786). Scheele’s green was colored by copper arsenite and was ideal for printing wallpapers, especially those with floral motifs. Wallpaper production rose steadily throughout the 1800s: in the UK it reached 1 million rolls a year in 1830 and 30 million rolls by 1870. When tests were then carried out it was found that four out of five wallpapers contained arsenic. Arsenic in wallpaper had a habit of diffusing into the air of a room and thereby affecting its occupants. This had been suspected as long ago as 1815, but the mechanism by which it occurred was not correctly deduced until the 1890s, and what exactly was being released was only solved in 1932.

In 1864 there were reports in the press of children actually dying as a result of the vapors given off by moldy green wallpaper, and the medical journal Lancet warned of the dangers of arsenic pigments. A typical wallpaper would contain around 700 mg/square meter so that an average-sized living room would hold around 30,000 mg of arsenic, in theory enough to kill more than a hundred people. Most of this arsenic would remain on the walls of the room unless they became damp. The nature of the aerial poison was unknown at the time but this did not stop concerned individuals launching campaigns against the use of arsenic-based pigments even though these flew in the face of most medical opinion which regarded arsenic as a potent medicine and good for treating all kinds of afflictions of the human body. In addition the general public had discovered that when arsenic-based papers were used on bedroom walls there was a noticeable disappearance of bed bugs, a major benefit that led to increased sales. Moreover, arsenic cigarettes were popular and reputed to cure nervous complaints, and arsenic-based cosmetics were supposedly good for the complexion. How could the tiny amount that was emitted by wallpapers be dangerous? It seemed illogical to claim otherwise, and so Scheele’s green continued to be used.

Culled from: The Elements of Murder

Hmmmmm… early death or bedbugs? You know, I think I’d go with the wallpaper too!

Facts

Today’s Notorious Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The most notorious use of torture of free citizens in the American English colonies occurred in the trials of those accused of witchcraft at Salem in 1692. The penalty of the peine forte et dure (pressing an accused individual with increasingly heavy stones on his chest to force a confession) had been abolished in Massachusetts by the 1641 Body of Liberties – ‘For bodily punishments we allow amongst us none that are inhumane, barbarous or cruel’ – but it was nevertheless imposed upon 80-year-old Giles Cory, who refused to plead. He died slowly over a period of two days, and ‘in pressing, his tongue being pressed out of his mouth, the sheriff with his cane forced it in again’.

Culled from: The History Of Torture

Facts

Today’s Over-indulgent Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

During lunch on August 28, 1905, Swiss laborer Jean Lanfray consumed seven glasses of wine, six glasses of cognac, one coffee laced with brandy, two crème de menthes, and two glasses of absinthe after eating a sandwich. He returned home drunk with his father, and drank another coffee with brandy. He then got into an argument with his pregnant wife, and asked his wife to polish his shoes for him. When she refused, Lanfray retrieved a rifle and shot her once in the head, killing her instantly, causing his father to flee. His four-year-old daughter, Rose, heard the noise and ran into the room, where Lanfray shot and killed her and his two-year-old daughter, Blanche. He then shot himself in the jaw and carried Blanche’s body to the garden, where he collapsed. He was discovered minutes later by police after they had been notified by his father.

After being taken to a hospital, Lanfray eventually recovered and was put on trial for murder. The trial started on February 23, 1906 and ended that same day. It was argued by his attorneys that the two ounces of absinthe he consumed prior to the murders were solely to blame for his actions; Dr. Albert Mahaim, a leading Swiss psychologist, testified that Lanfray suffered from “a classic case of absinthe madness”. However, the prosecuter, Alfred Obrist, argued that the two ounces of absinthe he had ingested were minor in relation to the large amounts of other alcoholic beverages he had consumed that day. Lanfray was eventually found guilty on all three counts of murder and received thirty years’ imprisonment. Due to his intoxicated state at the time of the murders, he did not face capital punishment. Three days after the trial, on February 26, 1906, Lanfray committed suicide by hanging in his prison cell.

The Lanfray case received an astonishing amount of coverage, especially by Europe’s temperance movement. It set off a moral panic against absinthe in Switzerland and other countries. A petition to ban absinthe in Switzerland received 82,000 signatures, and on May 15, 1906, the Vaud legislature voted to ban absinthe. On February 2, 1907, the Grand Conseil voted to ban the retail sale of absinthe, including its imitations. Eventually, similar incidents led to bans on absinthe in every European country (except the United Kingdom, Sweden and Spain) as well as the United States.

Culled from: Wikipedia

Thank goodness they’ve finally come to their senses and gotten rid of that silly absinthe ban!

Facts

Today’s Drunken Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

A North Carolina man is dead after police say he accidentally drank from a jar of gasoline and then smoked a cigarette. Havelock police received a 911 call about 9:55 p.m. Monday after 43-year-old Gary Allen Banning set himself on fire. Banning was transported to UNC Burn Center in Chapel Hill, where he died early Tuesday morning. Investigators believe Banning was at a friend’s apartment when he apparently mistook a jar of gasoline sitting by the kitchen sink for a beverage. After taking a gulp, he spit the gas out and got some on his clothes. Sometime later, Banning went outside to smoke a cigarette and burst into flame.

Culled from: WRAL.Com
Generously submitted by: Nina

Of course, the real question is: what was a jar of gasoline doing in the kitchen?

Facts

The Ring Lady: one of the bodies found in a boathouse at Herculaneum.

Today’s Pyroclastic Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

A plinian volcanic eruption, the type of eruption that consumed ancient Herculaneum and Pompeii, is one of the most lethal natural disasters on Earth. In this type of eruption, the conduit of the volcano is so tightly corked by solid rock that it takes an enormous amount of pressure building up from below, in the magma chamber, to blow a hole to the surface. When it does, the violence of the explosion propels liquid rock into the air so fast that it breaks the sound barrier, unleashing a sonic boom. During the Avellino eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 1780 B.C., the blast hurled nearly 100,000 tons a second of superheated rock, cinders, and ash into the stratosphere. As this incredible cloud of material rose, it spread at the top, assuming the classic shape of an umbrella pine tree, the iconic feature of a plinian eruption. It reached an altitude of about 22 miles and hovered in the air for up to 12 hours before collapsing. When a plinian column falls upon itself, it creates a pyroclastic surge – a boiling, turbulent avalanche of debris that shoots out sideways from the slopes of the volcano. This searing cloud can travel for many miles, initially at great speed. Not too many humans have seen (much less survived) a pyroclastic surge at close quarters, but many of us have an image of its horrifying power burned into our memories: it shares many physical properties with the huge clouds of powder and ash produced by the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in 2001.

Unlike the collapsed towers, the material in a pyroclastic surge is baked in a subterranean magma chamber to temperatures of up to 1650°F. The initial surge of the Avellino eruption, especially in the zones closest to Vesuvius, was instantly lethal. Hot, choking wind, advancing at about 240 miles an hour, reached temperatures of at least 900°F, and retained enough heat to bring water to a boil ten miles from the vent. Below 200°F, you can survive for several seconds, perhaps, if the wave passes quickly. But even if you survive the temperature you will suffocate on the fine powder in the air. The entire countryside surrounding Vesuvius was covered by foot upon foot of this powder, 65 feet deep at a distance of three miles from the crater to about ten inches thick at a distance of 15 miles. Eight inches of ash is enough to cause modern roofs to collapse.

The sizzling temperature of a Vesuvian pyroclastic surge has emerged as a key factor in explaining what happened at Pompeii and Herculaneum in the next great eruption, 1900 years later. Hundreds of fugitives who gathered in 12 seafront boathouses facing the beach of Herculaneum died instantly from a pyroclastic surge that reached temperatures of 932 degrees F, vaporizing clothing and flesh within seconds. In a grim bit of forensic paleoanthropology, scientists have reconstructed a parting picture of the victims huddled inside boathouse 5, 10 and 12. The heat would have boiled their brain tissue, which would then have burst out in small scalding explosions that left blue-black burn marks on the bone. Moisture from vaporized flesh and blood combined with volcanic ash in the surge to create a protective, plasterlike material that preserved the bones, and from the posture of the skeletons they could determine that victims in the boathouses died instantly.

Culled from: National Geographic, September 2007

Incidentally, reading a National Geographic article about Herculaneum back in the mid-80′s is what made me decide to become an anthropology major. Fascinating stuff.

Facts

Today’s Intolerable Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

John Smith, who was hanged for fifteen minutes at Tyburn (England) on Christmas Eve, 1705, told his rescuers: “When I was turned off [from a cart] I was, for some time, sensible of very great pain occasioned by the weight of my body and felt my spirits in strange commotion, violently pressing upwards. Having forced their way to my head I saw a great blaze of glaring light that seemed to go out of my eyes in a flash and then I lost all sense of pain. After I was cut down, I began to come to myself as the blood and spirits forcing themselves into their former channels put me by a prickling or shooting into such intolerable pain that I could have wished those hanged who had cut me down.”

Culled from: The Last Face You’ll Ever See: The Culture of Death Row

Facts

Today’s Disciplined Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

By the 1930s the militarization of the Japanese educational system resulted in it becoming regimented and robotic. A visitor to one of its elementary schools expressed pleasant surprise at seeing thousands of children waving flags and marching in unison in perfect lines; quite clearly the visitor had seen the discipline and order but not the abuse required to establish and maintain it. It was commonplace for teachers to behave like sadistic drill sergeants, slapping children across the cheeks, hitting them with their fists, or bludgeoning them with bamboo or wooden swords. Students were forced to hold heavy objects, sit on their knees, stand barefoot in the snow, or run around the playground until they collapsed from exhaustion. There were certainly few visits to the schools by indignant or even concerned parents.

The pressure to conform to authority intensified if the schoolboy decided to become a soldier. Vicious hazing and a relentless pecking order usually squelched any residual spirit of individualism in him. Obedience was touted as a supreme virtue, and a sense of individual self-worth was replaced by a sense of value as a small cog in the larger scheme of things. To establish this sublimation of individuality to the common good, superior officers or older soldiers slapped recruits for almost no reason at all or beat them severely with heavy wooden rods. According to the author Iritani Toshio, officers often justified unauthorized punishment by saying, “I do not beat you because I hate you. I beat you because I care for you. Do you think I perform these acts with hands swollen and bloody in a state of madness?” Some youths died under such brutal physical conditions; others committed suicide; the majority became tempered vessels into which the military could pour a new set of life goals.

Culled from: The Rape of Nanking

And this is how you turn decent human beings into killing machines…

Facts

Today’s Ineffective Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Slitting wrists is not the most effective form of suicide, with less than 2% of those that actually try, dying exclusively from it.

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

Which is why you combine slitting wrists with overdosing on sleeping pills for maximum impact. The blood from the wrist slitting is done for aesthetic reasons (because you MEAN it, man! and all that red is pretty), and the drugs provide the whole “stopping your heart” aspect to the endeavor. That’s what I did. Of course, you might point out the fact that I’m not dead. Okay, but I would have been if I hadn’t been interrupted, and that’s the important thing!

But, of course, you know, as Big Fun say, Suicide – Don’t Do It.

Facts

Today’s Noxious Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Antimony is an element with probably the most colorful history on the period table. Nebuchadnezzar, the king who built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in the sixth century BC, used a noxious antimony-lead mix to paint his palace walls yellow. Perhaps not coincidentally, he soon went mad, sleeping outdoors in fields and eating grass like an ox. Around that same time, Egyptian women were applying a different form of antimony as mascara, both to decorate their faces and to give themselves witchlike powers to cast the evil eye on enemies. Later, medieval monks – not to mention Isaac Newton – grew obsessed with the sexual properties of antimony and decided this half metal, half insulator, neither one thing nor the other, was a hermaphrodite. Antimony pills also won fame as laxatives. Unlike modern pills, these hard antimony pills didn’t dissolve in the intestines, and the pills were considered so valuable that people rooted through fecal matter to retrieve them and reuse them. Some lucky families even passed down laxatives from father to son. Perhaps for this reason, antimony found heavy work as a medicine, although it’s actually toxic. Mozart probably died from taking too much to combat a severe fever.

Culed from: The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

Facts

Today’s Slowly Rotting Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

At the Auschwitz death camp, x-ray sterilization experiments were carried out on many prisoners. A group of young, healthy Polish men were probably given an unusually high dosage because, as the former orderly in the ward reported, “Their genitals started slowly rotting away” and the men “often crawled on the floor in their pain.” Ointments were tried, but the men did not improve; and after a long period of suffering, they were ordered to the gas chamber.

As many as 200 men were subjected to x-ray castration, and of about 180 of those to amputation of at least one testicle, 90 of these operations taking place on one day, December 16, 1942. While overall statistics are uncertain, the general estimate is that approximately 1,000 prisoners, male and female, underwent x-ray sterilization or castration, and about 200 of these were subjected to surgical removal of testicles or ovaries. Whatever statistics are available derive from the Auschwitz policy of keeping relatively accurate surgical records of these experiments.

Culled from: The Nazi Doctors

Facts