by Justin Nobel Nicolae Ceausescu ruled Romania from 1974 through December 1989, when a revolution forced him and his wife Elena to flee the capitol. They headed by helicopter to Snagov, a commune north of Bucharest then fled again to Targoviste, an ancient city on the Ialomita River. Here the army ordered their helicopter to land [...]

by Justin Nobel An embalming board referred to by critics as the Coffin Cartel has told Benedictine monk carpenters in the woods of Louisiana that they can’t sell their simple cypress caskets. The monks make the coffins from wood gathered in a forest on their property and use the income to support the abbey. [...]

by Justin Nobel Thousands of people visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science last month to observe the slow birth and quick death of Lois, the pet name for a corpse flower from West Sumatra, Indonesia. When in bloom, the endangered flowers can grow to be five feet wide and ten feet tall; only 28 [...]

bu Justin Nobel Last month, Theodore “Pete” Peterson sat at a New Jersey bar with a vodka tonic in hand and an oxygen tank at his side. There was a buffet lunch, a 50/50 raffle and he was surrounded by friends and family, but this was no ordinary party, this was Pete’s wake. The 67 year-old [...]

by Justin Nobel Last week, police in Tokyo broke into the home of Sogen Kato. According to local records he was 111, the fifth oldest man on earth. But instead of a wizened old man, they found a skeleton in pajamas lying under a blanket. The body was surrounded by yellowed newspapers, whose date [...]

by Justin Nobel Cai Jinlai and his son Cai Ruigong had a bet; if Jinlai lived past 100 his son would hire a stripper for his funeral. He lived to 103, and Ruigong followed through on his end of the deal. He paid the equivalent of $160 for an adult dancer to perform a ten minute [...]

by Justin Nobel Paul Sterling Smith is a convicted sex offender and the prime suspect in the murder of an auto shop owner in Missouri. Earlier this month, he kidnapped a four year-old St. Louis girl from the front yard of her home. She was found wandering outside a car wash with different clothes and a [...]

by Justin Nobel On a winter morning in New York City a handful of mourners gathered underground. They dressed in black with black armbands, hung their heads low and listened to a bagpiper. A bushy wreath of bright yellow, green and red flowers framed a handsome photo of the deceased: a green circle with a white [...]

by Justin Nobel On Independence Day, about 200 people gathered at a remote lake in north-central Florida to see an old friend explode. They ate barbeque and corn on the cob, some took canoe rides. As dusk settled, they sat on the grass and watched the sky. But their firework display was far from the typical [...]

by Justin Nobel Walter Hudson was the fourth most obese human in medical history. By age 12, he weighed 200 pounds and by age 33 his waist measured 119 inches (a Guinness World Record) and he weighed 1,197 pounds. His daily diet was as follows: two boxes of sausages, a pound of bacon, 12 eggs, a [...]

by Justin Nobel For Gary Coleman, fame was a burden. After the once well-known child actor died of a brain hemorrhage last month, his final wishes surfaced. They stipulated that his funeral only be attended by, “those who have no financial ties to me and who can look each other in the eyes and say they [...]

by Justin Nobel Nicolas Cage owns a Gulfstream jet, two Europeans castles, a haunted mansion, a collection of shrunken heads, a dinosaur skull, a line of comic books called VooDoo Child and more than 30 cars, including nine Rolls Royces, an Enzo Ferrari and a Lamborghini once owned by the Shah of Iran, but this past [...]

by Justin Nobel While Ademir Jorge Goncalves and friends were drinking sugarcane liquor in a park in Santo Antonio de Platina, Brazil, a car crashed. The driver was killed and his body was brought to the hospital, where Goncalves’s aunt and uncle were brought in to examine it. “The corpse was badly disfigured,” said a police [...]

by Justin Nobel The philosopher Blessed John Duns Scotus lapsed into a coma in November 1308 and was reportedly buried alive. Sometime later he was found outside his coffin with torn and bloody hands. The centuries that followed tell a story of mania and ingenuity, as a series of zany devices were constructed with the [...]

by Justin Nobel On a Virginia mountaintop, a man and a woman are buried alive by a massive mushroom which induces a hallucinogenic trip then digests its victims. Sounds farfetched, but this actually happened, in an episode of the sci-fi TV show “The X-Files“. The theme of being buried alive has a lively history across recent television [...]

by Justin Nobel The woman pulled left to pass a slow car and was face to face with the oncoming procession. Spooked, she swerved back right and lost control. Her car crashed through a backyard and flipped over. Joe Merritt, the Tampa Bay area funeral home director who was leading the funeral procession the woman almost [...]

by Justin Nobel David Morales Colon was murdered last month in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was 22 and loved motorcycles. His family, carrying out what they considered was a last wish, presented him in an unconventional posture for his wake: in tight black jeans, a black cap and dark shades, atop a fiery orange Honda [...]

by Justin Nobel Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri on November 30, 1835; the same day Halley’s Comet streaked the sky. The comet, a jumble of rocks and ice more than 100,000 kilometers across, boomeranged back into space and returned 74 years later, on April 21, 1910, the day Twain died. Last week, a funeral procession [...]

by Justin Nobel Men in sharp suits carry a well-lacquered coffin into a fancy suburban house. “Who is this?!” screams Chris Rock, when the lid is cracked. The body is supposed to be his father but there’s been a mix-up, inside is an Asian-looking man. Thus begins “Death at a Funeral”, a slapstick movie released last [...]

by Justin Nobel Gita Jarrant’s 91 year-old husband Willi was wearing sunglasses and seated in a wheelchair when security officials at Liverpool Airport noticed he was dead. The couple and their daughter Anke were trying to board a plane for Berlin. The two women were arrested on the charge of failing to give notification of a [...]