Mob funerals: gold coffins, pimped-out rides and mayhem, from Brooklyn to Trinidad
With a heavy police presence and a bevy of gawking onlookers, a golden coffin was carried through the streets of Montreal’s Little Italy neighborhood earlier ...
Author: Justin Nobel
Digital Dying is written by Justin Nobel, whose stories about science, culture and travel have appeared in publications such as the Chicago Tribune, Audubon, Gourmet.com, Nunatsiaq News, Point Reyes Light and The Smart Set www.justinnobel.com. Comments and ideas can be sent to justinnobel@gmail.com.
Black at funerals: a two millennia-old trend, re-popularized by stuffy British women
“Wear Black in sunlight and you will roast as the Heat VIBRATIONS absorb easily. Hence Black is the most absurd colour for funerals & Hospitals: ...
Pope Benedict XVI survived but strange and ghastly papal murder goes back 2,000 years
A mentally unstable woman in a bright red coat jumped a barrier and tackled Pope Benedict XVI during Christmas Eve mass at St. Peter’s Basilica. ...
Out of space, Asia shoves their dead into futuristic tubes
From the outside, it looks like a downed spacecraft and a Las Vegas casino on the inside. There are red-carpeted VIP rooms, curved hallways lined ...
In space, cheaper to be dead than on Virgin
On a stormy December night in the middle of the Mojave Desert, SpaceShipTwo was unveiled. The sleek Virgin Galactic craft, which has been in secret ...
Are skullmongers next for murderous Baltimore?
Virginia McGhee stepped out to make a phone call while at the funeral of her boyfriend in Baltimore and was shot in the chest. The ...
World’s longest funeral, on a cramped cargo ship in the middle of the Pacific
The rumble of a ship’s engine is pierced by a human wail. A topless woman in a skirt woven from hibiscus fiber crawls across a ...
Smuggling corpses into Iraq – Part II
In the summer of 2004, the Mahdi Army battled U.S. troops in Wadi al-Salam, one of the largest cemeteries on earth.
Smuggling corpses into Iraq – Part I
On dark nights in the Zagros Mountains, along a border laced with mines, smugglers sneak into Iraq from Iran, carrying explosives, drugs and guns. Some ...
Walmart joins Wuyi and other weird web death vendors
What do Lady de Guadalupe, American Patriot and Executive Privilege have in common? They are casket models, now available on Wal-Mart’s website.
Magicians hope for Harry Houdini’s ghost to hack into their computers on Halloween
Every Halloween, a group that includes celebrities, master magicians, and ghost writers waits patiently for Harry Houdini to return from the grave. He hasn’t come ...
Michael Jackson and many grandmas will spend eternity as diamonds
Four year-old Rusty VandenBiesen was alone with the pictures of Jesus in the scary room at his grandmother’s when he burst into tears. His older ...
Teaching Death to Immortals
Writing an obituary was their first assignment and next month Professor Marla Toyne’s students will visit a cemetery.
Gorillas, parrots and horses commit suicide too
An 8 year-old lowland gorilla named Muchana was found dead in his sleeping quarters at the St. Louis Zoo, last Spring. He had pulled apart ...
For Native Americans, suicidal woodchucks are not strange
Just before Earth Day, in 1970, Cathy the dolphin committed suicide in Richard O’Barry’s arms, changing his life forever.
