In 1961, astronaut Gus Grissom nearly drowned after a splashdown when his Mercury capsule opened prematurely. He recommended making the hatch more secure.
Eight years later he died when Apollo 1 caught fire. The hatch had prevented his escape.
Death
Wait a Minute …
When you my friends are passing by,
And this inform you where I lie,
Remember you ere long must have,
Like me, a mansion in the grave,
Also 3 infants, 2 sons and a daughter.
— Tombstone in Pittsfied, Mass., cited in English as She Is Wrote, 1884
Better Safe
Johann Taberger designed this “safety coffin” in 1829, to preserve people who had been mistakenly buried alive. Strings were attached to the body’s head, hands, and feet, connected to a bell that would alert the cemetery’s nightwatchman, who could use a bellows to pump air into the coffin until it could be dug up.
Such devices were popular during the cholera epidemics of the 18th and 19th centuries — European graves were rigged variously with bells, flags, ladders, and escape hatches. There’s no evidence that they ever saved anyone, and they nearly killed some of their inventors: During a demonstration in 1897, a chamberlain to the tsar of Russia buried his assistant, waited, and finally realized that the signaling system had failed. The assistant was saved, but the marketing campaign was DOA.
Rumors of My Death …
Physicist James Van Allen outlived his own obituary writer.
As Van Allen approached old age, the Associated Press assigned writer Walter Sullivan to prepare a story that could be published on his death. Sullivan did so and died in 1996, but his story sat in the file for 10 more years before Van Allen finally passed away at 91.
Truth in Advertising
Pretty, ain’t it? This 30-meter cliff rises from the foothills of the Rockies in Alberta. For 6,000 years, Native Americans would drive buffalo over the edge; the bone deposits at the bottom are 10 meters deep.
The Blackfoot call this place estipah-skikikini-kots, after a legend about one unfortunate young man who chose to watch the climactic plunge from below. Estipah-skikikini-kots means “Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.”
Lost and Found
In 1940, British colonial officer Gerald Gallagher found a human skeleton and a sextant box under a tree on Gardner Island, a coral atoll in the western Pacific. Colonial authorities took detailed measurements, and in 1998 forensic anthropologists judged that the skeleton had belonged to a “tall white female of northern European ancestry.”
It may have been Amelia Earhart.
The Loneliest Number
When Washington’s power elite convene for the president’s annual State of the Union address, there’s always a cabinet member missing:
- 2007: Alberto Gonzales, attorney general
- 2006: Jim Nicholson, secretary of veterans affairs
- 2005: Donald Evans, secretary of commerce
- 2004: Donald Evans, secretary of commerce
- 2003: John Ashcroft, attorney general
- 2002: Gale Norton, secretary of the interior
- 2001: Anthony Principi, secretary of veterans affairs
- 2000: Bill Richardson, secretary of energy
That member stays at a remote location in case some catastrophe strikes the Capitol.
He’s called the designated survivor.
“Old Parr”
In Westminster Abbey there’s a gravestone that reads as follows:
THO: PARR OF YE COUNTY OF SALLOP. BORNE
IN AD: 1483. HE LIVED IN YE REIGNES OF TEN
PRINCES VIZ: K.ED.4. K.ED.5.K.RICH.3.
K.HEN.7.K.HEN.8.K.EDW.6.Q.MA.Q.ELIZ
K.JA. & K. CHARLES. AGED 152 YEARES.
& WAS BURYED HERE NOVEMB. 15. 1635.
That’s right, Thomas Parr supposedly lived to be 152 years old. Said to have been born in 1483, he was discovered still alive in 1635 by the Earl of Arundel, and London went nuts. Parr met Charles I; Rubens and Van Dyke painted him; poets lionized him; and the fuss finally killed him.
Most likely his records had been confused with his grandfather’s, but he was certainly very old. He attributed his longevity to vegetarianism and clean living, though he said he’d had a kid out of wedlock at around age 100. Youthful indiscretion.
“A Man Drowned by a Crab”
June 30, 1811. A few days ago, John Hall, a labouring man, went at low water among the rocks, at Hume Head, near Cawsand, for the purpose of catching crabs, when meeting with one in the interstices of the rocks, of a large size, he imprudently put in his hand, for the purpose of pulling it out; the animal, however, caught his hand between its claws or forceps, and, strange as it may appear, kept its hold so firmly, that every effort on the part of the poor fellow to extricate himself proved ineffectual; and no one being at hand to assist him, the tide came in and he was next morning found drowned.
— National Register, 1811
Table for One
Last meals:
- Ted Bundy: Steak (medium rare), eggs over easy, hash browns, coffee. (He refused it.)
- John Wayne Gacy: Fried chicken, fried shrimp, french fries, fresh strawberries.
- Gary Gilmore: Hamburger, eggs, a baked potato, coffee, three shots of whiskey.
- Timothy McVeigh: Two pints of Ben & Jerry’s mint chocolate-chip ice cream.
- Adolf Eichmann: Half a bottle of Carmel, a dry red Israeli wine.
- Bruno Hauptmann: Celery, olives, chicken, french fries, buttered peas, cherries, and a slice of cake.
Victor Feguer, executed in 1963 for shooting a doctor, asked for a single olive.