1. Within three days of the death, the enzymes that once digested your dinner begin to digest you.
During the process of digestion, the stomach releases enzymes and acids that break down bigger molecules of food into smaller ones so they can be absorbed by the body as nutrients. The cells lining the inner walls of your intestines are said to release as much as two litres of HCl (hydrochloric acid). Since the acid is corrosive the intestines regularly secrete a thick coating of mucus. These secretions cease after you die. As the mucus becomes depleted the enzymes and the acids start eating through your intestinal tissues
2. The practice of burying the dead dates as far back as 300,000 years.
Burying the dead was part of the doctrine of Paleolithic religions and is believed to have started during the Middle Paleolithic as a religious practice. The earliest confirmed records of burial, however, date back as much as 100,000 years and were found in the Skhul Cave at Qafzeh, Israel. The skeletal remains were stained in red ochre and were often found to be buried along with other items such as the lower jaw of a wild boar in the arms of the deceased.
3. About 100 billion people have died in all of human history.
Our current world population is 7.4 billion and growing, while according to the estimates by the Population Reference Bureau, there are over 107 billion people who ever lived on this planet. That means for everyone living person there are about fifteen dead people. In fact, the seven billion marks for the number of dead people to equal the number of living was passed somewhere between 8,000 BC and 1 AD. Ironically, though the population in the past was less than what it is now, there was a significant drop in the birth rate in the 20th century from forty births per 1,000 people per year to twenty-three. There is, however, an unprecedented increase in life expectancy in the 20th century
4. Medical mistakes kill over 250,000 Americans each year. If they were a disease, they would be the 3rd leading cause of death in the US.
According to a study by surgeon and John Hopkins University professor, Martin Makary, medical mistakes are the third leading cause of deaths in the U.S., the first being heart disease and second cancer. According to an estimate by the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine, 98,000 deaths are attributed each year to medical errors. In 2010, 180,000 Medicare patient deaths were reported by the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services. In 2013 a NASA toxicologist whose son died of what he believes to be a medical error estimated the deaths to be between 210,000 and 440,000 a year.
5. As a person dies, the sense of hearing is the last to go.
Several things happen as a person is dying. The breathing pattern changes, there might be hallucinations, agitation, and loss of appetite. There will be changes in skin colour and temperature, changes in bowel and bladder functions and relaxation of muscles as the blood moves away from the extremities. Among all the things that stop working hearing is the last sense to go in a dying person according to Dr. Katherine Clark, a staff specialist in palliative care, at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney. She cites this was indicated by the ECGs of various people’s brains during death
6. Mount Everest has about 200 dead bodies on it which are now landmarks on the way to the top.
Climbing Mount Everest is incredibly perilous. Sometimes it is not just the cold and the low oxygen levels that are dangerous. There can also be accidents and natural disasters like avalanches. The path to the summit of Mt. Everest is strewn with the dead bodies of unlucky climbers, as many as 200 of them. Before setting off the climbers are usually required to sign a body disposal form specifying, in the case of death, whether to leave their body on the mountain, bring it to Kathmandu for cremation, or to try and get it to their home. According to Alan Arnette, a mountaineer who successfully summited Mt. Everest, all the options other than leaving the body on the mountain are quite expensive and could cost as much as $30,000, which means most of the bodies are just left there.
7. Before a person dies from hypothermia, they experience a burst of extreme heat that causes them to undress. This is known as “paradoxical undressing.”
There are two possible explanations for paradoxical undressing. One is that the hypothalamus, which helps regulate the body’s temperature, starts to malfunction because of the cold. The second explanation is that the muscles that contract the peripheral blood vessels become exhausted and relax, causing a sudden rush of blood to the extremities making the person feel very hot. It is said that anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of hypothermia deaths are due to paradoxical undressing. Because of the cold, the victims become disoriented and confused, and in that state end up removing their clothes when they feel they are becoming overheated. This exposes them to further heat loss and death if no help arrives.
8. Crucifixion as part of the legal death penalty is still practised in Sudan and Saudi Arabia.
Based on the government’s interpretation of Shari’a Law, Sudan’s penal code calls for execution followed by crucifixion. During the 2000s, several people have been executed by crucifixion in Saudi Arabia, though some of them were first beheaded. In 2012 a 17-year-old Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimr was arrested during the Arab Spring and was sentenced to be publicly beheaded and crucified in May 2014. In Iran crucifixion is theoretically still a form of punishment. The prisoner would be tied to a framework that looks like a cross and is hung facing the direction of the Mecca for three days. The prisoner is allowed to live if still alive after that.
9. Drowning in saltwater is different from drowning in fresh water. It takes longer, and saltwater draws the blood plasma out of the bloodstream into the lungs. In other words, you drown in your own body fluids.
Apart from the fact that your lungs get filled with water making it impossible to breathe while drowning, water does a lot more than that to our body. Freshwater is hypotonic, meaning it has low osmotic pressure compared to our normal body fluids, causing the blood cells to absorb water through their membranes. The increase in liquid levels dilutes the plasma and electrolytes causing the blood cells to swell and burst.
Saltwater, on the other hand, is hypertonic, meaning its osmotic pressure is higher than that of body fluids. The plasma in your blood vessels is sucked out through the cell walls instead, causing the air sacs in your lungs to fill with fluids making it impossible to perform gas exchange. You drown in your own fluids.
10. Democide, the murder of citizens by their own government, surpassed war as the leading cause of non-natural death in the 20th century.
Redefined by the political scientist, R.J. Rummel, democide also includes genocide, politicide, and mass murders. It can also include intentional neglect or disregard for life, such as forced starvation, deaths of armed civilians during riots, and noncombatants killed during military attacks when they are not the targets. Rummel found that the number of democides by liberal democracies is less than that in authoritarian regimes and believes that mass murder grows with the increase in political power.
According to Rummel’s calculations, the total number of democides for the Chinese Communist Party is 77 million, for the Soviet Union 62 million, for Nazi Germany 21 million. There were 43 million alone during Stalin’s regime inside and outside the Soviet Union. As estimated by Rummel, there were 262 million deaths due to people working for governments in the last century, which is six times as many as those who died in battle.
11. This is not a city. It’s a cemetery in Iraq. It covers nearly 1,500 acres and has an estimated 5 million bodies buried underneath it.
Wadi Al-Salaam, the world’s largest cemetery, is located in Najaf, Iraq. It has been over 1,400 years since the burials started at this site. The cemetery is important to Shiite belief which states that the souls of all faithful men and women will be moved there no matter where they were buried. The graves are built using baked bricks and plaster and are of different sizes, including room-sized ones built by the wealthy. The violence during the Iraq war in 2003 has resulted in a massive expansion of the cemetery by 40 percent, spreading out over about three square miles. There was further growth in its size, especially in 2004 during clashes with American forces, then again in 2006-07 during the wars between Shiites and Sunnis, and the rate finally slowed down in 2008.
12. On the Indonesian island of Tana Toraja, if a baby dies before teething, the family cuts a hole in a tree and places the dead child inside. The tree regrows around the baby and absorbs it.
Death and burial on the island of Tana Toraja are thought to be “ruled by a complex set of long-established customs”. Funerals are very big events on the island and can last up to a week. The locals even invite outsiders to their family funerals, which are a procession of colourfully dressed men and women following the coffin. Babies that die before teething receive a more spiritual send off and are buried inside a tree so that “the wind can waft away their souls.”
13. A cat has “predicted” the deaths of 25 residents in a nursing home in the US. The cat displays sudden affection for dying residents and curls up next to them.
Oscar, a cat of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Rhode Island, has a habit of curling up next to the residents who are about to die even though it was not known to be friendly to them when they were doing well. Researchers weren’t able to pinpoint the exact explanation for this behaviour, but speculate Oscar could be smelling and sensing the organs shutting down as a resident is dying. Animals are known to have a very keen ability to sense illness among fellow animals or humans. Dogs, for example, are known to detect cancer and even predict epileptic seizures.
14. Male dead bodies can get a post-mortem erection.
Also known as angel lust or terminal erection, death erection is usually seen in the dead bodies of men who were executed, especially hanged, or who had a violent death. The pressure created by the noose during the hanging on the cerebellum is said to cause the erection. It is also seen among living men who experience erection without any physical or psychological stimulation because of an injury to their spinal cord or cerebellum. Apart from erection, violent deaths could also cause discharge of urine, mucus or prostatic fluid. In women, such deaths could cause enlargement of the vagina and clitoris and sometimes vaginal bleeding.
15. There was a serial killer in Thailand that was so feared by the people that they publicly executed him and put his body in a clear box so everyone could see he really was dead.
See Uey Sae Ung, also referred to as Si Quey, Si-oui or Si Ouey, was a Chinese immigrant who moved to Thailand in 1944 and is now known to have been a notorious serial killer. He suffocated and then ate the hearts and livers of over six young boys. He believed that eating them would make him stronger and healthier, and even immortal. In the 1950s, he was captured and hanged. Following the autopsy, his body was filled and covered with paraffin wax to preserve it, and is now on display in Songkran Niyomsane Museum of Forensic Medicine.
16. Most individuals who have had a near-death experience describe the existence of bright white light and a tunnel that seems to lead to the afterlife.
A near-death experience (NDE) is classified by Kenneth Ring, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Connecticut, into five stages: peace, body separation, entering darkness, seeing the light, and entering the light. According to Ring, while 60 percent of patients experienced the first stage, only 10% experience the fifth. There have been several attempts at research and proposed explanations for NDE. In 2010, researchers at the University of Maribor hypothesized that the excess CO2 in the bloodstream alters the chemical balance of the brain and tricks it into “seeing things”. Another explanation is the increase of serotonin in the brain triggers NDEs. Another study suggested that the brain has the capacity for neurophysiological and neurochemical activities, and can cause internal states of consciousness at near-death
17. QR codes have been popping up in cemeteries. When you scan a code on a gravestone, you can read an obituary and see photos of the deceased.
Smart cemeteries are now a reality. Just like GIS (Geographic Information Systems) provides digital access to historical and archaeological sites, QR (Quick Response) codes now provide a means of organizing and archiving information for others to use. Several cemeteries have already started using this feature. La Paz, a Jewish cemetery in Uruguay, has QR codes on every headstone to link the visitors to information about the specific graves. Living Headstones, a subsidiary of a gravestone and monument company called Quiring from Seattle, provide technology that links a “particular gravesite in one geographic location to a virtual public space” that can be accessed by visitors from afar providing them with a shared experience.
18. There is a gipsy tribe in India that celebrates death as one of the happiest events in their lives while treating births with great grief.
The Satiyaa Tribe is a group of twenty-four families scattered across the state of Rajasthan. They live in temporary shelters along the roads and rely on harvesting the dead bodies of cattle from the roads and prostitution. The funeral and cremation in the tribe is an event of celebration. They wear fresh clothes, buy sweets, local fruits, and local liquor. The dead body is taken in a procession of dancing groups and drum beats. After the funeral, they feast on their liquor and dance until the body is reduced to ashes. They celebrate death as it “liberates the soul from its physical prison, while birth puts the soul in one and so a great punishment by the god to sinful souls.”
19. The “Lazarus sign” is a reflex movement in brain-dead patients which causes them to briefly raise their arms and drop them crossed on their chest in a position similar to some Egyptian mummies.
The Lazarus sign is said to be an example of a reflex mediated by a reflex arc, which is a neural pathway that passes through the spinal column and not the brain. Even though a patient is brain-dead or has a brainstem failure, the movement still can happen. The reflex starts with slight shivering of the arms or goosebumps, after which the arms flex, lift themselves over to the breastbone and often bring themselves towards the chin or neck and touch or cross over. The reflex is named after the Biblical figure, Lazarus of Bethany, who was raised from the dead by Jesus, and is considered criteria for determining brain death.
20. One of the top things people regret when they are dying is that they worked too hard.
Bronnie Ware, a palliative nurse who has counselled many dying patients, has listed down some of the top regrets most people have at the end of their lives. She reports that the most common regret overall was “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself”, while the most common regret in almost every male patient she nursed was “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.” Other regrets include not having the courage to express their feelings, not staying in touch with friends, and not letting themselves be happier.
Bronnie Ware, a palliative nurse who has counselled many dying patients, has listed down some of the top regrets most people have at the end of their lives. She reports that the most common regret overall was “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself”, while the most common regret in almost every male patient she nursed was “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.” Other regrets include not having the courage to express their feelings, not staying in touch with friends, and not letting themselves be happier.
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