Dead Ringers

During the 1800's people developed the fear of being buried alive. Opportunistic merchants offered to sell special coffins and tombstones. A string was tied to the dead person's finger or hand. The other end was tied to a bell that sat on top of the grave marker. If the not-so-dead person woke up they could ring the bell to be dug up.

This practice stopped when too many bells would go off in cemeteries. as rigamortis would set in or muscles relaxed after death the hand would move and the bell would ring. Graveyard attendants would run with their shovels to dig up the unfortunate individual only to find they they were very dead. This is where the term a "dead ringer" comes from.

The Choir of the Silent Monks

                              Wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

We Found Richard III but Where is Ghengis?

The mystery began on August 18, 1227, when Mongol leader Genghis Khan died of unknown causes while leading a military campaign in China. According to legend, Khan’s successors killed anyone who witnessed his funeral procession on its way back to the Mongol capital of Karakorum. Some 800 soldiers are said to have massacred the 2,000 people who attended his funeral, before being summarily executed themselves. Khan’s corpse was then placed in an unmarked grave to ensure his rest would be undisturbed. Horses trampled all evidence of the burial, and some say a river was diverted to flow over the site. As a result of these extreme measures, the location of Khan’s tomb has remained unknown for almost 900 years.

Most experts believe Khan was buried somewhere near his birthplace in Khentii Aimag, northeastern Mongolia, and that his descendants may be buried there along with him—but they don’t have much more to go on than that. Researchers weren’t even allowed in the area until after the Soviet occupation of Mongolia ended in the 1990s. And in the decades since, various groups have been pressured to give up their searches due to protests from the Mongolian government and public that excavation would disturb the rest of their national hero.

Such opposition has not halted the hunt. In 2004 Japanese-Mongolian researchers discovered the remains of what they think is Khan’s palace complex on the grassy steppe of Khentii Province, 150 miles east of the Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator; they believe his tomb may be somewhere nearby. And since 2008, the Valley of the Khans Project has been using cutting-edge technology to search for Khan’s final resting place. The project has enlisted thousands of “citizen scientists” to comb through high-resolution satellite images of the region looking for possible clues, giving amateurs with a home computer and an Internet connection a rare chance to help solve one of history’s most enduring riddles.

England's Richard III Found under a parking lot in Leicester England.

What do the remains of King Richard III tell us about the man and how he died?


Researchers say the skull and jaw of last English monarch to die in battle were badly damaged, lending support to reports that the blows that killed him were so heavy that it drove the king’s crown into his head.

They also conclude that Richard III may have been as anxious and fearful as William Shakespeare portrayed him – he ground his teeth with stress.

Researchers also found that the king had suffered severe tooth decay, perhaps as a result of his privileged position and a sweet tooth.

Dr Amit Rai, a general dental practitioner in London who wrote a paper for the British Dental Journal, said: “Richard is likely to have been killed by one of two blows to the base of the skull from some of the most advanced military weapons of the time.

“Several accounts of Richard III reveal that he rode into battle wearing his crown which, despite this making him an easy target, is consistent with the location of the battlefield injuries he sustained on his skull.”

The skeleton of Richard III was found beneath a council car park earlier this year.

The discovery was described as one of the most significant archaeological finds in history. DNA analysis was used to confirm the skeleton belonged to the monarch by matching it to that of living descendants.

King Richard died in 1485 during the Battle of Bosworth in the War of the Roses over the English throne. Reports from the time say he was hit so hard by the blows from a Welsh swordsman that his crown or helmet were driven into his skull.

His body was taken to Grey Friars Church in Leicester where it was buried in a shallow grave.

Centuries later the site was built over by the council to form a car park until archaeologists dug him up.

Distant relatives of the king have now started legal proceedings to challenge a plan to rebury Richard III's remains in Leicester.

Lawyers have lodged papers in the High Court seeking a judicial review of a decision by the Ministry of Justice, arguing that Richard III’s remains should be buried in York, alongside his family.

However, in the meantime, the King’s remains have provided valuable insights into what life was like for the last Plantagenet king.

Dr Rai said the monarch’s teeth and jaw showed signs of rudimentary signs of medieval dentistry while some of the teeth showed signs of decay from a diet rich in carbohydrates and sugar.

Surface loss on a number of back teeth and upper right teeth suggest he also suffered from stress-related bruxism, or teeth grinding.

Whether this was because he was wracked with guilt over the fate of the Princes in the Tower, who he is accused of murdering to assume the throne, may never be clear.

Dr Rai also found evidence that Richard III had undergone dental surgery and had two teeth removed at the hands of barber surgeons.

Tartar was also found on the teeth in the King’s upper jaw.

Dr Rai added: “Analysis of this tartar will enable the identification of the strains and diversity of bacteria which once inhabited Richard’s mouth and provide a better insight into his diet and oral hygiene habits.”

Unpleasent Jobs in History

In the good old days before electricity and massive industry, many jobs that now require no or little labor, were undertaken by humans. This list looks at ten jobs that are now (mostly) extinct. Each job contains at least one element of the bizarre.

# 10 Jester

We have all heard of the court Jester – the fool who was permitted to insult the king without losing his head – as long as it made the king laugh. It was a job that came with accolades and with fear. It is also a job unlike any existent today. How many families do you know that employ a private “comedian” so to speak? But, while the job did vanish from history for hundreds of years, as recently as 1999 one Kingdom (Tonga) has appointed an official jester. In a bizarre (and very amusing) twist, the man appointed happened to also be the government’s financial advisor. He was later embroiled in a financial scandal. The American jester to the Tongan court was Jesse Bogdonoff and he is pictured above.

# 9 Toshers and Mudlarks

A tosher was someone who scavenges in the sewers, especially in London during the Victorian period. The toshers decided to cut out the middle man and it was a common sight in 19th Century Wapping for whole families to whip off a manhole cover and go down into the sewers, where they would find rich pickings. As most toshers would reek of the sewers, they were not popular with the neighbors. Similarly, the mudlarks were people who would dredge the banks of the Thames in the early morning when the tide was out. They would have to wade through unprocessed sewerage and even sometimes dead bodies in order to find little treasures to sell. In a kind of weird twist, this is now the popular hobby of some middle class Londoners who travel the banks to clean up trash.

# 8 Knocker-Up

A Knocker-up was a profession in England and Ireland that started during and lasted well into the Industrial Revolution, before alarm clocks were affordable or reliable. A knocker-up’s job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time. The knocker-up often used a long and light stick (often bamboo) to reach windows on higher floors. In return, the knocker-up would be paid a few pence a week for this job. The knocker-up would not leave a client’s window until they were assured the client had been awoken. This all leads to the obvious question: who knocks up the knocker-up?


# 7 Toad Doctor

Toad doctors were practitioners of a specific tradition of medicinal folk magic, operating in western England until the end of the 19th century. Their main concern was healing scrofula (then called “the King’s Evil,” a skin disease), though they were also believed to cure other ailments including those resulting from witchcraft. They cured the sick by placing a live toad, or the leg of one, in a muslin bag and hanging it around the sick person’s neck. Needless to say this job would also require growing or gathering up a large collection of toads, and in the case of doctors who used just the leg, chopping their legs off to give to their patient.



# 6 Dog Whipper

A dog whipper was a church official charged with removing unruly dogs from a church or church grounds during services. In some areas of Europe during the 16th to 19th centuries it was not uncommon for household dogs to accompany – or at least follow – their owners to church services. If these animals became disruptive it was the job of the dog whipper to remove them from the church, allowing the service to continue in peace. Dog whippers were usually provided with a whip (hence the title) or a pair of large wooden tongs with which to remove the animals. They were generally paid for their services, and records of payments to the local dog whipper exist in old parish account books in many English churches.

# 5 Resurrectionist

In Britain, the crime of snatching a body was only a misdemeanor and so was punishable by a small fine only. This led to a huge industry in body snatching in order to provide corpses to the blossoming medical schools of Europe. One method the body-snatchers used was to dig at the head end of a recent burial, digging with a wooden spade (quieter than metal). When they reached the coffin (in London the graves were quite shallow), they broke open the coffin, put a rope around the corpse and dragged it out. They were often careful not to steal anything such as jewelry or clothes as this would cause them to be liable to a felony charge. During 1827 and 1828, some Edinburgh resurrectionists including Burke and Hare changed their tactics from grave-robbing to murder, as they were paid more for very fresh corpses. Their activities, and those of the London Burkers who imitated them, resulted in the passage of the Anatomy Act 1832. This allowed unclaimed bodies and those donated by relatives to be used for the study of anatomy. This effectively ended the body snatching business.

# 4 Fuller

Fulling is a step in woollen clothmaking which involves the cleansing of cloth (particularly wool) to eliminate oils, dirt, and other impurities, and making it thicker. In days gone by, the fullers were often slaves. In Roman times, fulling was conducted by slaves standing ankle deep in tubs of human urine and cloth. Urine was so important to the fulling business that urine was taxed. Urine, known as ‘wash’, was a source of ammonium salts and assisted in cleansing and whitening the cloth. By the medieval period, fuller’s earth had been introduced for use in the process which ameliorated the process and removed the need for urine.

# 3 Whipping Boy

A whipping boy, in the 1600s and 1700s, was a young boy who was assigned to a young prince and was punished when the prince misbehaved or fell behind in his schooling. Whipping boys were established in the English court during the monarchies of the 15th century and 16th century. They were created because the idea of the Divine Right of Kings, which stated that kings were appointed by God, and implied that no one but the king was worthy of punishing the king’s son. Since the king was rarely around to punish his son when necessary, tutors to the young prince found it extremely difficult to enforce rules or learning. Whipping boys were generally of high birth, and were educated with the prince since birth. Due to the fact that the prince and whipping boy grew up together since birth, they usually formed an emotional bond. The strong bond that developed between a prince and his whipping boy dramatically increased the effectiveness of using a whipping boy as a form of punishment for a prince. The idea of the whipping boys was that seeing a friend being whipped or beaten for something that he had done wrong would be likely to ensure that the prince would not make the same mistake again.

# 2 Groom of the Stool

The Groom of the Stool was a male servant in the household of an English monarch who, among other duties, “preside[d] over the office of royal excretion,” that is, he had the task of cleaning the monarch’s anus after defecation. In the early years of Henry VIII’s reign, the title was awarded to minions of the King, court companions who spent time with him in the Privy chamber. These were the sons of noblemen or important members of the gentry. In time they came to act as virtual personal secretaries to the King, carrying out a variety of administrative tasks within his private rooms. The position was an especially prized one, as it allowed one unobstructed access to the King’s attention. Despite being the official bum-wiper of the king, the Groom of the Stool had a very high social standing.

# 1 Gong Farmer

A gong farmer or gongfermor was the term used in Tudor England for a person who removed human excrement from privies and cesspits, gong being another word for dung. Gong farmers were only allowed to work at night and the waste they collected, known as night soil, had to be taken outside the city or town boundaries. As flushing water closets became more widely used, the profession of gong farming disappeared. A latrine or privy was the toilet of the Middle Ages. A gong farmer dug out the cesspits and emptied the excrement. Gong farmers were only allowed to work between 9 pm and 5 am, and were permitted to live only in certain areas, for reasons that should not be too elusive. Due to the noxious fumes produced by human excrement, coroners’ reports exist of gong farmers dying of asphyxiation. This was obviously a shit job to have.

A Completely Unremarkable Future King

Frederick, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of George II and heir to the throne, but apart from that, he was not particularly remarkable for anything. One commentator astutely gave him the following epithet:--

‘Here lies Fred
Who was alive and is dead.
There is no more to be said.’

Frederick was, however, noteworthy for the unusual manner of his death. He died in 1751 of septicemia poisoning after being hit on the head by a cricket ball. A classic case of play stopped reign!

Other unusual British royal deaths:

William III died after a fall from his horse, which stumbled on a molehill.

King John died of eating too many peaches and cider.

Edward II was murdered by having a rhino horn inserted up his rectum.

Henry I died of food poisoning after eating too many lampreys (eels).

George I died sitting on the toilet.

George II died sitting on the toilet.

William I's body exploded when placed in the coffin

Alexander III of Scotland rode his horse off a cliff while rushing home to his young bride

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Margret, Queen of the Scots died of seasickness after a journey from Norway, to claim her kingdom.

George, Duke of Clarence was drowned in a barrel of malmsey wine.

Mystery of the "Mad King" of Bavaria

King Ludwig II of the German Kingdom of Bavaria was gay, wildly eccentric and built fairytale castles that today rate as Germany's leading tourist attractions – but more than a century ago "Mad King" Ludwig II of Bavaria was declared insane, deposed and three days later his corpse was found floating in a lake south of Munich.

The real cause of King Ludwig's death has been a mystery ever since his body, together with that of his psychiatrist, was dragged from Lake Starnberg on 13 June, 1886. But the official version, which holds that he committed suicide by drowning, has never been completely refuted.

It has been 126 years since the king's death and new evidence has surfaced which suggests that the King was murdered. The details are convincing enough to increase calls for the House of Wittelsbach, King Ludwig's family, to allow his body to be exhumed from its tomb in St Michael's Church in Munich to enable a new and conclusive post-mortem examination to be conducted.

The most intriguing new material to support the murder theory has come from a 60-year-old Munich banker called Detlev Utermöhle. In a sworn affidavit issued earlier this month, Mr Utermöhle recalled a scene from his childhood which he insists he remembers vividly.

As a 10-year-old, he and his mother were invited for afternoon coffee and cakes by a Countess Josephine von Wrba-Kaunitz, who looked after some of the Wittelsbach family's assets. Mr Utermöhle recalled how the countess gathered her guests, telling them in a hushed tone: "Now you will find out the truth about Ludwig's death without his family knowing. I will show you all the coat he wore on the day he died." The countess opened a chest and pulled out a grey coat. Mr Utermöhle insists in his statement that he saw "two bullet holes in its back" and says his mother, who has since died, left him a written account of what they saw.

Unfortunately  the king's coat was lost in a fire at Countess Wrba-Kaunitz's home in 1973 in which both she and her husband perished. However his claims were supported by Siegfried Wichmann, a Bavarian art historian and specialist in 19th-century painting, who published a hitherto unseen photograph of a portrait of the king painted only hours after his death.

The portrait shows what Mr Wichmann says is blood oozing from the corner of Ludwig's mouth. "King Ludwig cannot have drowned. This is blood from the lungs and there is no water in it," Mr Wichmann insisted.

The official version holds that the Bavarian government was driven to depose the reclusive Ludwig because he was squandering vast sums of money on bizarre building projects that were driving his kingdom to ruin.

Bernhard von Gudden, his psychiatrist, diagnosed him as suffering from "paranoia" – a condition which today would be classified as schizophrenia. Ludwig was deprived of his crown and, according to the official version, he reacted by drowning himself in Lake Starnberg in a fit of paranoid hystaria.

Murder theorists counter with recent medical evidence which suggests that the king was, in fact, suffering from a form of meningitis and was far from insane. They say fishermen reported hearing shots at the time of Ludwig's death and claim that his opponents in the Bavarian government hired assassins to kill him as he was trying to flee across the lake. They say that Von Gudden, who was also found dead in the lake, was shot because he was a witness.

To date, the Wittelsbach family has dismissed all murder theories and refused point blank to have the king's body exhumed. The latest attempt to persuade them to change their minds comes from the Berlin historian and author, Peter Glowasz, who wants to employ Swiss scientists to examine the corpse by giving it a computer tomography. He insists that while the procedure would not touch the body, it would show up any gunshot wounds.

The site where the King's body was discovered int he lake.