She has a face that was considered the ideal beauty of her time period, inspiring a generation of models and actresses. She has been referred to as having the most kissed face of all time. She has an enigmatic smile comparable to that of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Her attractive visage became a trendy addition [...]

Urban legend tells the tale of the performer who dies onstage during a performance, the audience unaware of the trauma before them thinking it to be part of the show. They clap and cheer at the realistic death performance, without realizing the performer is gasping for his last breath. This tale has more truth than [...]

Hidesaburo Ueno, born in Japan in 1871, was a professor in the agriculture department at the University of Tokyo. His dog, Hachiko, would sit by the front door and see him off for work every day and greeted him at 4 o’clock at the nearby train station when he returned from work. One evening, Professor [...]

It’s difficult to think about losing someone we care about, yet, it’s a part of life for everybody. Even cartoon characters aren’t safe from tragedy and hardship, and often this is how we learn about death for the first time as children. Most of the following are from children’s shows or films, but some are [...]

Pyramids as funerary monuments have a millennia-old tradition, dating back ancient Mesopotamia, the Aztecs and Mayans in Central America, and Stupas in Southern Asia. The most famous are the gigantic pyramid tombs of ancient Egypt that were built for the Pharaohs. If you have ever looked at the pyramids in amazement and wished that you [...]

If you haven’t heard the urban legend surrounding Walt Disney, or seen an episode of Futurama, Cryopreservation is the technology of freezing one’s body in the hopes that technology in the future will allow for reanimation. This idea that cryopreserved people can be recovered in the future is still hypothetical, since nobody can know for sure [...]

His name is synonymous with the music that has entertained us for most of our lives. Emblems bearing his name can be seen on stage behind our favorite musicians including The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Kiss, Pink Floyd, Rush, The Ramones, AC/DC, Guns ‘n Roses and Nirvana. Jim Marshall, inventor of the Marshall brand of guitar [...]

The small Pennsylvania town of Evans City is home to the Evans City Cemetery. This cemetery has been immortalized in George A. Romero’s 1968 classic zombie flick Night of the Living Dead . The cemetery chapel that’s featured in the movie is still standing, but it’s in bad shape. It could use some fixing up, or else [...]

The goals of the Infinity Burial Project are to promote death acceptance and awareness and to create alternatives for the postmortem body that neutralizes the toxins in human tissue. Our bodies are full of toxins that, upon decomposition, are harmful to the environment. Founded and directed by Jae Rhim Lee, she developed or “trained” a [...]

In the mid 90′s, Frank Sinatra was showing signs of dementia and his heart was in bad shape. The beginning of the end was in 1994, when Ol’ Blue Eyes was singing My Way on stage in Richmond, Virginia when he suddenly collapsed. He fell off his stool, hit his head on the speaker, and landed on [...]

Jeanne Calment was a French woman who was born February 21, 1875. She died August 4, 1997 at the ripe old age of 122. She had the longest confirmed human life span in history. She was a supercentenarian, which is a term for someone who lives to 110 (which Jeanne surpassed by 12 years!) She [...]

The job of a grief therapist is to work with an individual or a group to help people deal with emotional issues arising from the separation from a loved one. If you are interested in becoming a grief counsellor, there are many skills you will need. You must be a good listener, and have lots [...]

The word cremation comes from the Latin word cremo which means “to burn”. Most archaeologists believe that cremation was invented during the stone age, about 3000 BC. It became the most common method to dispose of bodies by 800 BC in Greece, and by 600 BC in Rome. In ancient Israel, cremation was shunned. The bodies [...]

Mark Gruenwald was a comic book writer and editor who was hired by Marvel Comics in 1978. In the late 1980s he became executive editor, with a particular focus as the keeper of continuity in the Marvel universe. His credits include Spider-Man, Captain America, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, X-Men, as well as writing for the Official Handbook [...]

The mortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths in a population. It is expressed in the number of deaths per 1000 people per year. The CIA World Factbook provides reference information for every country, and it reported for 2011 the crude death rate for the entire planet is 8.0 deaths/1000 population per [...]

The donation of organs for transplantation is a life-providing treatment that has grown in popularity in recent years. Unfortunately, the demand has grown at an even higher rate. The international exchange of organs or tissue is possible but is an uncommon procedure due to this high demand. Exportation of organs for transplantation will only happen if [...]

If you found out you had a short time left to live, what would you do? You would think about your loved ones, of course. And then you realize- you’re the provider for your family. How will your family get by financially when you’re gone? For Walter White of TV’s Breaking Bad , this is his dilemma. [...]