The Singular Mind

Dead men sometimes do tell tales

-This was originally written for the opinion section of the Bison, Harding University's student-run newspaper. It was published in the Oct. 26, 2007, issue.-

I subscribe to an interesting magazine called Mental_Floss, and this month they had a feature called the “Golden Lobe Awards,” a series of awards in honor of brains. There are categories such as “Most Obnoxious Prisoner” (Julius Caesar) and the “Craziest Rumor that Turned Out To Be True” (the duckbilled platypus). However, one award specifically caught my eye: the “Most Desirable Corpse.”

This dubious honor went to Abraham Lincoln, whose body was moved to a new location 17 times. Apparently the mausoleum he was placed in started falling apart, which made his family move him around while it was repaired. There were also multiple plots to steal his body (none of which were successful).

After reading about that, my mind started wandering to other famous corpses that have some sort of story behind them. In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I would share a few of those.

Frederick I Barbarossa – Frederick was the Holy Roman Emperor during part of the late 12th century. On his return from a campaign in 1190, he jumped into the Saleph River in full plate armor. While the water was only hip deep, some speculate that his age (he was 64 at the time) and maybe a heart attack, combined with the weight of the armor, caused him to drown. Then comes the strange part. In order to take his body back to Jerusalem to be buried, Barbarossa was basically pickled in a barrel full of vinegar. This didn’t really work, however, and his skin was placed in Antioch, his bones in Tyre and his organs in Tarsus.

Ted Williams – While famous for his outstanding career in baseball, Williams is also sometimes known for something a bit more unique. After his death on July 5, 2002, Ted Williams head was removed from his body and placed in cryonic suspension. Cryonics is based on the idea that humans in the future will be much more advanced than we are now, and as such, able to cure diseases and revive the dead, in whatever form that takes. Some people opt to have their bodies or, as in Williams’ case, just their heads frozen in hopes of waking up sometime in the future to jet packs and robots. Not many famous people have been cryogenically frozen. Although there have been rumors that Robert Heinlein, a prolific science fiction writer from the 20th century, and Walt Disney were, these are not true. They were both cremated, and Disney’s ashes are resting in a cemetery in Los Angeles, while Heinlein’s were scattered over the Pacific Ocean.

Vladimir Lenin – Of course, you can’t have a discussion of interesting corpses without mentioning Lenin. Lenin died at the age of 53 on Jan. 21, 1924. His official cause of death was listed as a fourth stroke, but many theories based on documents found after the fall of the U.S.S.R. claim that he had syphilis. Regardless, after his death, his body was embalmed and placed on display for mourners to view. By mid-March, more than 100,000 people had already visited, and there were more than 10 million visitors between 1924 and 1972. Every year, Lenin’s corpse is re-embalmed to keep it looking as fresh as the day he died.

All these weird corpses make me think of how I will want to be treated after I die. Maybe my body should be preserved, covered in concrete and placed as a statue in some garden. Or maybe I’ll just donate my corpse to Body Worlds, the controversial exhibit that displays real bodies preserved through the use of plastics with skin pulled back and organs exposed. And there’s the ever-popular cremation, with oh-so-many different things to do with your ashes, like be turned into diamonds, a painting or a lot of pencils. Well, whatever happens, I guess it won’t really bother me. Dead people don’t say much.

Labels: Bison Stories, Humor, Things of Interest

posted by Jeremy @ 12:51 PM