Oh, the irony!

In 1989, a guy called Michael Anderson Godwin was waiting in his death row cell for an execution day, as he was supposed to be sent to the electric chair.

One day, his TV broke and the guy decided to try to fix it playing around with the cables, or more specifically, chewing on them while he was on the toilet. The Universe at that point must have decided that the Criminal Justice system was a bit slow, because with the metal toilet as a conductor, Godwin died by electrocution. Oh well, it was going to be a matter of time anyway.

(Please get the Tywin Lannister reference).

The deadly lottery

You know what they say about lottery: you have more chances of dying on your way to get a ticket that actually winning it. But is it actually true?

Well, it’s plausible, and it all depends on how far you have to go to get your lottery ticket, the demographic and your method of transportation.

So, let’s take as an example the main lottery of the country I live in, England: the odds of winning the UK National Lottery are 1 in 13,983,815, and if we consider that – according to the 2011 annual report – car accidents in Great Britain cause one fatality every 393 million miles, we can conclude that the claim is true only if you drive more than 28 miles in order to purchase your lottery ticket.

Just play online, you’ll be fine (although probably £2 poorer).

Ashes to ashes, wax to wax

There is a chance that, after you die, your body will end up covered in wax. That happens only if the body come in contacts with cold water or soil, which makes it develop a waxy material called adipocere – formed from the bacteria breaking down the tissue – that functions as a natural preservative.

Mythbusting, Disney edition.

Those of you who are fan of Walt Disney might have stumbled across articles or biographies that state that he had his head (or body) cryonicallly frozen, and that it has been stolen.
That’s one of the several myths revolving around his person: sure Disney was an eccentric (and very wealthy) individual, but he was actually cremated whole, and his ashes are buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. The first cryonic freezing happened a month after the death of Walt Disney, too late for him to make such a decision.

Not im-pressed

The inventor of the web-rotary printing press died in an accident caused by his own invention. During the installation of a new machine in Philadelphia his foot got crushed, and he didn’t make it through the amputation.

The guy who felt the buzz.

The first ever execution by electric chair went horribly wrong: in 1890 a guy named William Kemmler had the “honour” to be the guinea pig for this new execution method.
The warden was pretty nervous himself when the time came for Kemmler to meet his maker, even more than the prisoner himself, whose words of encouragement for his executioner have been recorded: “Take your time; don’t be in a hurry. Do it well; be sure everything is all right,” he told him.
So, at first things seemed going well: the warden flipped the switch, and ten seconds later Kemmler looked pretty dead.
When, a few minutes later, a cut on his hand started bleeding, indicating that he was still alive, the warden panicked and quickly ordered the current to be restarted. This time the procedure went on for a while, and the poor guy even drooled and moaned until he literally started sizzling due to his body being “cooked” to death.

Oh, God.

In 2006, an Azerbaijani guy called Makhmudov was taking a stroll down Kiev Zoo, in Ukraine, when he decided to prove a point regarding the existence of God. He climbed down a lion den where four felines where minding their own businesses, claiming out loud that if God existed, He would have saved him from the lions.
God apparently decided that the moron wasn’t worth the effort, because a lioness attached Makhmudov seizing his carotid artery.

The light at the end of the tunnel

The “life that flashes before your eyes” on someone’s last moments phenomenon has a very scientific explanation: it is now believed that in the few seconds before death, the brain becomes  hyper-aware, causing unexpected things to happen. The gradual loss of blood and oxygen has a role in it as well.

Priorities, right?

A study that analysed Google queries containing the words “fear of…” puts death on fourth place after flying, heights and clowns.

You might be dead, but you are not ALL dead

If you are a male and die face down, you are very likely to get a post-mortem boner.