Strange Remains

Recent Posts - page 3

• The Roman empress who used forensic science to identify her rival’s head

  By strangeremains on December 28, 2016 • ( 1 )

  

  In 49 AD, a Roman soldier carried a decaying human head into Rome to present it to the wife of Emperor Claudius, Julia Agrippina.  Julia Agrippina, also known as Agrippina the Younger, had ordered the suicide of Lollia Paulina, her formal… Read More ›

• The traveling corpses of the medieval prince-bishops of Würzburg

  By strangeremains on December 4, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  While doing some research on heart burials, the ritual internment of the heart separate from the rest of the corpse, I came across an account of the odd and days-long funeral of the prince-bishops of Würzburg in an article by… Read More ›

• Which Beauchêne invented the “exploded” skull technique?

  By strangeremains on November 6, 2016 • ( 2 )

  

  The Beauchêne skull, or exploded skull, is a type of anatomical preparation for which the bones are separated and mounted in anatomical position, but spaced out, so that it looks like the bones are suspended in mid-air.  The Beauchêne skull is… Read More ›

• The camel-riding corpse that killed a woman

  By strangeremains on October 31, 2016 • ( 2 )

  

  In the spring of 1883, a coroner was dispatched to investigate the gruesome death of a woman on a sheep ranch in eastern Arizona.  The only witness to the killing was a woman who barricaded herself inside a ranch house… Read More ›

• Lord Byron’s skull cup

  By strangeremains on October 15, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  Lord Byron (January 22, 1788 – April 19, 1824), née George Gordon Byron (I love that his middle name is Gordon), was a leading poet of the Romantic movement and a good friend of fellow writers Mary and Percy Bysshe… Read More ›

• Re-animating a Murderer: The Corpse Experiment that Inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

  By strangeremains on October 15, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  George Forster was hanged at Newgate Prison on January 18, 1803 for murdering his wife and daughter.  After the execution, Forster’s (also spelled Foster in The Newgate Calendar) body was carried to a nearby house so that Giovanni Aldini (April… Read More ›

• George Washington, zombie-in-chief

  By strangeremains on October 7, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  George Washington (1732-1799) was many things: Founding Father, Commander-In-Chief, and the First President of the United States. He was also almost America’s first zombie. Washington became seriously sick after he got caught in a rainstorm in 1799. His doctors tried… Read More ›

• Forensic Science and the Creepy Legend of the Ourang Medan

  By strangeremains on October 7, 2016 • ( 2 )

  

  According to legend, some time in the 1940’s a ship named the S.S. Ourang Medan sent a distress signal as it traveled through the South Pacific.  The S.O.S. said that the officers aboard were dead and rest of the crew were dying…. Read More ›

• How a bloody corpse was used in a 17th century forensic test

  By strangeremains on October 5, 2016 • ( 1 )

  

  People used to believe that the corpses of murder victims could identify their killers – sort of a zombie testimony. Courts all over Europe, up until the 19th century in some places, practiced a ritual called the bier-right. The bier-right… Read More ›

• An almost complete list of human bone chandeliers

  By strangeremains on October 4, 2016 • ( 1 )

  

  Ossuaries are buildings or containers where human skeletal remains are kept as way to reduce the space needed to store human remains.  They are typically used in locales that need to re-use burial plots because space for graveyards is very… Read More ›

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