King Mithridates VI ruled in Asia Minor in the first century BC. He was so afraid of assassination by poisoning, he came up with a novel idea. He gave himself small doses of poison each day in the hope that he would naturally build up a resistance to poisons. It was so successful that when the Romans invaded in 63 BC, instead of being captured he tried to commit suicide, but the poison he took had no effect on him. Eventually the King ordered a slave to kill him with his sword.
After being killed during the celebrated Battle of Trafalgar, British Admiral Horatio Nelson was put into a large barrel of brandy to preserve his body during the voyage back to England. When the ship arrived back home Lord Nelson was removed from the barrel and the crew celebrated his achievements by drinking the remaining brandy.
In the late 1950s Lincoln City Football Club had a centre half named Ray LONG who was over 6 foot tall, and a left winger called David SHORT, who was only 5ft 4. Another piece of football trivia, the great strikers Dixie Dean and Jimmy Greaves, were both aged exactly 23 years 290 days, when they both scored their 200th league goals.
In July 1981, a tortoise was sentenced to death for murder. Tribal leaders in an eastern Kenyan village formally condemned the tortoise because they suspected it of causing the deaths of six people by magic. However, because none of the villagers was prepared to face the tortoise's wrath by carrying out the execution, it was chained to a tree instead. The tortoise was later freed after the government promised an inquiry into the six deaths.
After the death of her husband, poet Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein) kept his heart wrapped up in silk until she died.
In 1994 Los Angeles police arrested a man for dressing as the Grim Reaper - complete with scythe - and standing outside the windows of old people's homes, staring in.
Surprised while robbing a house in Antwerp, Belgium, a thief fled out the back door, clambered over a nine-foot wall, dropped down and found himself in the city prison.
Mike Stewart, 31, of Dallas was filming a movie in 1983 on the dangers of low-level bridges when the truck he was standing on passed under a low-level bridge -- killing him.
Walter Hallas, a 26-year-old store clerk in Leeds, England, was so afraid of dentists that in 1979 he asked a fellow worker to try to cure his toothache by punching him in the jaw. The punch caused Hallas to fall down, hitting his head, and he died of a fractured skull.
George Schwartz, owner of a factory in Providence, RI, narrowly escaped death when a 1983 blast flattened his factory except for one wall. After treatment for minor injuries, he returned to the scene to search for files. The remaining wall then collapsed on him, killing him.
In 1976 a twenty-two-year-old Irishman, Bob Finnegan, was crossing the busy Falls Road in Belfast, when he was struck by a taxi and flung over its roof. The taxi drove away and, as Finnegan lay stunned in the road, another car ran into him, rolling him into the gutter. It too drove on. As a knot of gawkers gathered to examine the magnetic Irishman, a delivery van plowed through the crowd, leaving in its wake three injured bystanders and an even more battered Bob Finnegan. When a fourth vehicle came along, the crowd wisely scattered and only one person was hit-Bob Finnegan. In the space of two minutes Finnegan suffered a fractured skull, broken pelvis, broken leg, and other assorted injuries. Hospital officials said he would recover.
In a classic case of one thing leading to another, seven men aged eighteen to twenty-nine received jail sentences of three to four years in Kingston-on-Thames, England, in 1979 after a fight that started when one of the men threw a French fry at another while they stood waiting for a train.
The Washington Post reported in January that, in their preparation of the outdoor gallows for the first death-row hanging in 50 years (for convicted murderer Billy Bailey), workers at the Delaware Correctional Center affixed non-skid safety strips to each of the 23 steps up.
Lowell Altvater, 80, was charged with negligent assault in Sandusky, Ohio, in November after he thought he saw a rat in his barn and fired his shotgun at it. It turned out to be his wife's hat, which she was wearing. Mrs. Altvater begged police not to file charges, but they did, in part because Lowell had shot himself in the leg in 1992 in the same barn after thinking then, too, that he had spotted a rat.
Valdamair Morelos, 35, confessed to murder in 1994 in San Jose, Calif., and told the judge he wanted the death penalty, but he was forced to trial because California law requires one in capital cases. Consequently, at the trial in January, Morelos occasionally tried to help the prosecution. For instance, after the prosecutor described the killing to the judge, Morelos added, "I blindfolded him, too."
In the old days, lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for several days. When found lying on the side of the road they would be taken for dead and prepared for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a bite to eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake. Hence the custom of holding a "wake."
England is old and small, and they started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and re-use the graves. In reopening these coffins, about one in 25 were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they tied a string on the "deceased's" wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tied it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. Hence on the "graveyard shift" they would know that someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer."
