Death trivia and tidbits

• Pope Johann XII died at age 18 after being beaten to death by his lover's husband.
• It's impossible to kill yourself by holding your breath, so if a kid pulls that on you, say, "That's nice, dear. Go right ahead.." (This is why my sister doesn't like me to babyish for her.)
• Cosmic Irony - The person who wrote the famous song, "Keep the Home Fires Burning" burnt to death when their home caught fire.
• A few months before he got killed in a car accident, James Dean made a driver's safety TV ad in which he said, "Drive safely; the life you save may be mine".
• Mark Twain, born on a year Halley's Comet visited us, correctly predicted he would die the next time it came by.
• It is a myth that the hair and nails grow after death; the skin shrinks, giving the illusion of their growth
• President Abraham Lincoln was so distraught over his young son Willie dying, he had his coffin exhumed twice so he could look at him again. And they say Mary was the nutty one...
• The word 'mausoleum' comes from the memorial tomb of Mausolus, ruler of Caria, who died in 353 B.C. When he died his wife had him cremated, mixed his ashes with water, and drank him. Cheers!
• Henry the VIII executed some 72,000 subjects. His favorite method was boiling people to death .
• The ashes of astronomer Eugene Shoemaker were put aboard the 1999 Lunar Prospector flight and was "control" crashed into a crater to give him a moon burial.
• Singer Steve Goodman had his ashes buried under the home plate in Chicago's Wrigley Field.
• The name of the pilot of the ill-fated TWA Flight 800 which exploded over New York, was Ralph Kevorkian
•  The Viet Nam Memorial has the names of 38 people engraved on it who are listed as killed, but weren't.

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