Facts You Probably Don't Know

Random facts about death

⚠️TW⚠️

This chapter may be disturbing to some readers. It's includes a few themes about S//cide.

Facts found from mentalfloss.com and factretriver.com

1. Just three days after dying, the enzymes that help break down a person's food begin to eat that person's body.

2. When people find out they are dying, they experience what's known as an "existential slap," according to palliative care experts. It's the moment when a person knows, on a gut level, that death is close. 

3. In New York City, more people commit suicide than are murdered. (Glad I decided to live while in New York.)

4. Soon after death, a person's eyeballs flatten due to the loss of blood pressure.

5. Between 1 to 9 minutes after death, a person's pupils begin to dilate and cloud over. The cloudy look is from the potassium in the red blood cells breaking down. Because most people die with their eyes open, the process usually occurs fairly quickly, though it can take up to 3 hours in some cases.

6. Mistakes on a doctor's note, mainly due to messy handwriting, kill over 7,000 people in the U.S. each year.

7. Compared to right-handers, left-handers die at least 3 years earlier (My brother better not die three years early.)

8. On average, 21 people in the United States die each day from the lack of available organs for transplant. (I'm gonna become an organ donor when I can. I could save some people.)

9. Hanging is the preferred means of suicide in most parts of the world. ( So many things could go wrong in a hanging, drowning sounds easier. Or suffocation.)

10. The United States has more than 5 times the number of gun deaths than all of the Western European nations.

11. Assisted Suicide or physician aid in dying (PAD) is legal in Washington, Oregon, , Vermont, and Montana. (I mean, I think that's a last resort.)

12. You can be declared dead in some states but considered alive in others. That's because New York and New Jersey allow families to reject the concept of brain death if it goes against their religious beliefs. 

13. Bodies can become covered in what looks like soap after death. Technically known as adipocere (and sometimes also called grave wax), it's a byproduct of decomposition that happens as the fat in a body decays under wet, anaerobic (lacking in oxygen) conditions.

 14. Scientists are currently studying the "necrobiome"—all the bacteria and fungi in a corpse—to figure out whether changes in the microbes alone can provide clues to the time of death.

15.Dead bodies generally aren't dangerous just because they're dead. But in the 19th century, there was widespread belief in "miasmatic theory," which said that air coming from rotting corpses and other sources of decay lead to the spread of disease. This belief was more or less replaced by germ theory.

16. Embalming is rarely required by law, except in certain situation where bodies leave state borders. (I've always wanted to embalm someone.)

17. You're more likely to be killed at a dance party than while skydiving.

18. Between the 16th and the early 20th centuries, artists used ground-up mummies as paint pigment. (That's fucked up.)

19. Human composting," in which bodies decompose into dirt in reusable "recomposition vessels," could soon be legal in Washington state. The results don't smell, and are suitable for use in the garden.

20. Although the etiquette guides for Victorian mourning varied widely, widows mourned for a total of two-and-a-half years, while widowers mourned for three months.

21. In the 17th century and beyond, human skulls were soaked in alcohol to create a tincture called "the King's drops" that was said to be good for gout, dropsy (edema), and "all fevers putrid or pestilential," among other ailments. King Charles II of England allegedly paid £6000 for a personal recipe.

These are so oddly fascinating. Which fact was your favorite?  I liked them all. Any suggestions for what I should do next? Thanks for reading my lovelies, it means a lot. 💜

Please Vote!

-Whimsical-Soul