DEATHS
” … power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill … (and) by these three was the third part of men killed … ”
—Rev. 6:8; 9:18
980 Total Deaths In World
The number of deaths in the world may fluctuate widely from one year to the next. A rough estimate of annual deaths is 60,000,000 or about 2 every second.
About two-thirds of these deaths are in Asia, a little less than one-sixth in Europe, about one-tenth in Africa, and one-twelfth in the Western Hemisphere.
In comparison, there are about 3 births every second, as there are between 100 and 115 million babies every year. About three- fifths of the births are in Asia, one eight each in Europe and in the Americas, and one-tenth in Africa.
981 Person’s Death Ages
At what year of age is the number of deaths greater?
According to insurance company averages, the number of deaths is greatest in the first year after birth. In 1961, there were 107,965 infant deaths reported in the United States. This was more than the number for each age from 1 through 55 years. A secondary peak in the number of deaths occurs near age 77.
982 Noah’s Flood
Population statistics indicate that nearly 3 billion people may have lived on the earth at the time of Noah’s Flood. This means that 3 billion were killed by God’s judgment at the Flood.
983 Dying Is Cheaper?
An item from the United Press International in Cincinnati: Despite the high cost of living, it’s still a bargain to die.
The overall cost of living rose 41.3 percent in the past 10 years, while the ’cost of dying’ increased only 32.1 percent.
984 Major Options After Death
The major options for a person contemplating death and concerned with his body:
(1) Reserve a cemetery lot for himself;
(2) Be cremated and reduced right away to ashes;
(3) Give his body to science for research after death; or
(4) Make an appointment to be frozen and stored in a cryotorium, until science finds a cure for his illness, defrosts the body, hopefully restores life, and cures his disease.
985 Brazil “Raising The Dead”
In Brazil, an architect has designed a 39-story skyscraper cemetery. It has “occupancy” for 21,000 tombs, with eventual full capacity of 147,000. It has a heliport, so that bodies can be flown in quickly. There are also two churches and 21 chapels, with comfortable beds for grieving friends. A soothing but somber background music is piped in 24 hours a day. This was to help solve Brazil’s growing burial problem.
986 Running Out Of Space
Great Britain became the first country in the world to have more cremations than burials. In Japan, it is said, graveyards are so crowded that only members of the imperial family are assured a resting place. West Berlin has had at least a six-week waiting period for burial. In Brazil, a 12-story “carneiro” has been built and there is a long-standing reservation.
Arlington National Cemetery is so crowded that officials are working on a columbarium to store 50,000 urns of ashes. Governments world-wide are worried that if people continue to die, soon no more places would be found to bury them.
987 World’s Largest Cemetery
Russia has the world’s largest cemetery. In Leningrad, there is a burial site which contains over 500,000 victims of the German army’s seige of 1941–42.
988 Grave With A Window
A Turkish watch repairer, All Yucel, has built himself a special grave which has an eight-inch window on top. He plans to install a push-button electric alarm bell inside the grave. If he is buried alive by mistake, he can push the button to call the cemetery’s guard room.
He also plans to have an electric light burning inside his grave for one week after his burial. At the week’s end the cemetery guards will check to see if he is really dead and put out the light.
—James C. Hefley
989 A Stake Through His Heart
When Herald West died, his doctor drove a stake through his heart to make sure he was dead. When he was buried, they did not nail his coffin shut in case he was not dead. West was no vampire. He was just a cautious banker who feared to be buried alive.
When West died at 90, he left a will directing that “my coffin shall not be screwed down and that a surgeon be instructed to pierce my heart with a steel or other instrument to make certain death has occurred.”
His family physician, Dr. Eric Kerr, said: “I did what Mr. West wanted, but it was the first request of that sort I have ever had.”
Kerr said West, a London bank manager, wanted to be certain he would be dead when he went to his grave, but if by chance he was not, he wanted a means of escape.
“He was very meticulous in his habits as a bank manager,” the doctor said, “but this did not seem to be overdoing it. Many people have fears of this sort.”
—United Press International
990 Lincoln’s Body Moved 17 Times
Following the burial of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, his casket was moved 17 times, chiefly to prevent its being stolen and held for ransom. Six men nearly succeeded once, on a night in 1876, but they were surprised and frightened away by the custodian when leaving the tomb with the body. Consequently, it was hidden under a pile of a scrap lumber in the cellar during the next two years. Since 1901, the casket has been locked in a steel cage and buried in solid cement ten feet below the floor of the mausoleum in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois.
—Freling Foster
991 The One-Year Stench
The corpse of “87-year-old James Bryce of Oshawa, Ontario, lay in his bedroom for over a year while his 62-year-old son lived in the same house. The son, Douglas, told police his father died and he could not bear to part with his father after death, and he didn’t have money to bury him.” The father’s body was found “lying in bed in a stench-filled room.”
—Free Press
992 Long Mourning Over Church Bells
In mourning over the death of King Louis XV, the church bells of the Cathedral of Toul, France, were rung continuously 40 days and nights. The result: the vibrations so weakened the bell-tower that the tower swayed—and the bells continued to ring—for 20 years and 7 months.
993 Tennyson’s Kind Memories
Alfred Tennyson suffered a tremendous emotional shock in the death of his close friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. In his “Break, Break, Break,” he meditates on his loss as he sits by the seashore. The fisherman’s children are laughing and playing, the sailor boy sings in his boat, the stately ships sail away, but the poet thinks, “Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still!”
994 Forest Lawn Memorial Park
The late Hubert Eaton became a millionaire by softening the hardness of death in the world’s most famous burying ground—Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Here the bodies of many movie stars and other famous people lie surrounded by rolling lawns, sparkling fountains, and marble statuaries.
The famous mortician admitted he wanted “to erase all signs of mourning.” For him and his employees, death became “leave-taking”; a corpse “the loved one,” who was treated by skilled cosmetologist in a luxuriously furnished “slumber” room.
995 “So Sorry … ”
After the usual funeral music, opening the “Obituary Column of the Air” on WATA, Boone, N. C., the announcer said: “We’re sorry to report there were no deaths in Watauga County during the past 24 hours.”
996 Gandhi: “All About Is Darkness”
Some fifteen years before Gandhi’s death, he wrote:
“I must tell you in all humility that Hinduism, as I know it, entirely satisfies my soul, fills my whole being, and I find a solace in the Bhagavad and Upainshads that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount.”
Just before his death, Ghandi wrote: “My days are numbered. I am not likely to live very long—perhaps a year or a little more. For the first time in fifty years I find myself in the slough of despond. All about me is darkness; I am praying for light.”
997 To Cry Or Not To Cry
Once upon a time, Duke Ching of Ch’i was rambling about on the Mount of Niu. When he saw the beautiful scenery in the north where his country lies, tears fell from his eyes, and with a sob, he said, “How beautiful are our fruitful plains, and our rippling rills. But our lives are as short as the water in the river that passes by.” After he spoke, he wailed aloud.
Ai-K’ung and Liang-Ch’iu-Chu wept with him. But Yen-Tzu laughed alone by the side. As Duke Ching wiped the tears from his eyes, he asked, “We are all weeping here, why is it that you are laughing?”
Yen-Tzu said, “It is your meaningless mourning I am laughing at. If the length of men’s lives were not so short, the previous rulers would not have died yet, how then, would it be possible for you to be the Prince of Ch’i?”
—Yen-Tzu Ch’un Ch’iu
998 Captain’s Skin As Drumheads
Count Ziska, the brave Bohemian captain, commanded, that, after death, his body should be flayed, and the skin be made into drum-heads to send dismay into the hearts of their enemies when his followers went out to battle.
999 Human Soul Weighs 21 Grams
A Swedish doctor in a new book says he discovered the human soul weighs 21 grams. He placed beds of terminal patients on sensitive scales and saw the needle drop when the patients died, he says.
—Pastor’s Manual