9. In 2008, a 23-year-old woman named Lauren Michaels created a group titled “I Need Sex” on Facebook. Within 10 minutes, she had 35 members and soon attracted 100—50 of whom she eventually slept with. Facebook has since removed her page.

10. An 18-year-old Wisconsin man posed as several different girls on Facebook to blackmail underage male teens into performing sexual favors by coaxing them to send nude photos of themselves. He could be facing up to 300 years in prison.
11. Beacon, part of Facebook’s controversial advertisement system that broadcasted information about a user’s shopping activity on other sites, was the target of a class action lawsuit in 2009. The resulting settlement required Facebook to pay $9.5 million into a settlement fund.
12. If Facebook were a country, it would be the fifth-largest country in the world, after China, India, the U.S., and Indonesia.

13. In 2009, an EMT at the crime scene took a cell phone picture of the body of a New York woman who had been strangled and beaten and then posted it on his Facebook profile. He was later arrested on charges of official misconduct and was fired from his job.

14. The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales warned that Facebook and MySpace can lead children to commit suicide because such sites encourage teens to build transient relationships and dehumanize community life.
15. Facebook includes eating disorder groups such as “Get Thin or Die Trying,” and “Quod me nutrit me destruit” (“What nourishes me destroys me”). While such eating disorder sites were typically anonymous on the Web, their growing presence on Facebook makes them more public and accessible to more people.
16. The New Oxford Dictionary announced that the 2009 Word of the Year was “unfriend,” as in “to remove someone as a friend on a social networking site” such as Facebook. However, there is some debate whether the word should be “defriend” rather than “unfriend.”
17. A 39-year-old Pennsylvania father was arrested for openly asking his 13-year-old daughter for sex over Facebook.
18. While stressing that correlation does not equal causation, a recent poll suggested that Facebook users have lower overall grades than non-users.
19. While initially created for college students, Facebook users over the age 26 now represent 60% of the total U.S. Facebook population.

20. The average Facebook users spend more than 55 minutes a day on the site. They use the Like button nine times a month and write 25 comments each month.
21. Approximately 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States.
22. Forbes dubbed 25-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, the creator/owner of Facebook, as the world’s youngest billionaire, worth 1.5 billion.
23. Syria, China, Vietnam, and Iran have banned Facebook.
24. In December 2009, there were over 250 million active users on Facebook, up from 1 million active users in December 2004.
25. Tim Sparapani, director of public policy at Facebook, stated that hundreds of millions of people had never stopped and thought about the consequences of sharing information online.u
26. Information deemed public—such as profile pictures, names, cities, and networks—are available to developers of any applications that Facebook users or their Facebook friends use on the site.
27. The first person to invest in Facebook was the cofounder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, who invested $500,000 in June 2004.
28. In 2005, East Asia’s richest man, Li Hu Shing, invested $120 million dollars in Facebook.
29. In September 2009, Zuckerberg announced for the first time that Facebook was cash flow positive, meaning Facebook made more money that it spent.
30. Lamebook.com is a regularly updated site that reposts “lame” and funny Facebook user posts.
31. In Florida, the Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee ruled that Florida judges and lawyers should no longer “friend” each other on Facebook.

32. Facebook’s fastest growing segment in the United States is women 55 years and older.
33. In May 2009, a Russian investment firm, Digital Sky Technologies, invested $200 million in Facebook in return for a 1.96% stake in the Web site.
34. Twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss claim Zuckerberg stole their idea after they hired him to do programming for their own site, Harvard Connect (ConnectU). The case was settled for an undisclosed sum. Others, such as fellow student, Aaron Greenspan, also claim they invented Facebook.
35. Named after a Harvard student directory that included student photos and profiles, Facebook was originally called “thefacebook” and was limited to only Harvard students. In 2005, the site was renamed “Facebook.”
36. When Facebook changed its privacy setting in December 2009, Zuckerberg’s previously private photos—in which he was seen shirtless, holding a teddy bear, and looking “plastered”—became public.
37. Both citizens and police departments are increasingly using Facebook to catch suspected criminals.
38. A “gaydar” software program developed at MIT can reportedly identify gay men on Facebook, private profile or not.
39. In January 2009, an advertising campaign from Burger King titled “WHOPPER Sacrifice” rewarded Facebook users a free “Angry Whopper” for publicly deleting 10 friends, who would then receive a blunt message informing they were deleted for a free hamburger.

40. Eleven percent of Facebook’s 100 million U.S. users are African-American, 9% are Latino, and 6% are Asian, which is a fairly accurate reflection of the U.S. general population.
41. A 20-year-old IBM employee in Canada lost sick leave benefits from her insurer because her Facebook page showed “cheerful” photos while she was on paid sick leave for depression.
42. Girls can be prone to anxiety and depression by talking too much to their friends on Facebook. Called “co-rumination,” frequently discussing the same problem can lead to an unhealthy obsession.
43. On July 1, 2009, shortly after Michael Jackson passed away, his page became the most popular page on Facebook. Previously, the most popular person on Facebook was U.S. President Obama with just over 6 million fans.
44. In Australia it is valid protocol to serve court notices to defendants on Facebook. A summons posted on Facebook is legally binding.
45. A site called Usocial offered to sell Facebook friends and fans to customers. Even after receiving a Cease and Desist from Facebook, Usocial said it will not shut down the service completely.
46. A Facebook post in December 2009 led to a kidney donation.
47. The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation contend that Facebook’s new “recommended” privacy settings serve Facebook more than they serve the user.
48. Farmville boasts more than 60 million players on Facebook. Zynga—the maker of Farmville, Mafia Wars, and other Facebook games—boasts an annual revenue of more than $200 million.
49. In the United States, 54.7% of people ages 13 to 17 have a Facebook account.
50. There are more than 800,000 developers building applications for Facebook.

Renowned French artist and master of jewelry, Bernard Maquin created the Royal Diamond Chess set in 2005 bringing the game of chess to a whole new level. Noted for its abililty to combine fine art, jewelry, and the classic game of chess, this is one of the most expensive chess sets in the world.

Thirty craftsmen, under the direction of Maquin spent over 4500 hours creating the expensive chess set. The work was done all by hand and when it was completed, the artists used 1168.75 grams of 14 carat white gold, and approximately 9900 black and white diamonds, bringing the total weight to 186.09 carats and the total cost to $500,000.

More pictures at the Charles Hollander website.

This posh chess set is part of the Charles Hollander Collection, one of the most respected names in the diamond industry. And you just know you are looking at a piece from the Hollander collection when you see a game doubling as a diamond studded work of art.

But if you thought the Hollander set would make your chess game bling-bling, then you haven’t seen the most expensive chess set in the world yet. This label goes to the Jewel Royale Chess Set from Britain. Boodles, a British custom jewelry company commissioned its production.

Valued at over £5 million ($9.8m USD), this single chess set is the most expensive and exquisite game set of any kind in the world. Constructed of gold and platinum, it contains diamonds, emeralds, rubies, pearls and sapphires. The king piece alone weighs 165.2 grams of 18 carat yellow gold and has a spiraling mid-section graced by 73 rubies and 146 diamonds.

Interestingly, there will be a limited number of replica sets selling for about £20,000 ($26,700 USD).

Book and film script adaptations featuring The Jewel Royale Chess Set, with the title of “Checkmate”, are being worked on by an un-known, award winning British writer. Whether it’s a comedy or a thriller, promotional and merchandising opportunities are sure to be huge!

The production of the Jewel Royale is nearly complete, and when suitable sponsors are confirmed, a celebrity chess tournament is slated to happen using the most expensive chess set in the world. Find out more about the expensive chess set at the Jewel Royale website.

If you’re looking for a guitar pick, there’s no shortage of different shapes, styles and materials available for you to choose from. Customized picks have been prevalent since the days when Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick would throw hundreds of them out into the audience. In fact, most famous guitarists have their own custom guitar pick. Even among the myriad of different styles, some plectrums are more unique than others. The world’s most expensive guitar picks are some of those.

Starpics, an Australian company known for plectrums made of precious metals, created a completely unique pair of guitar picks. Like their other picks, they’re guaranteed to last pretty much forever and to significantly reduce string breakage. So what makes these picks so special?

They’re made of meteors.

These two luxury picks were fashioned from pieces of Gibeon meteorite. Said to be around 4 billion years old, Gibeon meteorites were discovered in 1836 in Namibia, Africa, where their sale and export were banned by the local government. Despite that fact, over twenty-five tons of the meteorites have been recovered and it is the most commonly found meteorite on the market today. One of the most interesting things about the meteorites is the pattern of Widmanstatten lines created by their frigid passage through space. These patterns are preserved in the picks and can be seen in the picture above.

The most expensive guitar picks in the world are priced at $5,000 AUD ($4,674 USD).

“Blackie”, Eric Clapton’s favorite mid-career modified Strat has been surpassed in value and is no longer the most expensive guitar ever, despite that it was bought for $950,000 USD in 2004 by a guitar archaeologist.

The latest most expensive electric guitar in the world dethroned its predecessor at an auction in Doha, Qatar on November 16th, 2005. The Strat was signed by several rock musicians to benefit a tsunami charity, ‘Reach out to Asia’. It was bought one year ago by Qatar’s royal family for a million dollars and donated back to the Asia Program, bringing in $2.7 million USD at the more recent auction, whose attendees included Former President Bill Clinton. Technically, the guitar has generated a total of $3.7 million USD, making it the most expensive guitar yet.

Signees of this expensive electric guitar included Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend, Mark Knopfler, Ray Davis, Liam Gallagher, Ronnie Wood, Tony Iommi, Angus & Malcolm Young, Paul McCartney, Sting, Ritchie Blackmore, Def Leppard, and Bryan Adams, the coordinator of the project.

The most expensive coffee in the world does not hail from Jamaica or Hawaii, but instead from Indonesia.

Kopi Luwak the most expensive coffee in the world does exist, and those who drink the expensive coffee insist that it is made from coffee beans eaten, partly digested and then excreted by the Common palm civet, a weasel-like animal.

“Kopi” the Indonesian word for coffee along with “luwak” is local name of this animal which eats the raw red coffee beans. The civet digests the soft outer part of the coffee cherry, but does not digest the inner beans and excretes them.

Apparently the internal digestion ends up adds a unique flavor to the beans, removing the bitter flavor, and then beans are then picked up by locals and sold. The most expensive coffee beans can cost up to $600 a pound, and up to $50 per cup, if you can get over the fact that you are drinking such a strange brew.

You would know if you drank the most expensive coffee in the world, because the quantities of it are tiny amounts.

If you thought your 17” Apple MacBook or Alienware Aurora mALX qualified as an expensive laptop, think again.

In 1982 GriD Systems released the Compass 1100 laptop costing about $10,000 (inflation adjusted $20,200). Even this cost pales in comparison to the reports of a costly laptop that luxury manufacturer Luvaglio London is set to release in the near future by special order the most expensive laptop ever sold, with a price tag of a million dollars.

As of now all of the details are very sparse and the technical specifications have not been made fully available. We aren’t even sure what this laptop is made with to give it a cost of $1,000,000, but the exterior looks impressive. You can bet with a price this excessive, the expensive laptop will be a spectacle of precious metals and materials and include more than a couple gemstones.

In late 2005 the Dutch company Ego Lifestyle B.V. released the Tulip E-Go Diamond laptop, which was previously the world’s most expensive laptop and this mobile computer had over 80 total carats of diamonds and a retail price of €283,000.

1. Tokyo-Yokohama, Japan – 33,200,000
2. New York, United States – 17,800,000
3. Sao Paulo, Brazil – 17,700,000
4. Seoul-Incheon, South Korea – 17,500,000
5. Mexico City, Mexico – 17,400,000
6. Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, Japan – 16,425,000
7. Manila, Philippines – 14,750,000
8. Mumbai, India (formerly Bombay) – 14,350,000
9. Jakarta, Indonesia – 14,250,000
10. Lagos, Nigeria – 13,400,000
11. Kolkata, India (formerly Calcutta) – 12,700,000
12. Delhi, India – 12,300,000
13. Cairo, Egypt – 12,200,000
14. Los Angeles, United States – 11,789,000
15. Buenos Aires, Argentina – 11,200,000
16. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 10,800,000
17. Moscow, Russia – 10,500,000
18. Shanghai, China – 10,000,000
19. Karachi, Pakistan – 9,800,000
20. Paris, France – 9,645,000
21. Nagoya, Japan – 9,000,000 (tie)
21. Istanbul, Turkey – 9,000,000 (tie)
23. Beijing, China – 8,614,000
24. Chicago, United States – 8,308,000
25. London, United Kingdom – 8,278,000
26. Shenzhen, China – 8,000,000

Expected

1. USA Twitter share is ranked number one with 62%
2. Most of the largest cities that use Twitter are in the USA
3. English speaking countries dominate
4. The UK is ranked second as a Twitter nation
5. The majority of iPhone owners using Twitter are located in the U.S.
6. 65% of all users are under 25
7. Tuesday is the most popular day for Twitter activity, accounting for 15.7% and you Tweet from 11am to 3pm (of course this was expected, who wants to tweet on Monday)

Surprising

1. Australia’s share is 4th on the list with nearly 3% despite having a population of only just over 20 million
2. Brazil ranks 5th despite not being English speaking
3. Women outnumber men
4. 5% of users account for 75% of all activity
5. More than half of twitter users use something other than Twitter to tweet, monitor and manage their tweeting (TweetDeck has the largest market share with 19.7%)
6. 1 out of every 350 visits to a Website comes from Twitter as a source
7. Barely 5% of Twitter users go to an online retail service from Twitter. Google UK sends 365 times more traffic to shopping websites than Twitter

In Nahuatl, the native language of the Aztecs, “Aztec” means “someone who comes from Aztlán”, a mythical place in northern Mexico. However, the Aztec referred to themselves as Mexica or Tenochca. The modern usage of the name Aztec as a collective term, applied to all the peoples linked by trade, custom, religion, and language to the Mexica state, the Triple Alliance, was suggested by Alexander von Humboldt.

“Mexica”, the origin of the word Mexico, is a term of uncertain origin. Some say it was the old Nahuatl word for the sun. Others say it was derived from the name of their leader Mexitli. Yet others say it is just a type of weed that grows in Lake Texcoco. Miguel León-Portilla suggests that it means “navel of the moon” from Nahuatl metztli (moon) and xictli (navel). Alternatively, it could mean navel of the maguey (Nahuatl metl).

Aztec culture is generally grouped with the cultural complex known as the nahuas, because of the common language they shared. According to legend, the various groups who were to become the Aztecs arrived from the north into the Anahuac valley around Lake Texcoco. The location of this valley and lake of destination is clear – it is the heart of modern Mexico City – but little can be known with certainty about the origin of the Aztecs.

In the legend, the ancestors of the Aztecs came from a place in the north called Aztlán, the last of seven nahuatlacas (Nahuatl-speaking tribes) to make the journey southward. The Aztecs were said to be guided by their god Huitzilopochtli, meaning “Left-handed Hummingbird”. When they arrived at an island in the lake, they saw an eagle eating a snake while perched on a nopal cactus, a vision that fulfilled a prophecy telling them that they should found their new home on that spot. The Aztecs built their city of Tenochtitlan on that site, building a great artificial island, which today is in the center of Mexico City. This legendary vision is pictured on the Mexican flag.

According to legend, when the Aztecs arrived in the Anahuac valley around Lake Texcoco, they were considered by the other nahuas as the least civilized of all, but the Aztecs decided to learn, and they took all they could from other peoples, especially from the ancient Toltecs (whom they seem to have partially confused with the more ancient civilization of the Teotihuacanos). To the Aztecs, the Toltecs were the originators of all culture; “Toltecayotl” was a synonym for culture. Aztec legends identify the Toltecs and the cult of Quetzalcoatl with the mythical city of Tollan, which they also seem to have identified with the more ancient Teotihuacan.

Because the Aztecs combined several traditions with their own earlier traditions, they had several creation myths; one of these describes four great ages preceding the present world, each of which ended in a catastrophe. Our age – Nahui-Ollin, the fifth age, or fifth creation – escaped destruction due to the sacrifice of a god (Nanahuatl, “full of sores”, the smallest and humblest of the gods) who was transformed into the Sun. This myth is associated with the ancient city of Teotihuacan, which was already abandoned and destroyed when the Aztecs arrived. Another myth describes the earth as a creation of the twin gods Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl. Tezcatlipoca lost his foot in the process of creating the world and all representations of these gods show him without a foot and with a bone exposed. Quetzalcoatl is also called “White Tezcatlipoca”.

Initially, the Mexica hired themselves out as mercenaries in wars between Toltecs. Eventually they gained enough glory to receive royal marriages. Mexica rulers Acamapichtli, Huitzilihuitl and Chimalpopoca were, in 1372–1427, vassals of Tezozomoc, a lord of the Tepanec nahua.

When Tezozomoc died, his son Maxtla assassinated Chimalpopoca, whose uncle Itzcoatl allied with the ex-ruler of Texcoco, Nezahualcoyotl, and besieged Maxtla’s capital Azcapotzalco. Maxtla surrendered after 100 days and went into exile. Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan formed a “Triple Alliance” that came to dominate the Valley of Mexico, and then extended its power beyond. Tenochtitlan gradually became the dominant power in the alliance.

Itzcoatl’s nephew Motecuhzoma I inherited the throne in 1449 and expanded the realm. His son Axayacatl (1469) surrounding kingdom of Tlatelolco. His sister was married to the tlatoani of Tlatelolco, but, as a pretext for war, he declared that she was mistreated. He went on to conquer Matlazinca and the cities of Tollocan, Ocuillan, and Mallinalco. He was defeated by the Tarascans in Tzintzuntzan (the first great defeat the Aztecs had ever suffered), but recovered and took control of the Huasteca region, conquering the Mixtecs and Zapotecs.

In 1481 Axayacatl’s son Tizoc ruled briefly before he was replaced by his younger brother Ahuitzol who had reorganized the army. The empire was at its largest during his reign. His successor was Motecuhzoma II (better known as Moctezuma II), who was emperor when the Spaniards arrived in 1519.

The Aztec Empire is not completely analogous to the empires of European history. Like most European empires, it was ethnically very diverse, but unlike most European empires, it was more a system of tribute than a single system of government. Arnold Toynbee in War and Civilization analogizes it to the Assyrian Empire in this respect.

Although cities under Aztec rule seem to have paid heavy tributes, excavations in the Aztec-ruled provinces show a steady increase in the welfare of common people after they were conquered. This probably was due to an increase of trade, thanks to better roads and communications, and the tributes were extracted from a broad base. Only the upper classes seem to have suffered economically, and only at first. There appears to have been trade even in things that could be produced locally: love of novelty may have been a factor.

The most important official of Tenochtitlan government is often called The Aztec Emperor. The Nahuatl title, Huey Tlatoani (plural huey tlatoque, translates roughly as “Great Speaker”; the tlatoque (“speakers”) were an upper class). This office gradually took on more power with the rise of Tenochtitlan. By the time of Auitzotl “Emperor” is an appropriate analogy, although as in the Holy Roman Empire, the title was not hereditary.

Most of the Aztec empire was forged by one man, Tlacaelel (Nahuatl for “manly heart”), who lived from 1397 to 1487. Although he was offered the opportunity to be tlatoani, he preferred to stay behind the throne. Nephew of Tlatoani Itzcoatl, and brother of Chimalpopoca and Motecuhzoma I Ilhuicamina, his title was “Cihuacoatl” (in honor of the goddess, roughly “counselor”), but as reported in the Ramírez Codex, “what Tlacaellel ordered, was as soon done”. He gave the Aztec government a new structure, he ordered the burning of most Aztec books (his explanation being that they were full of lies) and he rewrote their history. In addition, Tlacaelel reformed Aztec religion, by putting the tribal god Huitzilopochtli at the same level as the old Nahua gods Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca, and Quetzalcoatl. Tlacaelel thus created a common awareness of history for the Aztecs. He also created the institution of ritual war (the flower wars) as a way to have trained warriors, and created the necessity of constant sacrifices to keep the Sun moving. Some writers believe upper classes were aware of this forgery, which would explain the later actions of Moctezuma when he met Hernán Cortés (a.k.a. Cortez). But eventually this institution helped to cause the fall of the Aztec empire. The people of Tlaxcalla were spared conquest, at the price of participating in the flower wars. When Cortés came to know this, he approached them and they became his allies. The Tlaxcaltecas provided thousands of men to support the few hundred Spaniards. The Aztec strategy of war was based on the capture of prisoners by individual warriors, not on working as a group to kill the enemy in battle. By the time the Aztecs came to recognize what warfare meant in European terms, it was too late.

For the Europeans, human sacrifice was the most striking feature of Aztec civilization. Human sacrifice was widespread at this time in Mesoamerica and South America (during the Inca Empire), but the Aztecs practiced it on an uncommon scale, sacrificing victims on each of their 18 festivities.

In the usual method of sacrifice, the victim was painted completely with blue chalk (the color of sacrifice) and taken to the top of the great pyramid, then the victim was laid on a stone slab, his abdomen (an obsidian knife hardly could cut through a ribcage) was ripped with a ceremonial knife, and his heart was taken out and raised to the sun. The heart was put in a bowl held by a statue, and the body was thrown on the stairs, where it would be dragged away. This was suposed to be voluntary, so, if faith was not enough, probably they were also drugged. There is no agreement on how the bodies were disposed of: the viscera were used to feed the animals in the zoo, the head was cleaned and placed on display in the tzompantli, and the rest of the body was either cremated or cut into very small pieces and offered as a gift to important people.

There were others kind of sacrifice, some of them involved some kind of torture; the victim could be shoot with arrows, burned or drowned. Compared with European methods of execution, the Aztecs were not very imaginative.

While there is universal agreement that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, there is a lack of scholarly consensus as to whether they also practiced cannibalism and, if so, to what extent. At one extreme, Materialist anthropologist Marvin Harris, who wrote about cannibalism in Our Kind and Cannibals and Kings has suggested that the flesh of the victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward, since the Aztec diet was lacking in proteins. According to him, the Aztec economy would have been unable to support feeding them as slaves, so the columns of prisoners were “marching meat”. At the other extreme, William Arens doubts whether there was ever any systematic cannibalism.

While most historians of Mesoamerica believe that there was ritual cannibalism related to human sacrifices, they do not support Harris’s thesis that human flesh was ever a significant portion of the Aztec diet.

The Aztecs were conquered by Spain in 1521, when after long battle and a long siege where much of the population died from hunger and smallpox, Cuauhtémoc surrendered to Hernán Cortés (a.k.a. “Cortez”). Cortés, with his up to 500 Spaniards, did not fight alone but with as many as 150,000 or 200,000 allies from Tlaxcala, and eventually from Texcoco, who were resisting Aztec rule. He defeated Tenochtitlan’s forces on August 13, 1521.

It seemed that the Cortés’s intention was to maintain the structure of the Aztec empire, and at first it seemed the Aztec empire could survive. The upper classes at first were considered as noblemen (to this day, the title of Duke of Moctezuma is held by a Spanish noble family), they learned Spanish, and several learned to write in European characters. Some of their surviving writings are crucial in our knowledge of the Aztecs. Also, the first missionaries tried to learn Nahuatl and some, like Bernardino de Sahagún, decided to learn as much as they could of the Aztec culture.

But soon all changed. The second wave of missionaries and authorities showed an apparently profound hatred for every aspect of the Mesoamerican cultures and began a process to wipe them out. Eventually, the Indians were forbidden not only to learn of their cultures, but to learn to read and write in Spanish, and, under the law, they had the status of minors.

It has been reported that epidemics of smallpox and typhus killed up to 75% of the population. The population at the time of the conquest is estimated at 15 million; seventy years after the conquest, the estimated population was 3 million. Mexico City was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan.

Information about Aztecs survives in contemporary sources like Codex Mendoza collected in 1541 and in the works of Bernardino de Sahagún, who worked with the surviving Aztec wise men.

Nahuatl is still spoken by Mexican Indians, mostly in mountainous areas in the states surrounding Mexico City.

2 Never say die: There are at least 200 euphemisms for death, including “to be in Abraham’s bosom,” “just add maggots,” and “sleep with the Tribbles” (a Star Trek favorite).

3 No American has died of old age since 1951.

4 That was the year the government eliminated that classification on death certificates.

5 The trigger of death, in all cases, is lack of oxygen. Its decline may prompt muscle spasms, or the “agonal phase,” from the Greek word agon, or contest.

6 Within three days of death, the enzymes that once digested your dinner begin to eat you. Ruptured cells become food for living bacteria in the gut, which release enough noxious gas to bloat the body and force the eyes to bulge outward.

7 So much for recycling: Burials in America deposit 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid—formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol—into the soil each year. Cremation pumps dioxins, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide into the air.

8 Alternatively . . . A Swedish company, Promessa, will freeze-dry your body in liquid nitrogen, pulverize it with high-frequency vibrations, and seal the resulting powder in a cornstarch coffin. They claim this “ecological burial” will decompose in 6 to 12 months.

9 Zoroastrians in India leave out the bodies of the dead to be consumed by vultures.

10 The vultures are now dying off after eating cattle carcasses dosed with diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory used to relieve fever in livestock.

11 Queen Victoria insisted on being buried with the bathrobe of her long-dead husband, Prince Albert, and a plaster cast of his hand.

12 If this doesn’t work, we’re trying in vitro! In Madagascar, families dig up the bones of dead relatives and parade them around the village in a ceremony called famadihana. The remains are then wrapped in a new shroud and reburied. The old shroud is given to a newly married, childless couple to cover the connubial bed.

13 During a railway expansion in Egypt in the 19th century, construction companies unearthed so many mummies that they used them as fuel for locomotives.

14 Well, yeah, there’s a slight chance this could backfire: English philosopher Francis Bacon, a founder of the scientific method, died in 1626 of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken with snow to see if cold would preserve it.

15 For organs to form during embryonic development, some cells must commit suicide. Without such programmed cell death, we would all be born with webbed feet, like ducks.

16 Waiting to exhale: In 1907 a Massachusetts doctor conducted an experiment with a specially designed deathbed and reported that the human body lost 21 grams upon dying. This has been widely held as fact ever since. It’s not.

17 Buried alive: In 19th-century Europe there was so much anecdotal evidence that living people were mistakenly declared dead that cadavers were laid out in “hospitals for the dead” while attendants awaited signs of putrefaction.

18 Eighty percent of people in the United States die in a hospital.

19 If you can’t make it here . . . More people commit suicide in New York City than are murdered.

20 It is estimated that 100 billion people have died since humans began.