Clipmarks | wiccantexan's 'death' clips

Russia says remains of last Czar's son identified

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:05:43 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Russia said on Wednesday that charred remains found in a pit belonged to Czar Nicholas II's only son and his daughter, exactly 90 years after the Bolsheviks shocked the world by murdering the last Czar.

Moscow's confirmation that the remains included those of Czar Nicholas' 13-year-old heir, Prince Alexei, came as hundreds of Russians flocked to a church built on the site where the family was gunned down by Bolshevik executioners.

Remains believed to belong to the Czar, his wife and three of his daughters were exhumed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were reburied in 1998 in the imperial crypt of the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg.

But Prince Alexei Nikolayevich and 19-year-old Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna were not among those remains.

Forensic scientists said molar teeth and amalgam fillings found with the new remains matched those found among the remains of the other members of the royal family.

Tags: russia, history, dna, forensics, death, family, royal

Former Senator Kills Young Geese on Gas Grill, Then Jokes About It

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:35:07 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.woai.com

Former Republican Mississippi state senator Mike Gunn has entered guilty pleas to charges he took young Canada geese from their habitat and killed them in his gas grill.

Boland said her attention was drawn to Gunn when she saw adult geese attacking him, trying to save their young.

She said he put the goslings in a gas grill and when that didn't kill them, he beat them to death.

Gunn told authorities he fed the geese to his dog.

After Gunn pleaded guilty in federal court he joked about the episode

"I ran afoul of the law, and laid a huge egg and have received a gaggle of problems as a result, I am just glad this wild goose chase is behind us now," Gunn joked as he left court.

"What's important to remember is the despicable way these baby geese or goslings were killed, and if we find others doing that we will all wind up right back here in federal court," Walker said.

Tags: animals, cruelty, abuse, geese, death, babies

Smithsonian Puts Mysterious Crystal Skull on Display

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:38:05 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

Some mysteries are such fun you almost don't want to know the truth. That may help explain why people are fascinated with crystal skulls.

"People like to believe in something greater than themselves," Smithsonian anthropologist Jane MacLaren Walsh said, and crystal skulls are mysterious and beautiful.

The skulls "are a fascinating example of artifacts that have made their way into museums with no scientific evidence to prove their rumored pre-Columbian origins," she added.

Crystals carved into the shape of a human skull fed the 19th century's need for drama and mystery and its fascination with death.

Of the many crystal skulls in museums and private collections around the world, the Smithsonian's is one of the largest, at 10 inches high and weighing 30 pounds.

The skulls were carved from blocks of quartz — sometimes called rock crystal — and show the marks of modern carving tools. That means they were not made before the 19th century.

Tags: death, skull, museum, mystery, smithsonian

Japanese Man Dies After Working Excessive Overtime

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:35:15 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

A Japanese labor office ruled that one of Toyota's top car engineers died from working too many hours.

It was the latest decision against overwork in Japan, where stoic acceptance of extended overtime has long been the norm.

The victim's wife's lawyer says the man, who was 45, had been under severe pressure as the lead engineer in developing a hybrid version of Toyota's Camry line.

According to the lawyer, in the two months up to his death, the engineer averaged more than 80 hours of overtime per month.

The ruling, which will allow his family to collect benefits from his work insurance, is the most recent in a string of decisions against long working hours in Japan. The country has been struggling to cut down on deaths from overworking, known as "karoshi," which have steadily increased since the Health Ministry first recognized the phenomenon in 1987.

Tags: japan, japanese, work, overtime, death

Archaeologists Recreate Aztec 'Whistles of Death'

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 02:02:55 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

Scientists were fascinated by the ghostly find: a human skeleton buried in an Aztec temple with a clay, skull-shaped whistle in each bony hand.

But no one blew into the noisemakers for nearly 15 years.

When someone finally did, the shrill, windy screech made the spine tingle.

If death had a sound, this was it.

Roberto Velazquez believes the Aztecs played this mournful wail from the so-called Whistles of Death before they were sacrificed to the gods.

The 66-year-old mechanical engineer has devoted his career to recreating the sounds of his pre-Columbian ancestors, producing hundreds of replicas of whistles, flutes and wind instruments unearthed in Mexico's ruins.

Tags: history, archaeology, culture, mexico, aztec, death

Obama disagrees with court on child rape case

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:46:52 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Democrat Barack Obama said Wednesday he disagrees with the Supreme Court's decision outlawing executions of people who rape children, a crime he said states have the right to consider for capital punishment.

"I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances for the most egregious of crimes," Obama said at a news conference. "I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime and if a state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that that does not violate our Constitution."

Obama, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, said that had the court "said we want to constrain the abilities of states to do this to make sure that it's done in a careful and appropriate way, that would have been one thing. But it basically had a blanket prohibition and I disagree with that decision."

Tags: obama, child, rape, supreme court, death penalty, constitution

Americans: My Religion Isn't The Only Way

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:15:09 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.cbsnews.com

(CBS/ AP) America remains a nation of believers, but a new survey finds most Americans don't feel their religion is the only way to eternal life - even if their faith tradition teaches otherwise.

The findings, revealed Monday in a survey of 35,000 adults, can either be taken as a positive sign of growing religious tolerance, or disturbing evidence that Americans dismiss or don't know fundamental teachings of their own faiths.

In all, 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation shared that view, and 68 percent said there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their own religion.

"There's a growing pluralistic impulse toward tolerance and that is having theological consequences," he said.

"I think that organized religion could find this also a little bit threatening in the sense when dogma and doctrine become less and less important, it doesn't matter belonging to one church or another," Williams said on the CBS Evening News.

Tags: religion, faith, american, belief, life, death, theology

Empty 'Meet the Press' chair honors Russert

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:34:59 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

The moderator's chair on NBC's "Meet the Press" stood empty on Sunday in remembrance of Tim Russert, the man who had occupied it for 17 years.

Colleague and former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, who broke the news about the anchor's death, spoke on Sunday the familiar first four words of the news program, "Our issues this Sunday." He noted that those were the same words Russert had been recording for the show when he collapsed and died. Watch Brokaw break the news »

"Our issue this sad Sunday morning is remembering and honoring our colleague and friend," Brokaw said.

"This is where you separated the men from the boys," said Matalin, who is married to Carville. "You weren't a candidate until you came on this show."

Russert had appeared as an unlikely icon for television news, with his cherubic face and dimpled chin, but he was a prolific interviewer and tireless journalist, one with an intimidating breadth of political knowledge and insight.

Tags: tv, television, journalism, politics, tim russert

Singer’s bloody EMail stunt flopped

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:20:48 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

I received a really disturbing e-mail the other afternoon.

It's not everyday that I get death threats, so naturally I freaked, clicked on the link and up popped a news report about a series of copycat murders that had been inspired by the R&B singer Ashanti's video "The Way That I Love You," a song about a woman who discovers her boyfriend has been unfaithful.

Jealous lovers, according to the report, were on a rampage -- and the next victim, it suggested, would be me. On the wall of one of the crime scenes were the words "Lola Will Die," written in what appeared to be blood.

Turns out the entire thing was a hoax, a publicity stunt created to help Ashanti sell her latest album, "The Declaration." Visitors to her Web site were invited to fill out a "gotcha-gram" questionnaire, which would allow one to personalize the news report. The target would receive an ominous e-mail from a "detective" and the name scrawled in blood at the fictional crime scene would be theirs.

Tags: stupid, music, email, hoax, publicity, internet

Manson follower Susan Atkins being considered for release

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:10:26 GMT

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Clip Source: www.woai.com

Authorities say Susan Atkins, a Charles Manson follower convicted in the 1969 murder of actress Sharon Tate, could soon be released from prison because she is near death.

State corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton says the now 59-year-old Atkins is terminally ill and is being considered for so-called "compassionate release."

Thornton says the corrections department is reviewing the request, which would then be passed to a state sentencing court.

Thornton did not say what sort of illness Atkins has.

Atkins helped stab Tate, the pregnant wife of filmmaker Roman Polanski, 16 times during a 1969 rampage that saw six others murdered.

Tags: charles manson, murder, prison, death, celebrity

Crackdown on Ghoulish 'Body Exhibitions'

Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:10 GMT

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Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says the company that has made millions of dollars with U.S. exhibitions of plasticized human bodies used "the remains of individuals that may have been tortured and executed in China."

In announcing what he called the "grim reality" of an official investigation triggered by an ABC News "20/20" report, Cuomo said the company, Premier Exhibitions, "despite repeated denials...had no way of knowing the true source of their human exhibits and no meaningful documentation to support their claims that the bodies had been donated for such a use."

"Respect for the dead and respect for the public requires that Premier do more than simply assure us that there is no reason for concern," said Cuomo.

In the "20/20" report on Premier, the then-premier CEO, Arnie Geller, denied using the bodies of executed prisoners and said all of the bodies had come from the Dalian Medical University in China.

Tags: china, body, human, exhibit, death

Stonehenge Part of Vast Religious Complex?

Thu, 29 May 2008 23:48:52 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

Even after 4,500 years, Stonehenge is bathed in mystery. Was it a temple? An observatory? Something else?

Mike Parker Pearson, an archeologist at the University of Sheffield, thinks he has a new answer. After eight years of excavation, he argues that Stonehenge was just one part of a great religious complex, built by Neolithic people in Britain who did not yet have writing or the wheel.

Two miles away from the famous circle of Stonehenge, Parker Pearson says there is evidence of a primitive town — primitive but remarkably large for 2,500 B.C. It would have had room for more than a thousand people.

What's more, there are signs nearby of a second circle — a virtual twin, except that it was made of wood.

Parker Pearson theorizes that the wooden circle was a celebration of life and perhaps fertility, while Stonehenge — the only remaining part of the complex — would have been a monument to death or the afterlife.

Tags: ancient history, history, stonehenge, religion, death, life, britain

Einstein letter calls Bible ‘pretty childish’

Wed, 14 May 2008 01:06:34 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

A letter being auctioned in London this week adds more fuel to the long-simmering debate about the Nobel Prize-winning physicist's religious views. In the note, written the year before his death, Einstein dismissed the idea of God as the product of human weakness and the Bible as "pretty childish."

Einstein, who helped unravel the mysteries of the universe with his theory of relativity, expressed complex and arguably contradictory views on faith, perceiving a universe suffused with spirituality while rejecting organized religion.

In it, Einstein said that "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

"Like many great scientists of the past, he is rather quirky about religion, and not always consistent from one period to another," Brooke said.

Tags: religion, belief, bible, science, god, theology

Texas eco-friendly cemetery offers 'green burial'

Wed, 14 May 2008 01:01:29 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.mysanantonio.com

When you think of a cemetery, usually dozens of rows of marble headstones crowded together lining acres of burial ground comes to mind.

However, one Texas cemetery is alive with the remains of people who chose to go green even in death.

Russell founded the state's first green cemetery and it is an eco-friendly final resting place where a person is buried without embalming fluid and without a coffin.

"Green burial is a form of eternal life because we humans are nothing more than recycled material," he said.

"It makes it such an intimate experience for the family," Russell said.

As for Russell and his wife, they too will be going green, but he's hoping for an even more unusual burial. “

Russell encourages “sky burial,” a Tibetan funeral practice in which the body of a dead person or an animal carcass is exposed to the open air to be eaten by vultures.

Tags: funeral, death, nature, ecology, green, texas

Civil War cannonball kills relic collector

Sat, 03 May 2008 15:39:11 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

Like many boys in the South, Sam White got hooked on the Civil War early, digging up rusting bullets and military buttons in the battle-scarred earth of his hometown.

As an adult, he crisscrossed the Virginia countryside in search of wartime relics — weapons, battle flags, even artillery shells buried in the red clay. He sometimes put on diving gear to feel for treasures hidden in the black muck of river bottoms.

But in February, White's hobby cost him his life: A cannonball he was restoring exploded, killing him in his driveway.

More than 140 years after Lee surrendered to Grant, the cannonball was still powerful enough to send a chunk of shrapnel through the front porch of a house a quarter-mile from White's home in this leafy Richmond suburb.

White's death shook the close-knit fraternity of relic collectors and raised concerns about the dangers of other Civil War munitions that lie buried beneath old battlefields.

Tags: war, civil war, collection, history, death, military