Shades of Young Frankenstein! As part of a survey of human-error incidents in mortuaries throughout the United Kingdom, it was discovered at an undertaker put the wrong brain back into a body post-autopsy. The error was “corrected immediately,” according to the UK’s Human Tissue Authority, but was one of 278 incidents reported by the BBC. Among them were 38 times the wrong body was delivered to the family and thirteen occasions where bodies were released without their full compliment of organs, making us wonder if the morticians treated the bodies the way we did when building model cars—if the piece wouldn’t fit, or was too hard to glue in, into the box of spare parts it went!
Sure, you’ve been to the Playa for Burning Man, but you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve been to Custer, South Dakota for the annual Burning Beetle festival. It’s pretty much just what it sounds like—a celebration to commemorate the end of the pine beetle infestation that plagued the Black Hills. After a variety show of beetle-themed, the crowd is given torches and, along with the Custer volunteer fire department, armed with blowtorches, march to a pitch, where a twenty-foot effigy of a beetle atop an eight-foot pyre is set aflame, to cheers of “burn, beetle burn.” It might not be your cup of tea, but it’s better than people burning their Beatle memorabilia…
“Someone from a village reported that a family was burning the body of a woman in an open field” sounds like the start of a novel we’d like to read, but it’s an actual line from a news report in the Hindustan Times. Even worse, the woman was a victim of honor killer; police believe she was killed by her parents for ruining the marriage they had arranged for her and becoming romantically involved with a man from another caste. She was killed when she threatened to elope.
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