Fun Facts from Death for Beginners

1.  One pound of body weight will yield roughly 1 cubic inch of ashes.

2.  With cryonics, you can just “freeze” your head and choose a body when science is advanced enough to revive you. Let’s all take a moment and think about the kind of body we would choose.

3.  Some statistics state that the carbon emissions from a cremation equal that of cooking a hamburger.

4.  One company makes furniture that can later be converted into your casket.

5.  When you donate your body to a body farm, it will be placed outdoors in a protected research facility and left to decompose. The up side is you get to help catch the bad guys.

6.  Your ashes can be made into lead for a pencil that will be used to draw your portrait.

7.  Contrary to urban myth, there is no public health risk if the body is not embalmed.

8.  The items most requested to be buried with the body are cell phones and Blackberries.

9.  You can still be mummified but it comes with a $67,000 price tag.

10. You can be buried at sea in a living coral reef.

11. Costco and Wal-Mart sell caskets!

12. For about $35 you can buy a coffin for your wedding ring and then perhaps bury it or mail it to your ex-spouse.

13. You can buy caskets shaped like kites, surfboards or beer bottles.

14. Now you can look good at your viewing! Plastic surgery after death is the new fashion trend.

15. The latest rage is to have a solar-powered panel containing a multimedia tribute to the deceased mounted on the monument or memorial marker. Who says baby boomers are self-absorbed?

16. Victorian ‘Coffin Torpedoes’ Blasted Would-Be Body Snatchers: Grave robbing got more hazardous in the 1880s. http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/coffin-torpedos