Could this have been the shortest marriage ever? And does this kind of thing (dropping dead at the altar) happen often enough that it's no longer weird? [Source: The Day - Apr 3, 1967]
"This Museum was established in 1990 by the Heimatverein Neroth in the old School House to celebrate the mouse trap making cottage industry that had flourished in Neroth and nearby villages for over one hundred years."
The man depicted above is Dr. Bernard Wheatley who, after the deaths of his family, chucked a flourishing career to live as a hermit on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
In 1957 Dr. Bernard Wheatley - an African American physician from the Virgin Islands - made a pilgrimage to Kalalau Valley. Distraught after the death of his wife and son in a car accident, he kept questioning the meaning of life and other ontological problems until the answers finally came. In a remarkable religious conversion-like revelation he realized that life is eternal. He abandoned his medical practice, sold all his worldly possessions and sought a quiet, secluded place where he could earnestly seek truth without distraction. He arrived on the remote Island of Kauai and after seeing Kalalau from a ridge-top lookout in Kokee, he knew that he had found his home.... He passed on December 3, 1991 at the age of 72. His ashes were spread in Kalalau.
Over in Australia, Darwin City Council Alderman Gary Lambert is in the news for proposing that bodies should be buried upright, in order to save space in the local cemetery. He also thinks the corpses should be frozen before burial because, "If it's not frozen, it will wobble and move, and this makes sure that the body is in a straight position and can fit inside the hole."
His idea about burying bodies frozen is actually more original than burying them upright, because those who worry about making the burial process more efficient have been pushing the upright burial concept for a long time. In fact, there's already an Australian company, Upright Burials, dedicated to promoting this method. Their infographic is below. As you can see, they've solved the problem of how to bury a body unfrozen without it wobbling and moving.
Posted By: Alex | Date: Tue Mar 19, 2013 | Comments (7)
Category: Death
Category: Death, Husbands, 1960's