⅏Did You Know - 15 Things You Didn't Know About the DEAD?

15 Things You Didn't Know About the Dead

1. A human head stays conscious for 15-20 seconds after decapitation.  A cockroach can live for up to 9 days without it's head!
2. One in 200,000 high school-age athletes die suddenly every year.  Most deaths occur in football and basketball, and males are five times more likely to die than females.
3. 80% of all U.S. deaths occur in hospitals despite the emergence of the popularity of dying at home through hospice and home healthcare.
4. The average burial in the U.S. puts hundreds of gallons of embalming fluid (includes formaldehyde and ethanol) into the soil.
5. It's not true that suicide rates are higher among the holiday season; actually the opposite is true.
6. A death erection, angel lust or terminal erection is a post-mortem erection, technically a priapism, observed in the corpses of human males who have been executed, particularly by hanging.
7. The majority of people who die in fires don't die from burns, but rather they suffocate due to lack of oxygen an inhale toxic gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide.
8. The one common cause in all incidents of death is lack of oxygen.
9. After death, the enzymes that once digested your meals, will begin to digest the tissues of your body.  This begins within 3 days of your death.
10. In New York City, more people commit suicide than are murdered; news reports are filled with reports of death by murder.
11. The U.S. does not classify "old age" to be a cause of death although dying of old age is common.  Why?  Whether organs wear out, or disease processes become unmanageable there always are specific reasons for a person's death.  The International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), does list "senescence" a medical euphemism for old age, as a cause of death.
12. What do the following people have in common?   Elvis Presley, Lenny Bruce, Orville Redenbacher and Robert Pastorelli - they all died in a bathroom.
13. Cremations are not much better when it comes to polluting the earth.  Cremation puts harmful gasses into the air including dioxins, mercury vapour from dental fillings, hydrochloric acid, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide.
14. There are over 200 euphemisms for death in the English language.  Some favorites are:  bought the farm (this supposedly comes from the G.I. Insurance Policy, because the amount of money the next of kin would receive was enough to buy a farm), checked out, bit the big one, kicked the bucket, bitten the dust, popped their clogs, pegged it, carked it, turned their toes up and assumed room temperature (popular among mortuary technicians).
15. In China, your family has more luck if more people show up to your funeral.  So it is a tradition to round up as many people as possible - even if these people don't know the deceased.  One way to do this is to hire exotic dancers for funeral processions.  This way, more people are sure to show up for the funeral!

Source:  Medical Insurance Blog