Being eaten by lions, torso murders, remodelling the kitchen with coffins

I think I'll go check out Facts About Multiples, as it's been updated. Then maybe I'll make storm / heavy rain preparations, such as shutting this computer down for a bit. We'll see...


Today's Tasty Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

In March 1898, the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo (SAH-vo) River in East Africa. Over the next nine months, two large male lions killed and ate nearly 140 railway workers. Crews tried to scare off the lions and built campfires and thorn fences for protection, but to no avail. Hundreds of workers fled Tsavo, halting construction on the bridge.

Before work could resume, chief engineer Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson (1865-1947) had to eliminate the lions and their threat. After many near misses, he finally shot the first lion on December 9, 1898, and brought down the second three weeks later. The first lion killed measured nine feet, eight inches (3 m) from nose to tip of tail. It took eight men to carry the carcass back to camp. The construction crew returned and completed the bridge in February 1899.

Culled from: The Field Museum

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Talk about a pair of cool cats! The lions are on display at the Field Museum here in Chicago, and of course the movie The Ghost and the Darkness was made about them.

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Tragedy Strikes The Comtesse DeSpair

The most horrendous thing happened to me today. My Thunderbird inbox became corrupted! (I know - for such a pious Comtesse, I found it quite astonishing as well!) And, of course, I hadn't performed a recent back-up, so I've essentially lost all of my pending emails. This is, quite naturally, immensely distressing to me... but I've tried everything I can do to restore the file and nothing works - it appears to be hopelessly corrupted. (As Thunderbird support says, "If none of these procedures work, count your losses" - gee, thanks!) Of course, I'm smacking myself on the forehead until bloody (much like the latest Peaches video) for being so stupid as to not perform a regular back-up of my inbox, but what can I do? Suffice to say, I will be much more diligent in the future.

I was up to about mid-September in replying to my emails, so if you have contributed anything in the last few months and you haven't heard back from me, please feel free to send your submission to me again (mailto:despair@asylumeclectica.com). The saddest thing about losing the inbox is missing out on all those wonderful links, trinkets, brushes with morbidity, morbid sightseeing suggestions, and the like that I receive from you every day.

I am playing TAPS for those lost missives as I type.

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Wretched Recommendations!

zale has a book recommendation for us:

"The Thames Torso Murders of Victorian London by R. Michael Gordon details some wonderfully gruesome murders that have unfortunately been overshadowed by Jack the Ripper and his crimes, though the book does try to link them together."

The Thames Torso Murders of Victorian London by R. Michael Gordon

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Morbid Link Du Jour!

Now, here's a PROPER way to remodel a kitchen: Coffin It Up!

Thanks to dusty for the link.