August 26, 2014 • 47 mins
Headstones have quite an interesting history. From the beginnings of marking graves with simple wood carvings to the elaborate tombstones that would come in the Victorian era, Chuck and Josh break down the deal with all things headstone in this episode.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles Seby, Chuck Bryant, sons out. Jerry's over there.
It's the end of July. There's a son out. Can
(00:21):
you tell him this tone? I can see I have
a window. I can look out behind you over your shoulder.
You must I mean this. I can't imagine you're not depressed,
just staring at foam. Yeah. When I look behind me,
it's like, jeez, but you're the light. Thanks. That just
makes everything. Okay. That's so nice of you. You're making
me blessed. I know. So how are you doing? Oh
(00:44):
I'm sleepy? Okay, well, well let's get this over with.
So sucking. Let good ticking naps and I guess we
have those like Japanese style nap rooms here. We're very forward. Thing.
That would be wonderful House the Works. Yeah. I don't
think i'd be able to do that at work take
a nap, no, no way, No, I don't think I
would be able to either. But I would think it'd
(01:05):
be wonderful just because it would show how progressive how
Stuff Works is. We should have nap um cubbies that
are like plexi, so you can just watch people nap.
How uncomfortable would that be? Or yeah, it would be
very uncomfortable. There's probably one or two weirdos here that
would love to do that. Yeah. Jonathan Strickland sucks is
thumb not a surprise. Um? Yeah, this was cobbled together,
(01:30):
this one, which is unusual. Yeah. Where where did you
get some of the information? One was the International Southern
Cemetery Gravestones Association, and the other was the U S
Department of Veterans Affairs, definitive sources. You know all about
headstones and grave markers and tombstones yea by any name. Yeah.
(01:50):
I think the professionals who make headstones or grave markers
or tombstones call them funeral markers, are grave markers. That's
the lingo of the jargon of the industry. Yes, and
this pairs nicely with our Coffins podcast. Dude, it pairs
nicely with a bunch of them. This is part of
the Dying Suite. Will never end until we die. Here
(02:13):
lies Josh and Chuck the death Swite. Um, So, Chuck,
you want to talk a little bit about the history
of this stuff. I've got a little bit of history.
I don't know if you have or not about how
long humans have been burying the dead. Let's hear it,
it's pretty old. As a matter of fact, there's evidence
of like weird funeral rights kind of at least an
(02:38):
assemblage of people acting differently, or an assemblage of primates
acting differently, um around a recently deceased member of their
group in bunabo um apes. So they'd like to poke
it and think it's not moving. Um. I don't think
they were poking it, but the way that they were
(03:00):
interacting with one another, like those with the highest rank
had the most access to the body. Um, they were
kind of guarding it from being disturbed. Uh, like early
signs of respect. Interesting and apparently Neanderthals as well, UM
used to as as as far back as two fifty
years ago. There's evidence that parts of the dead Neanderthals
(03:25):
were put away from the rest of the group in
what you could consider like a resting place like a
cave or something like that. I wonder if that started
because of just obvious things like smell and rotting bodies,
or if it was just or maybe both. Well, I mean,
we're hard wired for disgust to experience disgust, and disgust
(03:45):
warrns is like, don't eat that poop unless it's a
fecal transplant. Um, don't eat that vomit under any circumstances.
There's a lot of stuff that you shouldn't do, like
don't don't um eat that dead body. It's turned Um,
it's not a nice fresh dead body. So I would
guess that funeral rites grew out of the our sense
(04:06):
of disgust. Like you're saying, um, the that's just kind
of ambiguous stuff. Though the Neanderthals like they they de
fleshed bones and then place the bones in separate places.
Some people are like, well, it's evidence of cannibalism. Other
people are saying, that's a funerary practice. The unambiguous evidence
(04:27):
of burials comes I think about eighty thousand years ago,
between forty thousand and eighty thousand years ago in Egypt,
child was buried um next to a cobble pit. What's that?
It's where you like, you excavate stone to like pave
roads or something with although forty tho years ago they
weren't making roads. I'm not sure what a cobble pit
(04:50):
is nothing to do with it's an excavation pit. Um.
I guess that they were excavating stones to make tools.
I would guess rather them roade. But there was a
child buried by anatomically modern humans between forty thousand and
eighty thousand years ago, so we've been doing it for
a very long time. Yeah, but this is just burial. Right. Well,
(05:11):
we're talking about our headstones and they didn't come along
until far after that, right. Uh, Well, there weren't well
let's go back and them further to Roman and Celtic times. Uh,
they had headstones that there were kind of it seems
like they were pretty advanced for the time. And then
there was a period where they weren't so um detailed,
(05:34):
but early on they were super detailed. They would have pictures.
They would describe things that happened, these battles that took place.
If they died in battle and uh, Salmon's in Scotland,
they would describe the profession maybe uh if sometimes it
was pictorial, like if someone was a carpenter, they wouldn't
say here lies a carpenter. They would just have a
(05:55):
hammer maybe, um, like a saw. Yeah, that's a that
giveaway that it was a carpenter. Uh. Scotland was very descriptive.
Apparently in their early days of headstones too, they would
describe professions. So like early on it seems just like
the profession was a big deal, right, like this is
what they did here on earth. And in other cultures too,
(06:17):
there was this idea that you could erect a memorial
to somebody by placing a stone or something, an upright stone,
not necessarily at their grave, but like there's things called
stella um that are basically just markers that say like
this person did this um, or this person fought this
battle in one or lost, or this person was great
(06:39):
for some reason that makes us want to memorialize it
by carving this into a stone and placing it upright
and never said this person didn't do so much. Not really,
that came later in the twentieth century. But the idea
of stones period was before gravestones even. I think the
term headstone from what I gathered, is from the Jewish
(06:59):
custom of marking graves with stones and then um. I
think the other cultures did that too, like uh, supposedly
to keep the dead from rising, they would I thought
that was cool. But I've also heard and I think
it makes sense that they didn't want the bodies to
be disturbed by, you know, packs of wild coyotes. Yeah,
so to combat that, and if you were lazy and
(07:22):
didn't feel like burying, or you lived in a place
where the dirt was just too hard, you could make
something called a cairn or carn. Yes, c A I
r n and right, yeah, I'm not sure I was pronounced,
which is basically like you lay the body on the ground,
maybe you dig out a little bit of a shallow pit,
and then you place rocks around and on top of
it so that no, not even like the hungriest coyote
(07:44):
is not going to be able to get through this
pile of rubble. And then you may also erect like
a marker at the head of it. Sure, and these
I think at this point pre nineteenth century, I don't
even think there were cemeteries. It was just you would
be buried near your family plot, near your home with
your family. Um, but they weren't all gathered together a
(08:07):
bunch of dead people in one area. Uh well, it
was the whole family, was there, Yeah, but not like
a cemetery. And then depending um, on where how how
many people lived in a village, say, eventually that morphed
into a churchyard. The graveyard was moved to the church
because the church was so intertwined in people's everyday lives
(08:30):
that it just made sense that that's where you would
go to be buried. The thing is these were almost um,
purposefully gloomy places. They were um reminders. Yeah, it was
a reminder that you're gonna die a memnto maori. The
churchyard itself was a reminder that you're gonna die. Um.
(08:51):
And they were not landscaped. They were usually they had
a fence around him maybe, and there were the markers,
but that was about it. It wasn't meant to be
a place of solace or peace or meditation. Yeah, there's
one over in my neighborhood. There's a churchyard. Uh cemetery,
and it is it feels a little different than just
(09:13):
your average cemetery. It is, it looks a little different,
and it's does seem a little like I don't know. Well,
the reason why is because you and I are used
to what's called the Rural Cemetery Movement, the the RCM. Right,
you know, you have that T shirt but that that
was that came out of the nineteenth century. The I
(09:33):
think um the early mid nineteenth century where this idea.
As cities built up and people became further and further
removed from nature, and you also had less and less
space to just bury somebody in a churchyard, they started
moving the dead slightly to the outskirts of the city
and also put some thought into landscaping the area as well.
(09:58):
So what you have is what you and I think
of as a modern cemetery, very park like, nice shrubbery
um paved roads that that allow people to go through
a nice place for visitors. So much so that very
early on in the rural cemetery movement, for a while
families would go picnic there on Sundays. It was like
(10:19):
a park, but you also plant you're dead there too.
It was a little bit of both, but it and
also during this time that's not very surprising because during
this time death was so much more fully intricate, integrated
into the life of the average person that um having
a picnic there on a Sunday it didn't seem at
least bit bizarre. Macaw. Yeah, there weren't the hang ups
(10:41):
like we have these days. It seems like right, because
nowadays it's sterilized and removed. Death is Yeah. Back to
the headstones the Celts started using once Christianity came to Ireland,
they started using the the Celtic cross, which was originally
the I think called the sun cross, which was a
(11:03):
pagan symbol. But then um, I think St Patrick and
put the Christian cross over the sun cross and we
now had our Celtic cross and they started using that
became kind of a common but again not um specific,
just sort of like an unmarked grave still with the
Celtic cross, no inscription, right right, Yeah, that didn't come
(11:26):
until later. But like you said, there was um, there
was a lot of symbology or symbols attached, and then
over time it evolved to include things like date of birth,
date of death, the person's name, um, and then inscriptions
later on. Yeah, and thanks also to the Irish um.
They were the first ones I believed to get a
(11:46):
little cheeky with their uh sense of humor um And
I don't know, but well they probably yeah. But one
example that in the article I read said I think
of me as you walk by where you now stay,
and so once did I, which is you know for
the eighteenth century. That's that's a big time funny, right
because it rhymes yeah exactly. But again that's what's called
(12:08):
the memento More. It's like a reminder that you're gonna die,
so don't get too big for your breeches or don't
forget to go live your life. There's all sorts of
reasons for that. Uh. And America and the colonies, um,
colonial times, it wasn't super fancy um, and they used
they started to use things like limestone and marble instead
(12:30):
of wood, which would last longer in sandstone. But then
in the eighteen sixties they moved to igneous rock. Which
always want to say ignacious because of I always want
to say because Confederacy dunces. I think was it the
name of one of the characters. Yeah, the main guy,
Ignacious Riley was. It's igneous. What about saying ignacious who?
(12:53):
I don't know who was? If there was ever a
name for a saint, it's ignacious saying ignacious? But what
was he? The saint? I don't remember, just his name
always stood out to me like that is a saints name,
patron saint of podcasting? All right, Um. In the six
so they started using the igneous rock, which is underground
cooled rock, and that was much more permanent because other
(13:16):
stuff crumbled and you know the sandstone. Yeah, let's talk
about weathering, shall we. Um And in colonial times too,
when they were using these markers and headstones. Um. So,
symbology has been a part of headstones for a very
long time, whether it was the Celtic cross or a
(13:36):
saw to indicate a carpenter or whatever. And in the colonies, apparently,
um they like to remind everybody that only the most
pious select few we're going to go to heaven. The
rest of you are going to hell. Like, no bones
about it, buddy, you are going to hell. Sorry, And um,
(13:57):
I would like to use my headstone to remind you
of it. So I'm gonna put a sculling crossbones on it,
the death's head. They carved the death head, the death's
head onto the gravestone to remind others that they were
going to hell. That's what the Puritans did. Yeah. The
Victorians were fancy and always so they had really elaborate
(14:17):
headstones and tombs, and they were also big on like
the really nice park atmosphere. Well that's what that's what
it grew out of, was the Victorian era. Yeah, and
you sent a link to about some what some of
the Victorian symbols mean, right, Yeah, they had some there's
weren't quite as they weren't intended to be a reminder
(14:38):
that you're going to hell. They were a lot more
hopeful and a lot of these you still see on
tombstones today, headstones like modern ones and people who are
buried today, Like you'll see a bundle of wheat gathered together,
and that's the indicate that somebody lived a nice, long
life and and they were harvested and they will go
on and into the next life. A gateway might be
(14:59):
nice because that means sure, that's the gateway to heaven. Yes,
any kind of arch or gate Yeah, butterfly is the
symbol of resurrection. That's very nice. Um, if you have
a broken column, it indicates that you were cut down
in the prime of life, taken too young. Um. If
you have a flower that's broken, have you ever seen that?
(15:22):
Uh No, it's like it's it's it'll be like a
rose or something and then it's like snapped into That
indicates that, um, you were you died suddenly and if
it's a bud, if it's not an open flower, it
indicates it was a child. So there's like all this code. Yeah,
an hourglass is the transience of this life, right, or lamp,
the light of truth. Clasped hands, you know where there's
(15:45):
like somebody holding somebody else's hand that means like take care,
I'll see you in a few years. Or the saddest
maybe maybe the willow tree. That's just morning and that's
just really sad. It is sad, but there's none of
these are reminders that you're going to You're gonna go
to hell when you die. It's gonna be bad. The
(16:08):
Victorians were a little more uplifting. If anybody had their
finger on the pulse of death, it was the Victorians.
They just knew what they were doing. Another thing human
beings did in the eighteenth century was more safe. These cages,
iron cages they would put over um. But the Victorians
were like, no, that's really untoward. Well get rid of those.
Part of the reason why is because there wasn't that
(16:30):
need for it anymore. It was remember the cairns or
the carns me to stay carns. And it's probably wrong,
but that was to protect from coyotes disturbing the grave.
He also said Morls, yeahs and Kama Jacoma. Yeah, that's
what I said, Laura said Jacama. The more safe were
(16:54):
to protect the body from being dug up by people
who were robbing graves to sell the body to anatomists. Yeah,
or I imagine, you know, maybe loot the body as well.
On your way, like here's your body. Um, disregard where
that wedding gold wedding band was on the finger right?
Remember Mr Burns has um the suit that Charlie Chaplin
(17:15):
was buried in in a shadow box on it. That's
a good one. Uh. And that kind of you know,
brings us I guess, I mean that's skipping forward though.
But the modern era, the last hundred years has been um,
I mean headstone. The headstone industry is a big deal.
It's it's you know, people put a lot of thought
(17:37):
into what goes on their headstone or their family's headstone,
and cost a lot of money. And you can be
as ornate as you want to, or you can do
like in Royal Tannin bombs and invent your own fake headstone,
which is pretty good. You wanting to talk about some
of these ones. Yeah, some of these epitats. We have
the slide show on stuff you Should Know dot Com
(17:58):
called the twenty one remark Coble Epitaphs, and it is
definitely worth checking out. Um, and this one's my favorite.
Chuck Charleskowski, Yeah, Fewkowski's don't try that on. Yeah, and
he has a little pugilist too. Yeah. Well, he was
a huge boxing fan. I think he might have been
a boxer himself. He died, yeah, crazy. Yeah, for some reason,
(18:22):
I thought he was like in the eighties or something. No,
he's still working in the eighties. Yeah. Boy, he didn't
look good there at the end. Well, he pretty much
drank him to death, I know, but he Yeah, he
looked really bad. I remember seeing a documentary I think
from the eighties or not early nineties. Is that the
one where he like kicks his wife off of the
couch or something. He's like being physically abusive in the documentary.
(18:45):
He wasn't a nice fellow. No, he really wasn't. No,
he's not at all. You saw bar Flat, right, That's
one of my all time favorite movies. I figured it's
a good one. Who's that one? Mitchell's Oh, it's just
a person. Yeah, these are just like no worthy. Well
this sucks that awesome, Yeah, that seems like something I
might do. Actually, well this sucks on your grace stone. Yeah,
(19:07):
because this got me thinking of what I would want,
you know, um, And I mean I didn't come up
with anything, but I think I would just want something
sort of like humble, like, you know, he tried his best,
but you know, maybe he didn't do such a good
job all the time. Yet more, I wouldn't want to
(19:28):
like flout, like to out anything or trump up in
a life, you know, like he was a simple dude
who tried to not be such a jerk. How's that?
That's a good one. What about mel Blanks? Yeah, that's
all folks, that's a good one. Man. Of one thousand voices,
that's very nice. Some of these are a little smallsey
and sweet. This one was good. Robert Klay Allison his tombstone.
(19:52):
He died in seven at the age of forty seven.
His epitaph says he never killed a man that did
not need killing. That's pretty good. That's a gun slinger
right there. Did you know that only like four or
five times in the history of the United States, where
was there an actual gunfight in the center of town. No,
it sounds like a good don't be dumb. Oh yeah,
(20:13):
make a mental note. I think it's verified like five
times or something. It's very much a movie thing. I
mean there were plenty of gun you know, people shooting
in gunfights, but but like the whole like, hi, yeah,
come out in the middle of town and draw your
guns at the tick of the clock or whatever. You know.
Whaticed was a surprisingly good movie Three o'clock High. Did
(20:34):
you ever see that Richard Tyson and Casey Samasco. Yeah.
I saw that when it came out and thought, man,
this is kind of a different movie. And then years
later it's sort of a cult favorite. Uh. That guy
what was his name in the movie The Bully but
his real name, No, his name in the movie, I
don't remember. It was like he had like a scary
first name or something, and he went on to a sale.
(20:55):
Arnold Schwartz and anger in Kindergarten Cop. I didn't see
Kindergarten Cop. Really, Yeah, you should see it? All right,
you want to do anymore? We should we just tell
everybody to go check these out. I think we should
just near let's see this one more raised four beautiful
daughters with only one bathroom, and still there was love.
That's nice, It is nice. He wants to be morbid,
(21:18):
you know, I don't know. I think there's something to
be said. You're just gonna be some morbids. Mine will
probably say boom, I'm coming to get you right and chuck.
One more thing about um epitaphs and gravestones before we
move on. UM. There was this thing. Remember why two
K y two K bug I wasn't sold on that
to begin with, Well, there are a lot of potential problems.
(21:40):
It wasn't just with computer programs. One of them was
the grave marker industry. A lot of people by their
headstones ahead of time, and they had nineteen and then
nothing after the date because they expected to die in
the twentieth century. Well, a lot of people had to
have this filled in and re etched because they lived
(22:02):
into the two thousand's. There was a big problem, and
apparently a lot of long standing UM gravestone makers around
the sixties or seventies started really trying to persuade their
customers did not etch that in. A lot of people
didn't listen, some people did, some people didn't. Why would
you get that done ahead of time? I understand picking
out your plot and you're what you wanted to say,
(22:24):
but the actual etching, like who cares? I guess these
people really didn't want their families that have to do
almost anything. I get that, like, just put nine nine
in there, like I'm alive, it's two thousand. I gotta
call that guy. Yeah exactly. I mean, what a what
a thing to have on your to do list. You
need to get my epithelf filled in and recarve, drink
(22:47):
ovaltee and get epithets carve um. All right, So we'll
move on here after this message break and talk a
little bit about military graves and government funded headstone Okay,
so government furnished headstones and this is from the Veterans
Affairs website. But I thought that's pretty interesting. They also
(23:08):
call them Obama stones. That was off the cup. That
was good originally. UM. I found it interesting that standard
grave markers were even before the national cemeteries were established
in eighteen sixty two, and they had, like you know,
prior to the Civil War, they had all these frontier
(23:30):
armies and they would just bury you in uh, don't
bury me on the open prairie. Basically they would bury
you if you died in battle, not a mass grave
as in they would dump everyone in there, but um
a mass grave site. Yeah. Initially, like they would just
bury everyone together, or and they wouldn't even market yeah,
or you were just buried in battle like where you
(23:51):
died if things were really tough, yeah, if yeah, if
you were lucky. I'm quite sure there are plenty of
soldiers who were not left on the frontier to basically
be picked off by vultures sky burial sky burials on
the on the American front here. Um, yeah, you're exactly right,
I'm sure. It wasn't until like the nineteenth century that
they started even marking these mask grades. It was like, oh,
(24:12):
a bunch of soldiers died here, let's take a pit,
fill it in and just forget about it. Then in
the mid nineteenth century, like the Crimean War, for example,
they would raise a monument saying, there's a bunch of
guys buried here who fell in this battle. And it
wasn't until World War One that they started to really
try to individually bury men who fell in battle. Yeah. Initially,
(24:34):
in the Civil War days, they would um used a
wooden board, UM, and it would have a registration number
and some sort of inscription. But they didn't keep any
kind of records of burials at that point. That came
along later as well. But once the Civil War happened
after the Battle of Manassas, they were like, a lot
of people are dying here. This is becoming a problem,
(24:56):
Like we need to find a way to respect these soldiers.
And oh, the Quartermaster General Um from the General's Orders
in September eighteen sixty one was directed to finally start
keeping records and provide headboards headboards in blank forms to
all of the commanders around the country so they could
(25:17):
just keep track of everything at least, right, And this
is the first time that anybody ever made a coordinated
effort to track burials ever. Apparently. Yeah, and after the
Civil War they made an effort for the first time
to relocate um people that were buried in battle and
have them relocated to an official grave. Yeah. After the
(25:40):
Civil War. Oh yeah, because they had a bunch of
Confederate dead that the Southern States reclaimed and moved down
south to bury so that they wouldn't have to be
buried in any Yankee earth. Yankee dirt. Uh. In eighteen
sixty five is when they started thinking, hey, these wooden
(26:02):
burial markers are not lasting very long. No, they were
expected to last about five years. They each cost at
the time a dollar twenty three, which is not cheap.
And so when you suddenly multiplied that by the three
hundred thousand expected dead from the Civil War that you
had to bury and then maintain their their headboards every
(26:22):
five years, they suddenly were like, this is gonna go
well into a million dollars over the next twenty years.
Maybe we should come up with something a little more
permanent than popsicle sticks. It was the economics of it,
and the public sentiments started growing to um to hey,
maybe we should memorialize these soldiers in a more permanent way. Yeah,
(26:43):
because a little wood thing that's rotting after a few
years is pretty kind of a disrespectful thing. And apparently
there was a huge and um vigorous debate over what
we should use as a headstone. Should we use like
something like marble, or should we use something like galvanized
iron coated in zinc, which I wasn't even familiar that
was the thing until today. Yeah, I've never heard of
(27:05):
it either. And I guess over the course of like
seven years there was a lot of debate and angry
words flying, and and um, I'm sure the marble industry
was like, yeah, yeah, Marble, and the galvanized iron industry
was like, you better get in there and get this passed.
And then finally the marvel people won. Yeah. And in
eighteen seventy three, Secretary of War William W. Bell nap
(27:27):
Um said, you know what we're gonna design. These stones
are gonna be in national cemeteries, are going to be permanent,
but they're only gonna be for the known dead at
this point. The unknown came about later as well. And
not only that this is just for Union soldiers. Yeah,
that we're not providing for the Confederate soldiers was a
bit of a slap in the base. I believe they
reversed that position later on, and they did. And then
(27:49):
anybody who'd ever fallen in battle in the United States
got a marker, and they made different markers for the
unknown dead. They were basically just blocks of stone, and
then it had the grave the burial plot carved into
the top of it. And then eventually they said we're
gonna make all of them the same everybody gets the
(28:11):
same marker. Yeah, and they made it retroactive to and
started started including past wars, Revolutionary War, War of eighteen twelve,
Mexican War, and Indian campaigns, and then eventually the Spanish
American War. So a lot of thought went into it.
I thought it was just kind of never really think
about that kind of thing. You just see like Arlington,
and you don't think about all the behind the scenes
(28:33):
work and decisions that need to be made on exactly
how to do that. Yeah. And they even did a
study in nineteen two to find out how the the
eighteen seventy nine markers were holding up, and they said,
we need to change these a little bit. So if
anyone ever asks you what the official military um headstone
(28:55):
in the US dimensions are, this would be the most
arcane piece of trivia anyone would asked. It's pretty arcane,
but you could probably impress some weird uncle or your
grandpa or something like that with this one. Uh. The
height of the stone is thirty nine inches tall, twelve
inches wide, and the thickness is four inches and apparently
(29:16):
the height extends twelve inches above the ground, so you
have twenty seven inches Bury below the ground. You've been
to Darlington, m hm, it's pretty neat. It is really something.
You go to Oakland Cemetery here in Atlanta, Yep, I've
been there too. Yeah, it's pretty nice. It is really something. Yeah.
And they Oakland even has and I've always felt I
(29:38):
don't think I have death hang ups, but they have
like concerts there and stuff like that. Yeah. And I
think they show movies there, yeah, I think so. Like
in the outside, um, there's some really neat mausoleums. There's
like a miniature, uh, statue of Liberty. There's some really ornate,
beautiful mausoleums. Bobby Jones, the famous golfer, is buried there,
(30:00):
and there's a putting green on his graves. I've never
seen that one. Yeah, if you if you, there's usually
golf balls there. I think if you bring your own
putter you can just sit there and put on his grave. Interesting. Yeah,
well I just recently saw Washington and Mrs Washington's grave
at Um up there in d C. Which was cool. Um,
but they were moved as well. That one's really kind
(30:22):
of when you go there to Mount Vernon, you know
you see them Bury. Oh yeah, we saw that recently too. Yeah,
you see, they were moved from their original one, but
the original tomb is still there and they made a
nicer one. And then there's the slave burial ground, which
is just a really kind of a sad place to
visit because it's not I mean, they've done something now,
but um, I don't know, it's just sort of a reminder, yeah,
(30:43):
of what went on, which, um, you know, speaking of
that Washington, it was like, you know, he's lauded for
freeing his slaves, but it was after he he freed
them after he died, and then in his will it
was after Martha Washington was to die. Um, then they
would be officially freed. And you know that's that's great. Whatever,
(31:06):
he still held slaves until he died. At least Martha
Washington did something remarkable though. Um. She gave the slaves
that she inherited from her husband their freedom within a
year of his death. She didn't wait until she died.
She was like, you guys, be free, and I mean
in Washington's favor for sure. He also provided a substantial
(31:28):
amounts of money for their for them to just start
a new free life. It wasn't just like your free
good luck. It was you guys are free, like, here's
here's a new life for you. Did you go recently? Yeah? Yeah,
pretty neat it is. It's like really well done. I
guess Living Museum. Yeah. I went last year with just
my sister and then went again. Actually, you and I
(31:50):
probably went within the last like a few weeks of
each other. It's funny, yeah, because I went with my
niece and Emily and um highly recommend going to melt Burnon.
It's and Monicello too. I still haven't been there. That's amazing.
Both of them are just really great spots to go
check out. It's pretty cool. I mean you can stand
there and look at the bed where he died. Yeah,
it's you're like five ft from it. Yeah. I try
(32:11):
to get in and lay down, and they did. I
got some. I got smacked on the wrist. Um. All right,
after this break, we're going to talk a little bit
about unmarked graves. Chuck. Yeah, I am interested in learning
(32:35):
the definition of an armarked grave, as per say someone
named Joe len uh, Well, it means it's a great
that's not march right. Pretty much, it's almost exactly what
you think it is. Is if somebody is buried in
a grave. And this is according from this article from
How Stuff Works. According to um Joelene Mason, who's the
(32:58):
general manager of Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park, which
is where a lot of celebrities are buried in Los Angeles,
it's really one of the most useless quotes I've ever seen.
She says, quote, if there's no marker, headstone, or nameplate
and there's someone in the grave, it qualifies as unmarked.
She was probably like, yeah, she hung up, just shaking
her head. Uh, there are many reasons. There's a lot
(33:21):
of reasons why you might want your grave unmarked. Um man,
that was so caddy of us. Just then to make
fun of that lady, well, to make fun of the quote,
the whole thing. Yeah, that's sorry. Sorry everyone. I didn't
think it was that caddy. I was moved to say something, right, Um,
Like I said, there's a lot of reasons you might want,
(33:44):
uh or not want. There's all the reasons you might
have an unmarked grave. Historically, you might have an unmarked
grave if you are a really bad person. Um like Himmler.
Oh his grave isn't mark That makes sense, Yeah, pretty
bad persons, bad person, good example of a bad person. Hey, thanks,
(34:04):
you're welcome. Um executed criminals a lot of times have
unmarked graves a lot of times the show like you know,
contempt for what they did on Earth, but a lot
of times too. It's also so it doesn't draw people
there to you know, go do bad things to face
the grave in any way, um, family victims or whatever.
It's also if families. If you die of pauper, you
(34:26):
will be buried in what's called the potter's field. And
Oakland Cemetery has a potter's field. Yeah, like one next
to the theater to the drive in theater. Is there
a potter's field there? Oh yeah, I know that right
next to it. But basically it's just a plot of
unmarked graves and the state still does that. Yeah. The
one next to uh starlight drive in is um, like
(34:47):
a lot of bad stuff goes on over there. Apparently
it's like prostitution and drugs and yeah, um, what else
could you do? You could scatter the remains of a
bad person and not even have a grave at all.
And that's what some of the Nazi war criminals that
was their fate. Like I commend and Guring were just
(35:07):
scattered and like, so no one would know where they were.
You know, it wasn't around then, but today it would
seem like if you came up against the Nazis again,
the best way to dispose of their body would be
something we mentioned in our episode, what are different ways
to dispose of a body? And remember the auto licens
one where you turned into a biscus goo that can
(35:30):
be poured down the drain. That's what you should do
with Nazis these days. Put it in the toilet and
flush it. Yes, yes, heads up Nazis. Yeah, but in
some cities don't they treat waste water for eventual drinking
water That the process of auto licens renders it um sterile,
(35:51):
So you can just pour it down the drain. But
would you want to drink it? Tho? I can't imagine
the molecules that we drink, the things that we drink
what they used to be. Yeah, that's still make it
into our body on a molecular level. I'm sure it
would be revolting to know. As a matter of fact,
if anybody out there does know, if you work in
like wastewater treatment or something, share some stories. Yeah, that'd
(36:13):
be a good podcast. I don't know if I want
to know. Do you remember the story of that poor
girl in Los Angeles who um went missing? She was
on a trip there by herself for a few days
from Canada in the last couple of years. Oh, the
one in the tank. Yeah. They found her in the
drinking and the hotel water tank on the roof after
(36:33):
like I think a week or two. Yeah, because people
said the water tasted funny, yeah, and looked funny. Yeah.
She was the one that did the strange stuff with
the elevator, right, Yes, yeah, she was. She was mentally ill.
That was really sad. Wasn't mental illness or was she
on drugs? I don't believe she had a history of
mental illness. Did Yeah she did? Oh she did. Yeah.
It is sad. I mean it's sad either way. Yeah,
(36:54):
But at first it's like, oh my gosh, it's the
creepiest thing I've ever seen, because her behavior was so weird. Yeah.
If you look on line, there's a lot of sixteen
year olds, they're like stoof that she was possessed by
a demon, and they actually mean it, chuck, they mean it.
Come on, sixteen year olds, get tracked together all right,
And now to close, we're gonna go over some famous
(37:16):
people with unmarked graves, because sometimes if you're famous, your
family might want to unmark graves so your grave site
doesn't become a tourist stop. Um, that's one reason, I guess,
because you've ever been to like, No, I haven't, but
I've seen pictures. Yeah. I went, of course, because I
was just out of college, way into the doors, and
(37:37):
you didn't. No, I went and looked at it. You
don't like the doors anymore, there, do you it? Um?
It was a passing fancy, but I don't like dislike
the doors. But I was like really into him for
a while, and then I now I'm coming to Morrison
was not much of a poet. I bought his poetry
books back then, and I was all into the Lizard King.
(38:00):
I think it's something that happens when you're twenty. Yeah,
what's good music. I still like him. Um. I was
into Pink Floyd for a while too, but I don't
listen to them much anymore. They have a new album
coming out, from what I understand, Yeah, I did hear
that old material that they've is gonna be awesome. Yeah,
I still love Pink Floyd, but not like I did
when I was fourteen. Yeah, alright, Mozart, he's in an
(38:24):
unmarked to him. Um, because even though we see him
as a big shot, he at the time was not
in the upper Echelona society. No, you had to be
pretty high falutin in the eighteenth century in Vienna to
get a grave marker. Yeah, so he's buried. They now
have an In the eighteen fifties, they built a monument
(38:46):
over where they think he was buried. Um. And then
that was later moved to a space where they just
had honored various musicians that were buried there. And they
put up another monument near his original assumed or prison
grave site at Marks Cemetery St. Mark's m r x UM.
And it has an angel leaning up against the broken column, which,
(39:10):
as you remember, indicates someone who has cut down the
prime of life. And Mozart died at age thirty five
suddenly of rheumatic fever. The vapors he had the vapors,
So that that's what I call the Enna's nice ever
been there? Uh? No, lovely? Uh it is John Wayne.
He is buried in his family gives his reason for
(39:33):
his unmarked grave for just not wanting to be uh,
disrespectful to others that are also buried there, which I
think is a pretty nice thing. That's kind of a
I don't want to say a trend, but a lot
of celebrities families do that they they're buried in unmarked
graves either because they have the same thought that you have,
(39:54):
Like you want to be humble. You can't be much
more humble than being buried in an mark grave. Yeah,
I want to be marked at least, so like George C. Scott,
Frank Zappa, they're both buried in on Mark graves. Roy Orbison.
Roy Orbison is um because apparently his family never got
around to putting a headstone on his grave. They were
(40:15):
planning on moving him and never have, so he's been
laying in on Mark Graves since Yah Bessie Smith famous
blue singer. She was big in the vaudeville scene in
the nineteen twenties and like a lot of the siren
singers of the day, I had a problem with alcoholism
and died in a car crash in ninety seven. And
(40:39):
she didn't have a grave because her husband apparently the
rumors didn't want to pay for it, and years later
Janice Joplin was such a fan she had moved to
pay for and commission a headstone for her um and
I didn't see if it was ever done. It says
she died shortly thereafter, but I don't know if that
project was ever completed. It was okay, it went through
(41:01):
all right. Mike Tyson did that too. His mother was
died very poor and I think had an unmarked grave
or a very small marker. And after he hit it big,
one of the first things he did was get this huge, gaudy,
elaborate headstone erected for Belushi has been uh. They've had
(41:21):
some problems with fans of Belushi's partying at his grave,
so they moved him from his UH grave and Martha's
vineyard to a spot that only the family knows. But
they have two uh cinotaphs, which are empty tombs, one
at Martha's vineyard, one at his family plot in Chicago
where you can go visit, but apparently only like his
(41:42):
family knows where he's truly buried. Now. Um, and you know,
I hung out in the room where he died a
couple of times. Yeah, and the in the Belushi Cabana
at the Chateau Marmott. Oh yeah, I always think he was.
It was it was Chicago, but that was um Chris Farley,
who died in exactly the same manner that Belushi did,
(42:03):
just in Chicago. Yeah, it's a little weird. I mean
you're sitting there and you're you know, I was having
a good time and having a few drinks, and it's
like John Belushi died right here where I'm standing, and um, yeah,
bad way to go. What speedball? And then chuck out?
Got one more? Remember the movie Peter Pan, the Disney
movie The Cartoon. Yeah, a little boy who voices who
(42:27):
voiced Peter Pan. He is buried in an unmarked Popper's grave.
That is sad. Yeah, he was in. His name is
Bobby Driscoll. He was in not just Peter Pan, but
also um Treasure Island movie called The Window. And he
was a child star and after he hit puberty he
was apparently discarded by Hollywood and hit the skids and
(42:50):
he actually died. The guy who the kid who voiced
Peter Pan died at age thirty one in an abandoned
apartment in New York City. Um, not even of a
drug overdose, but of a whole bunch of drug overdoses
that finally led to catastrophic heart failure. Um and his
mother started looking for him a year after he died
(43:11):
and found that he died because I guess the police
printed him. He was just a John Doe until his
mother started looking for him. But he's still buried in
an omark grave from what I understand. Yeah, and it's
not just like, oh, he was famous, and it's so
sad he died that way because thousands of people die
every day in this country, homeless people that died with
(43:31):
no family and no one that cares about burying them. Well,
there's also a lot of people who have family, whose
family don't have enough money to do anything. And I
have no choice but to allow the state to handle
the funeral. And it is not an elaborate funeral. State
state run funerals are not elaborate, I'm sure. Unless it's
(43:52):
ahead of state, then there wizz bangs in salute. I
got nothing else, I don't either. Go to our website
Stuff you Should Know dot com and check out twenty
one remarkable epitaphs. It's pretty good, if I say so myself. Uh,
you can um read the let's see what is it?
(44:13):
Ten famous people buried in unmarked graves that articles on
how stuff works dot com? And since I said how
stuff works dot com, it's time for listener now. I'm
gonna call this branical illusion, okay. And this is something
that we hear about a lot, and UH as fans
of radio and podcasting myself. If you've never seen someone
(44:36):
that you've always heard, it's always jarring to see what
they look like. And some people still don't even want
to know what we look like, which you know, I get.
I don't blame you, man, I've seen Kiris Doll before. Yeah,
it's just fun to look at the NPR people like
Lois writes, as I expected to be three years old,
And Lois writes, this looks exactly like I would have
thought she did. She looked younger than I thought, Um,
(44:58):
but not much. All right, Hey, guys, uh, Josh, Chuck
and Jerry and again Jerry spelt correctly. People are really
getting with it. Man. I've been an avid listener uh
to your podcasts and the sister podcasts since two thousand nine.
Never thought I'd have anything interesting enough to write in about.
But it finally happened, and it was so perception altering,
(45:19):
so randomly odd. I thought you should know. All these
years I had an inner podcast movie playing of YouTube
bantering going through my head. All was good. I could
see Chuck laughing, I could see Josh studiously explaining things,
and I stayed in podcast land, never having ventured out
to see your shows or videos. Yet I would enjoyed
them in time as well. But what turned my world
(45:40):
upside down and seemed like a brainical illusion was that
I finally did see a video of the two of you,
and Josh's voice was coming out of Chuck's face, and
Chuck's voice had a beard on it. All this time
I had thought of each of you was the other person,
and this is after he had already seen pictures, so
that must be really weird. Um, seeing those voices coming
(46:02):
on different faces has done my head in. I think
the culprit is how your pictures are situated on the
podcast immans, with Chuck on the left and Josh on
the right. But since Westerners read from left to right
and the show always starts with Josh and Chuck and
then Chuck, that's the order of my brain. Put you
in I now have to fight with my inner podcast
movie to correct which face the voices are coming from,
(46:25):
and it causes constant bewilderment. Uh, you guys sent me
to my dreamland every night with your friendly voices. Thanks
a lot. Perhaps I would just follow the advice of
one of those funny T shirts, I reject your reality
and substitute my own, because no matter how hard I try,
I always see Josh with a beard and Chuck with
a buzz cut. You got it wrong, pal, and that
(46:45):
even though I did have a buzz cut recently. It's
from Avalon. Thanks a lot of Avalon. We appreciate you writing,
and we do hear that a lot. So for everybody
who that's ever happened to. Um, I'm sorry, I guess,
but not really, because there's something we could do about.
It's your brain. You look like what we look like.
If you want to share something from your brain with us,
you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
(47:08):
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcasts at how stuff Works dot com, and as always,
check us out at our home on the web. Stuff
you Should Know dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it How Stuff Works dot
(47:28):
com
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles Seby, Chuck Bryant, sons out. Jerry's over there.
It's the end of July. There's a son out. Can
(00:21):
you tell him this tone? I can see I have
a window. I can look out behind you over your shoulder.
You must I mean this. I can't imagine you're not depressed,
just staring at foam. Yeah. When I look behind me,
it's like, jeez, but you're the light. Thanks. That just
makes everything. Okay. That's so nice of you. You're making
me blessed. I know. So how are you doing? Oh
(00:44):
I'm sleepy? Okay, well, well let's get this over with.
So sucking. Let good ticking naps and I guess we
have those like Japanese style nap rooms here. We're very forward. Thing.
That would be wonderful House the Works. Yeah. I don't
think i'd be able to do that at work take
a nap, no, no way, No, I don't think I
would be able to either. But I would think it'd
(01:05):
be wonderful just because it would show how progressive how
Stuff Works is. We should have nap um cubbies that
are like plexi, so you can just watch people nap.
How uncomfortable would that be? Or yeah, it would be
very uncomfortable. There's probably one or two weirdos here that
would love to do that. Yeah. Jonathan Strickland sucks is
thumb not a surprise. Um? Yeah, this was cobbled together,
(01:30):
this one, which is unusual. Yeah. Where where did you
get some of the information? One was the International Southern
Cemetery Gravestones Association, and the other was the U S
Department of Veterans Affairs, definitive sources. You know all about
headstones and grave markers and tombstones yea by any name. Yeah.
(01:50):
I think the professionals who make headstones or grave markers
or tombstones call them funeral markers, are grave markers. That's
the lingo of the jargon of the industry. Yes, and
this pairs nicely with our Coffins podcast. Dude, it pairs
nicely with a bunch of them. This is part of
the Dying Suite. Will never end until we die. Here
(02:13):
lies Josh and Chuck the death Swite. Um, So, Chuck,
you want to talk a little bit about the history
of this stuff. I've got a little bit of history.
I don't know if you have or not about how
long humans have been burying the dead. Let's hear it,
it's pretty old. As a matter of fact, there's evidence
of like weird funeral rights kind of at least an
(02:38):
assemblage of people acting differently, or an assemblage of primates
acting differently, um around a recently deceased member of their
group in bunabo um apes. So they'd like to poke
it and think it's not moving. Um. I don't think
they were poking it, but the way that they were
(03:00):
interacting with one another, like those with the highest rank
had the most access to the body. Um, they were
kind of guarding it from being disturbed. Uh, like early
signs of respect. Interesting and apparently Neanderthals as well, UM
used to as as as far back as two fifty
years ago. There's evidence that parts of the dead Neanderthals
(03:25):
were put away from the rest of the group in
what you could consider like a resting place like a
cave or something like that. I wonder if that started
because of just obvious things like smell and rotting bodies,
or if it was just or maybe both. Well, I mean,
we're hard wired for disgust to experience disgust, and disgust
(03:45):
warrns is like, don't eat that poop unless it's a
fecal transplant. Um, don't eat that vomit under any circumstances.
There's a lot of stuff that you shouldn't do, like
don't don't um eat that dead body. It's turned Um,
it's not a nice fresh dead body. So I would
guess that funeral rites grew out of the our sense
(04:06):
of disgust. Like you're saying, um, the that's just kind
of ambiguous stuff. Though the Neanderthals like they they de
fleshed bones and then place the bones in separate places.
Some people are like, well, it's evidence of cannibalism. Other
people are saying, that's a funerary practice. The unambiguous evidence
(04:27):
of burials comes I think about eighty thousand years ago,
between forty thousand and eighty thousand years ago in Egypt,
child was buried um next to a cobble pit. What's that?
It's where you like, you excavate stone to like pave
roads or something with although forty tho years ago they
weren't making roads. I'm not sure what a cobble pit
(04:50):
is nothing to do with it's an excavation pit. Um.
I guess that they were excavating stones to make tools.
I would guess rather them roade. But there was a
child buried by anatomically modern humans between forty thousand and
eighty thousand years ago, so we've been doing it for
a very long time. Yeah, but this is just burial. Right. Well,
(05:11):
we're talking about our headstones and they didn't come along
until far after that, right. Uh, Well, there weren't well
let's go back and them further to Roman and Celtic times. Uh,
they had headstones that there were kind of it seems
like they were pretty advanced for the time. And then
there was a period where they weren't so um detailed,
(05:34):
but early on they were super detailed. They would have pictures.
They would describe things that happened, these battles that took place.
If they died in battle and uh, Salmon's in Scotland,
they would describe the profession maybe uh if sometimes it
was pictorial, like if someone was a carpenter, they wouldn't
say here lies a carpenter. They would just have a
(05:55):
hammer maybe, um, like a saw. Yeah, that's a that
giveaway that it was a carpenter. Uh. Scotland was very descriptive.
Apparently in their early days of headstones too, they would
describe professions. So like early on it seems just like
the profession was a big deal, right, like this is
what they did here on earth. And in other cultures too,
(06:17):
there was this idea that you could erect a memorial
to somebody by placing a stone or something, an upright stone,
not necessarily at their grave, but like there's things called
stella um that are basically just markers that say like
this person did this um, or this person fought this
battle in one or lost, or this person was great
(06:39):
for some reason that makes us want to memorialize it
by carving this into a stone and placing it upright
and never said this person didn't do so much. Not really,
that came later in the twentieth century. But the idea
of stones period was before gravestones even. I think the
term headstone from what I gathered, is from the Jewish
(06:59):
custom of marking graves with stones and then um. I
think the other cultures did that too, like uh, supposedly
to keep the dead from rising, they would I thought
that was cool. But I've also heard and I think
it makes sense that they didn't want the bodies to
be disturbed by, you know, packs of wild coyotes. Yeah,
so to combat that, and if you were lazy and
(07:22):
didn't feel like burying, or you lived in a place
where the dirt was just too hard, you could make
something called a cairn or carn. Yes, c A I
r n and right, yeah, I'm not sure I was pronounced,
which is basically like you lay the body on the ground,
maybe you dig out a little bit of a shallow pit,
and then you place rocks around and on top of
it so that no, not even like the hungriest coyote
(07:44):
is not going to be able to get through this
pile of rubble. And then you may also erect like
a marker at the head of it. Sure, and these
I think at this point pre nineteenth century, I don't
even think there were cemeteries. It was just you would
be buried near your family plot, near your home with
your family. Um, but they weren't all gathered together a
(08:07):
bunch of dead people in one area. Uh well, it
was the whole family, was there, Yeah, but not like
a cemetery. And then depending um, on where how how
many people lived in a village, say, eventually that morphed
into a churchyard. The graveyard was moved to the church
because the church was so intertwined in people's everyday lives
(08:30):
that it just made sense that that's where you would
go to be buried. The thing is these were almost um,
purposefully gloomy places. They were um reminders. Yeah, it was
a reminder that you're gonna die a memnto maori. The
churchyard itself was a reminder that you're gonna die. Um.
(08:51):
And they were not landscaped. They were usually they had
a fence around him maybe, and there were the markers,
but that was about it. It wasn't meant to be
a place of solace or peace or meditation. Yeah, there's
one over in my neighborhood. There's a churchyard. Uh cemetery,
and it is it feels a little different than just
(09:13):
your average cemetery. It is, it looks a little different,
and it's does seem a little like I don't know. Well,
the reason why is because you and I are used
to what's called the Rural Cemetery Movement, the the RCM. Right,
you know, you have that T shirt but that that
was that came out of the nineteenth century. The I
(09:33):
think um the early mid nineteenth century where this idea.
As cities built up and people became further and further
removed from nature, and you also had less and less
space to just bury somebody in a churchyard, they started
moving the dead slightly to the outskirts of the city
and also put some thought into landscaping the area as well.
(09:58):
So what you have is what you and I think
of as a modern cemetery, very park like, nice shrubbery
um paved roads that that allow people to go through
a nice place for visitors. So much so that very
early on in the rural cemetery movement, for a while
families would go picnic there on Sundays. It was like
(10:19):
a park, but you also plant you're dead there too.
It was a little bit of both, but it and
also during this time that's not very surprising because during
this time death was so much more fully intricate, integrated
into the life of the average person that um having
a picnic there on a Sunday it didn't seem at
least bit bizarre. Macaw. Yeah, there weren't the hang ups
(10:41):
like we have these days. It seems like right, because
nowadays it's sterilized and removed. Death is Yeah. Back to
the headstones the Celts started using once Christianity came to Ireland,
they started using the the Celtic cross, which was originally
the I think called the sun cross, which was a
(11:03):
pagan symbol. But then um, I think St Patrick and
put the Christian cross over the sun cross and we
now had our Celtic cross and they started using that
became kind of a common but again not um specific,
just sort of like an unmarked grave still with the
Celtic cross, no inscription, right right, Yeah, that didn't come
(11:26):
until later. But like you said, there was um, there
was a lot of symbology or symbols attached, and then
over time it evolved to include things like date of birth,
date of death, the person's name, um, and then inscriptions
later on. Yeah, and thanks also to the Irish um.
They were the first ones I believed to get a
(11:46):
little cheeky with their uh sense of humor um And
I don't know, but well they probably yeah. But one
example that in the article I read said I think
of me as you walk by where you now stay,
and so once did I, which is you know for
the eighteenth century. That's that's a big time funny, right
because it rhymes yeah exactly. But again that's what's called
(12:08):
the memento More. It's like a reminder that you're gonna die,
so don't get too big for your breeches or don't
forget to go live your life. There's all sorts of
reasons for that. Uh. And America and the colonies, um,
colonial times, it wasn't super fancy um, and they used
they started to use things like limestone and marble instead
(12:30):
of wood, which would last longer in sandstone. But then
in the eighteen sixties they moved to igneous rock. Which
always want to say ignacious because of I always want
to say because Confederacy dunces. I think was it the
name of one of the characters. Yeah, the main guy,
Ignacious Riley was. It's igneous. What about saying ignacious who?
(12:53):
I don't know who was? If there was ever a
name for a saint, it's ignacious saying ignacious? But what
was he? The saint? I don't remember, just his name
always stood out to me like that is a saints name,
patron saint of podcasting? All right, Um. In the six
so they started using the igneous rock, which is underground
cooled rock, and that was much more permanent because other
(13:16):
stuff crumbled and you know the sandstone. Yeah, let's talk
about weathering, shall we. Um And in colonial times too,
when they were using these markers and headstones. Um. So,
symbology has been a part of headstones for a very
long time, whether it was the Celtic cross or a
(13:36):
saw to indicate a carpenter or whatever. And in the colonies, apparently,
um they like to remind everybody that only the most
pious select few we're going to go to heaven. The
rest of you are going to hell. Like, no bones
about it, buddy, you are going to hell. Sorry, And um,
(13:57):
I would like to use my headstone to remind you
of it. So I'm gonna put a sculling crossbones on it,
the death's head. They carved the death head, the death's
head onto the gravestone to remind others that they were
going to hell. That's what the Puritans did. Yeah. The
Victorians were fancy and always so they had really elaborate
(14:17):
headstones and tombs, and they were also big on like
the really nice park atmosphere. Well that's what that's what
it grew out of, was the Victorian era. Yeah, and
you sent a link to about some what some of
the Victorian symbols mean, right, Yeah, they had some there's
weren't quite as they weren't intended to be a reminder
(14:38):
that you're going to hell. They were a lot more
hopeful and a lot of these you still see on
tombstones today, headstones like modern ones and people who are
buried today, Like you'll see a bundle of wheat gathered together,
and that's the indicate that somebody lived a nice, long
life and and they were harvested and they will go
on and into the next life. A gateway might be
(14:59):
nice because that means sure, that's the gateway to heaven. Yes,
any kind of arch or gate Yeah, butterfly is the
symbol of resurrection. That's very nice. Um, if you have
a broken column, it indicates that you were cut down
in the prime of life, taken too young. Um. If
you have a flower that's broken, have you ever seen that?
(15:22):
Uh No, it's like it's it's it'll be like a
rose or something and then it's like snapped into That
indicates that, um, you were you died suddenly and if
it's a bud, if it's not an open flower, it
indicates it was a child. So there's like all this code. Yeah,
an hourglass is the transience of this life, right, or lamp,
the light of truth. Clasped hands, you know where there's
(15:45):
like somebody holding somebody else's hand that means like take care,
I'll see you in a few years. Or the saddest
maybe maybe the willow tree. That's just morning and that's
just really sad. It is sad, but there's none of
these are reminders that you're going to You're gonna go
to hell when you die. It's gonna be bad. The
(16:08):
Victorians were a little more uplifting. If anybody had their
finger on the pulse of death, it was the Victorians.
They just knew what they were doing. Another thing human
beings did in the eighteenth century was more safe. These cages,
iron cages they would put over um. But the Victorians
were like, no, that's really untoward. Well get rid of those.
Part of the reason why is because there wasn't that
(16:30):
need for it anymore. It was remember the cairns or
the carns me to stay carns. And it's probably wrong,
but that was to protect from coyotes disturbing the grave.
He also said Morls, yeahs and Kama Jacoma. Yeah, that's
what I said, Laura said Jacama. The more safe were
(16:54):
to protect the body from being dug up by people
who were robbing graves to sell the body to anatomists. Yeah,
or I imagine, you know, maybe loot the body as well.
On your way, like here's your body. Um, disregard where
that wedding gold wedding band was on the finger right?
Remember Mr Burns has um the suit that Charlie Chaplin
(17:15):
was buried in in a shadow box on it. That's
a good one. Uh. And that kind of you know,
brings us I guess, I mean that's skipping forward though.
But the modern era, the last hundred years has been um,
I mean headstone. The headstone industry is a big deal.
It's it's you know, people put a lot of thought
(17:37):
into what goes on their headstone or their family's headstone,
and cost a lot of money. And you can be
as ornate as you want to, or you can do
like in Royal Tannin bombs and invent your own fake headstone,
which is pretty good. You wanting to talk about some
of these ones. Yeah, some of these epitats. We have
the slide show on stuff you Should Know dot Com
(17:58):
called the twenty one remark Coble Epitaphs, and it is
definitely worth checking out. Um, and this one's my favorite.
Chuck Charleskowski, Yeah, Fewkowski's don't try that on. Yeah, and
he has a little pugilist too. Yeah. Well, he was
a huge boxing fan. I think he might have been
a boxer himself. He died, yeah, crazy. Yeah, for some reason,
(18:22):
I thought he was like in the eighties or something. No,
he's still working in the eighties. Yeah. Boy, he didn't
look good there at the end. Well, he pretty much
drank him to death, I know, but he Yeah, he
looked really bad. I remember seeing a documentary I think
from the eighties or not early nineties. Is that the
one where he like kicks his wife off of the
couch or something. He's like being physically abusive in the documentary.
(18:45):
He wasn't a nice fellow. No, he really wasn't. No,
he's not at all. You saw bar Flat, right, That's
one of my all time favorite movies. I figured it's
a good one. Who's that one? Mitchell's Oh, it's just
a person. Yeah, these are just like no worthy. Well
this sucks that awesome, Yeah, that seems like something I
might do. Actually, well this sucks on your grace stone. Yeah,
(19:07):
because this got me thinking of what I would want,
you know, um, And I mean I didn't come up
with anything, but I think I would just want something
sort of like humble, like, you know, he tried his best,
but you know, maybe he didn't do such a good
job all the time. Yet more, I wouldn't want to
(19:28):
like flout, like to out anything or trump up in
a life, you know, like he was a simple dude
who tried to not be such a jerk. How's that?
That's a good one. What about mel Blanks? Yeah, that's
all folks, that's a good one. Man. Of one thousand voices,
that's very nice. Some of these are a little smallsey
and sweet. This one was good. Robert Klay Allison his tombstone.
(19:52):
He died in seven at the age of forty seven.
His epitaph says he never killed a man that did
not need killing. That's pretty good. That's a gun slinger
right there. Did you know that only like four or
five times in the history of the United States, where
was there an actual gunfight in the center of town. No,
it sounds like a good don't be dumb. Oh yeah,
(20:13):
make a mental note. I think it's verified like five
times or something. It's very much a movie thing. I
mean there were plenty of gun you know, people shooting
in gunfights, but but like the whole like, hi, yeah,
come out in the middle of town and draw your
guns at the tick of the clock or whatever. You know.
Whaticed was a surprisingly good movie Three o'clock High. Did
(20:34):
you ever see that Richard Tyson and Casey Samasco. Yeah.
I saw that when it came out and thought, man,
this is kind of a different movie. And then years
later it's sort of a cult favorite. Uh. That guy
what was his name in the movie The Bully but
his real name, No, his name in the movie, I
don't remember. It was like he had like a scary
first name or something, and he went on to a sale.
(20:55):
Arnold Schwartz and anger in Kindergarten Cop. I didn't see
Kindergarten Cop. Really, Yeah, you should see it? All right,
you want to do anymore? We should we just tell
everybody to go check these out. I think we should
just near let's see this one more raised four beautiful
daughters with only one bathroom, and still there was love.
That's nice, It is nice. He wants to be morbid,
(21:18):
you know, I don't know. I think there's something to
be said. You're just gonna be some morbids. Mine will
probably say boom, I'm coming to get you right and chuck.
One more thing about um epitaphs and gravestones before we
move on. UM. There was this thing. Remember why two
K y two K bug I wasn't sold on that
to begin with, Well, there are a lot of potential problems.
(21:40):
It wasn't just with computer programs. One of them was
the grave marker industry. A lot of people by their
headstones ahead of time, and they had nineteen and then
nothing after the date because they expected to die in
the twentieth century. Well, a lot of people had to
have this filled in and re etched because they lived
(22:02):
into the two thousand's. There was a big problem, and
apparently a lot of long standing UM gravestone makers around
the sixties or seventies started really trying to persuade their
customers did not etch that in. A lot of people
didn't listen, some people did, some people didn't. Why would
you get that done ahead of time? I understand picking
out your plot and you're what you wanted to say,
(22:24):
but the actual etching, like who cares? I guess these
people really didn't want their families that have to do
almost anything. I get that, like, just put nine nine
in there, like I'm alive, it's two thousand. I gotta
call that guy. Yeah exactly. I mean, what a what
a thing to have on your to do list. You
need to get my epithelf filled in and recarve, drink
(22:47):
ovaltee and get epithets carve um. All right, So we'll
move on here after this message break and talk a
little bit about military graves and government funded headstone Okay,
so government furnished headstones and this is from the Veterans
Affairs website. But I thought that's pretty interesting. They also
(23:08):
call them Obama stones. That was off the cup. That
was good originally. UM. I found it interesting that standard
grave markers were even before the national cemeteries were established
in eighteen sixty two, and they had, like you know,
prior to the Civil War, they had all these frontier
(23:30):
armies and they would just bury you in uh, don't
bury me on the open prairie. Basically they would bury
you if you died in battle, not a mass grave
as in they would dump everyone in there, but um
a mass grave site. Yeah. Initially, like they would just
bury everyone together, or and they wouldn't even market yeah,
or you were just buried in battle like where you
(23:51):
died if things were really tough, yeah, if yeah, if
you were lucky. I'm quite sure there are plenty of
soldiers who were not left on the frontier to basically
be picked off by vultures sky burial sky burials on
the on the American front here. Um, yeah, you're exactly right,
I'm sure. It wasn't until like the nineteenth century that
they started even marking these mask grades. It was like, oh,
(24:12):
a bunch of soldiers died here, let's take a pit,
fill it in and just forget about it. Then in
the mid nineteenth century, like the Crimean War, for example,
they would raise a monument saying, there's a bunch of
guys buried here who fell in this battle. And it
wasn't until World War One that they started to really
try to individually bury men who fell in battle. Yeah. Initially,
(24:34):
in the Civil War days, they would um used a
wooden board, UM, and it would have a registration number
and some sort of inscription. But they didn't keep any
kind of records of burials at that point. That came
along later as well. But once the Civil War happened
after the Battle of Manassas, they were like, a lot
of people are dying here. This is becoming a problem,
(24:56):
Like we need to find a way to respect these soldiers.
And oh, the Quartermaster General Um from the General's Orders
in September eighteen sixty one was directed to finally start
keeping records and provide headboards headboards in blank forms to
all of the commanders around the country so they could
(25:17):
just keep track of everything at least, right, And this
is the first time that anybody ever made a coordinated
effort to track burials ever. Apparently. Yeah, and after the
Civil War they made an effort for the first time
to relocate um people that were buried in battle and
have them relocated to an official grave. Yeah. After the
(25:40):
Civil War. Oh yeah, because they had a bunch of
Confederate dead that the Southern States reclaimed and moved down
south to bury so that they wouldn't have to be
buried in any Yankee earth. Yankee dirt. Uh. In eighteen
sixty five is when they started thinking, hey, these wooden
(26:02):
burial markers are not lasting very long. No, they were
expected to last about five years. They each cost at
the time a dollar twenty three, which is not cheap.
And so when you suddenly multiplied that by the three
hundred thousand expected dead from the Civil War that you
had to bury and then maintain their their headboards every
(26:22):
five years, they suddenly were like, this is gonna go
well into a million dollars over the next twenty years.
Maybe we should come up with something a little more
permanent than popsicle sticks. It was the economics of it,
and the public sentiments started growing to um to hey,
maybe we should memorialize these soldiers in a more permanent way. Yeah,
(26:43):
because a little wood thing that's rotting after a few
years is pretty kind of a disrespectful thing. And apparently
there was a huge and um vigorous debate over what
we should use as a headstone. Should we use like
something like marble, or should we use something like galvanized
iron coated in zinc, which I wasn't even familiar that
was the thing until today. Yeah, I've never heard of
(27:05):
it either. And I guess over the course of like
seven years there was a lot of debate and angry
words flying, and and um, I'm sure the marble industry
was like, yeah, yeah, Marble, and the galvanized iron industry
was like, you better get in there and get this passed.
And then finally the marvel people won. Yeah. And in
eighteen seventy three, Secretary of War William W. Bell nap
(27:27):
Um said, you know what we're gonna design. These stones
are gonna be in national cemeteries, are going to be permanent,
but they're only gonna be for the known dead at
this point. The unknown came about later as well. And
not only that this is just for Union soldiers. Yeah,
that we're not providing for the Confederate soldiers was a
bit of a slap in the base. I believe they
reversed that position later on, and they did. And then
(27:49):
anybody who'd ever fallen in battle in the United States
got a marker, and they made different markers for the
unknown dead. They were basically just blocks of stone, and
then it had the grave the burial plot carved into
the top of it. And then eventually they said we're
gonna make all of them the same everybody gets the
(28:11):
same marker. Yeah, and they made it retroactive to and
started started including past wars, Revolutionary War, War of eighteen twelve,
Mexican War, and Indian campaigns, and then eventually the Spanish
American War. So a lot of thought went into it.
I thought it was just kind of never really think
about that kind of thing. You just see like Arlington,
and you don't think about all the behind the scenes
(28:33):
work and decisions that need to be made on exactly
how to do that. Yeah. And they even did a
study in nineteen two to find out how the the
eighteen seventy nine markers were holding up, and they said,
we need to change these a little bit. So if
anyone ever asks you what the official military um headstone
(28:55):
in the US dimensions are, this would be the most
arcane piece of trivia anyone would asked. It's pretty arcane,
but you could probably impress some weird uncle or your
grandpa or something like that with this one. Uh. The
height of the stone is thirty nine inches tall, twelve
inches wide, and the thickness is four inches and apparently
(29:16):
the height extends twelve inches above the ground, so you
have twenty seven inches Bury below the ground. You've been
to Darlington, m hm, it's pretty neat. It is really something.
You go to Oakland Cemetery here in Atlanta, Yep, I've
been there too. Yeah, it's pretty nice. It is really something. Yeah.
And they Oakland even has and I've always felt I
(29:38):
don't think I have death hang ups, but they have
like concerts there and stuff like that. Yeah. And I
think they show movies there, yeah, I think so. Like
in the outside, um, there's some really neat mausoleums. There's
like a miniature, uh, statue of Liberty. There's some really ornate,
beautiful mausoleums. Bobby Jones, the famous golfer, is buried there,
(30:00):
and there's a putting green on his graves. I've never
seen that one. Yeah, if you if you, there's usually
golf balls there. I think if you bring your own
putter you can just sit there and put on his grave. Interesting. Yeah,
well I just recently saw Washington and Mrs Washington's grave
at Um up there in d C. Which was cool. Um,
but they were moved as well. That one's really kind
(30:22):
of when you go there to Mount Vernon, you know
you see them Bury. Oh yeah, we saw that recently too. Yeah,
you see, they were moved from their original one, but
the original tomb is still there and they made a
nicer one. And then there's the slave burial ground, which
is just a really kind of a sad place to
visit because it's not I mean, they've done something now,
but um, I don't know, it's just sort of a reminder, yeah,
(30:43):
of what went on, which, um, you know, speaking of
that Washington, it was like, you know, he's lauded for
freeing his slaves, but it was after he he freed
them after he died, and then in his will it
was after Martha Washington was to die. Um, then they
would be officially freed. And you know that's that's great. Whatever,
(31:06):
he still held slaves until he died. At least Martha
Washington did something remarkable though. Um. She gave the slaves
that she inherited from her husband their freedom within a
year of his death. She didn't wait until she died.
She was like, you guys, be free, and I mean
in Washington's favor for sure. He also provided a substantial
(31:28):
amounts of money for their for them to just start
a new free life. It wasn't just like your free
good luck. It was you guys are free, like, here's
here's a new life for you. Did you go recently? Yeah? Yeah,
pretty neat it is. It's like really well done. I
guess Living Museum. Yeah. I went last year with just
my sister and then went again. Actually, you and I
(31:50):
probably went within the last like a few weeks of
each other. It's funny, yeah, because I went with my
niece and Emily and um highly recommend going to melt Burnon.
It's and Monicello too. I still haven't been there. That's amazing.
Both of them are just really great spots to go
check out. It's pretty cool. I mean you can stand
there and look at the bed where he died. Yeah,
it's you're like five ft from it. Yeah. I try
(32:11):
to get in and lay down, and they did. I
got some. I got smacked on the wrist. Um. All right,
after this break, we're going to talk a little bit
about unmarked graves. Chuck. Yeah, I am interested in learning
(32:35):
the definition of an armarked grave, as per say someone
named Joe len uh, Well, it means it's a great
that's not march right. Pretty much, it's almost exactly what
you think it is. Is if somebody is buried in
a grave. And this is according from this article from
How Stuff Works. According to um Joelene Mason, who's the
(32:58):
general manager of Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park, which
is where a lot of celebrities are buried in Los Angeles,
it's really one of the most useless quotes I've ever seen.
She says, quote, if there's no marker, headstone, or nameplate
and there's someone in the grave, it qualifies as unmarked.
She was probably like, yeah, she hung up, just shaking
her head. Uh, there are many reasons. There's a lot
(33:21):
of reasons why you might want your grave unmarked. Um man,
that was so caddy of us. Just then to make
fun of that lady, well, to make fun of the quote,
the whole thing. Yeah, that's sorry. Sorry everyone. I didn't
think it was that caddy. I was moved to say something, right, Um,
Like I said, there's a lot of reasons you might want,
(33:44):
uh or not want. There's all the reasons you might
have an unmarked grave. Historically, you might have an unmarked
grave if you are a really bad person. Um like Himmler.
Oh his grave isn't mark That makes sense, Yeah, pretty
bad persons, bad person, good example of a bad person. Hey, thanks,
(34:04):
you're welcome. Um executed criminals a lot of times have
unmarked graves a lot of times the show like you know,
contempt for what they did on Earth, but a lot
of times too. It's also so it doesn't draw people
there to you know, go do bad things to face
the grave in any way, um, family victims or whatever.
It's also if families. If you die of pauper, you
(34:26):
will be buried in what's called the potter's field. And
Oakland Cemetery has a potter's field. Yeah, like one next
to the theater to the drive in theater. Is there
a potter's field there? Oh yeah, I know that right
next to it. But basically it's just a plot of
unmarked graves and the state still does that. Yeah. The
one next to uh starlight drive in is um, like
(34:47):
a lot of bad stuff goes on over there. Apparently
it's like prostitution and drugs and yeah, um, what else
could you do? You could scatter the remains of a
bad person and not even have a grave at all.
And that's what some of the Nazi war criminals that
was their fate. Like I commend and Guring were just
(35:07):
scattered and like, so no one would know where they were.
You know, it wasn't around then, but today it would
seem like if you came up against the Nazis again,
the best way to dispose of their body would be
something we mentioned in our episode, what are different ways
to dispose of a body? And remember the auto licens
one where you turned into a biscus goo that can
(35:30):
be poured down the drain. That's what you should do
with Nazis these days. Put it in the toilet and
flush it. Yes, yes, heads up Nazis. Yeah, but in
some cities don't they treat waste water for eventual drinking
water That the process of auto licens renders it um sterile,
(35:51):
So you can just pour it down the drain. But
would you want to drink it? Tho? I can't imagine
the molecules that we drink, the things that we drink
what they used to be. Yeah, that's still make it
into our body on a molecular level. I'm sure it
would be revolting to know. As a matter of fact,
if anybody out there does know, if you work in
like wastewater treatment or something, share some stories. Yeah, that'd
(36:13):
be a good podcast. I don't know if I want
to know. Do you remember the story of that poor
girl in Los Angeles who um went missing? She was
on a trip there by herself for a few days
from Canada in the last couple of years. Oh, the
one in the tank. Yeah. They found her in the
drinking and the hotel water tank on the roof after
(36:33):
like I think a week or two. Yeah, because people
said the water tasted funny, yeah, and looked funny. Yeah.
She was the one that did the strange stuff with
the elevator, right, Yes, yeah, she was. She was mentally ill.
That was really sad. Wasn't mental illness or was she
on drugs? I don't believe she had a history of
mental illness. Did Yeah she did? Oh she did. Yeah.
It is sad. I mean it's sad either way. Yeah,
(36:54):
But at first it's like, oh my gosh, it's the
creepiest thing I've ever seen, because her behavior was so weird. Yeah.
If you look on line, there's a lot of sixteen
year olds, they're like stoof that she was possessed by
a demon, and they actually mean it, chuck, they mean it.
Come on, sixteen year olds, get tracked together all right,
And now to close, we're gonna go over some famous
(37:16):
people with unmarked graves, because sometimes if you're famous, your
family might want to unmark graves so your grave site
doesn't become a tourist stop. Um, that's one reason, I guess,
because you've ever been to like, No, I haven't, but
I've seen pictures. Yeah. I went, of course, because I
was just out of college, way into the doors, and
(37:37):
you didn't. No, I went and looked at it. You
don't like the doors anymore, there, do you it? Um?
It was a passing fancy, but I don't like dislike
the doors. But I was like really into him for
a while, and then I now I'm coming to Morrison
was not much of a poet. I bought his poetry
books back then, and I was all into the Lizard King.
(38:00):
I think it's something that happens when you're twenty. Yeah,
what's good music. I still like him. Um. I was
into Pink Floyd for a while too, but I don't
listen to them much anymore. They have a new album
coming out, from what I understand, Yeah, I did hear
that old material that they've is gonna be awesome. Yeah,
I still love Pink Floyd, but not like I did
when I was fourteen. Yeah, alright, Mozart, he's in an
(38:24):
unmarked to him. Um, because even though we see him
as a big shot, he at the time was not
in the upper Echelona society. No, you had to be
pretty high falutin in the eighteenth century in Vienna to
get a grave marker. Yeah, so he's buried. They now
have an In the eighteen fifties, they built a monument
(38:46):
over where they think he was buried. Um. And then
that was later moved to a space where they just
had honored various musicians that were buried there. And they
put up another monument near his original assumed or prison
grave site at Marks Cemetery St. Mark's m r x UM.
And it has an angel leaning up against the broken column, which,
(39:10):
as you remember, indicates someone who has cut down the
prime of life. And Mozart died at age thirty five
suddenly of rheumatic fever. The vapors he had the vapors,
So that that's what I call the Enna's nice ever
been there? Uh? No, lovely? Uh it is John Wayne.
He is buried in his family gives his reason for
(39:33):
his unmarked grave for just not wanting to be uh,
disrespectful to others that are also buried there, which I
think is a pretty nice thing. That's kind of a
I don't want to say a trend, but a lot
of celebrities families do that they they're buried in unmarked
graves either because they have the same thought that you have,
(39:54):
Like you want to be humble. You can't be much
more humble than being buried in an mark grave. Yeah,
I want to be marked at least, so like George C. Scott,
Frank Zappa, they're both buried in on Mark graves. Roy Orbison.
Roy Orbison is um because apparently his family never got
around to putting a headstone on his grave. They were
(40:15):
planning on moving him and never have, so he's been
laying in on Mark Graves since Yah Bessie Smith famous
blue singer. She was big in the vaudeville scene in
the nineteen twenties and like a lot of the siren
singers of the day, I had a problem with alcoholism
and died in a car crash in ninety seven. And
(40:39):
she didn't have a grave because her husband apparently the
rumors didn't want to pay for it, and years later
Janice Joplin was such a fan she had moved to
pay for and commission a headstone for her um and
I didn't see if it was ever done. It says
she died shortly thereafter, but I don't know if that
project was ever completed. It was okay, it went through
(41:01):
all right. Mike Tyson did that too. His mother was
died very poor and I think had an unmarked grave
or a very small marker. And after he hit it big,
one of the first things he did was get this huge, gaudy,
elaborate headstone erected for Belushi has been uh. They've had
(41:21):
some problems with fans of Belushi's partying at his grave,
so they moved him from his UH grave and Martha's
vineyard to a spot that only the family knows. But
they have two uh cinotaphs, which are empty tombs, one
at Martha's vineyard, one at his family plot in Chicago
where you can go visit, but apparently only like his
(41:42):
family knows where he's truly buried. Now. Um, and you know,
I hung out in the room where he died a
couple of times. Yeah, and the in the Belushi Cabana
at the Chateau Marmott. Oh yeah, I always think he was.
It was it was Chicago, but that was um Chris Farley,
who died in exactly the same manner that Belushi did,
(42:03):
just in Chicago. Yeah, it's a little weird. I mean
you're sitting there and you're you know, I was having
a good time and having a few drinks, and it's
like John Belushi died right here where I'm standing, and um, yeah,
bad way to go. What speedball? And then chuck out?
Got one more? Remember the movie Peter Pan, the Disney
movie The Cartoon. Yeah, a little boy who voices who
(42:27):
voiced Peter Pan. He is buried in an unmarked Popper's grave.
That is sad. Yeah, he was in. His name is
Bobby Driscoll. He was in not just Peter Pan, but
also um Treasure Island movie called The Window. And he
was a child star and after he hit puberty he
was apparently discarded by Hollywood and hit the skids and
(42:50):
he actually died. The guy who the kid who voiced
Peter Pan died at age thirty one in an abandoned
apartment in New York City. Um, not even of a
drug overdose, but of a whole bunch of drug overdoses
that finally led to catastrophic heart failure. Um and his
mother started looking for him a year after he died
(43:11):
and found that he died because I guess the police
printed him. He was just a John Doe until his
mother started looking for him. But he's still buried in
an omark grave from what I understand. Yeah, and it's
not just like, oh, he was famous, and it's so
sad he died that way because thousands of people die
every day in this country, homeless people that died with
(43:31):
no family and no one that cares about burying them. Well,
there's also a lot of people who have family, whose
family don't have enough money to do anything. And I
have no choice but to allow the state to handle
the funeral. And it is not an elaborate funeral. State
state run funerals are not elaborate, I'm sure. Unless it's
(43:52):
ahead of state, then there wizz bangs in salute. I
got nothing else, I don't either. Go to our website
Stuff you Should Know dot com and check out twenty
one remarkable epitaphs. It's pretty good, if I say so myself. Uh,
you can um read the let's see what is it?
(44:13):
Ten famous people buried in unmarked graves that articles on
how stuff works dot com? And since I said how
stuff works dot com, it's time for listener now. I'm
gonna call this branical illusion, okay. And this is something
that we hear about a lot, and UH as fans
of radio and podcasting myself. If you've never seen someone
(44:36):
that you've always heard, it's always jarring to see what
they look like. And some people still don't even want
to know what we look like, which you know, I get.
I don't blame you, man, I've seen Kiris Doll before. Yeah,
it's just fun to look at the NPR people like
Lois writes, as I expected to be three years old,
And Lois writes, this looks exactly like I would have
thought she did. She looked younger than I thought, Um,
(44:58):
but not much. All right, Hey, guys, uh, Josh, Chuck
and Jerry and again Jerry spelt correctly. People are really
getting with it. Man. I've been an avid listener uh
to your podcasts and the sister podcasts since two thousand nine.
Never thought I'd have anything interesting enough to write in about.
But it finally happened, and it was so perception altering,
(45:19):
so randomly odd. I thought you should know. All these
years I had an inner podcast movie playing of YouTube
bantering going through my head. All was good. I could
see Chuck laughing, I could see Josh studiously explaining things,
and I stayed in podcast land, never having ventured out
to see your shows or videos. Yet I would enjoyed
them in time as well. But what turned my world
(45:40):
upside down and seemed like a brainical illusion was that
I finally did see a video of the two of you,
and Josh's voice was coming out of Chuck's face, and
Chuck's voice had a beard on it. All this time
I had thought of each of you was the other person,
and this is after he had already seen pictures, so
that must be really weird. Um, seeing those voices coming
(46:02):
on different faces has done my head in. I think
the culprit is how your pictures are situated on the
podcast immans, with Chuck on the left and Josh on
the right. But since Westerners read from left to right
and the show always starts with Josh and Chuck and
then Chuck, that's the order of my brain. Put you
in I now have to fight with my inner podcast
movie to correct which face the voices are coming from,
(46:25):
and it causes constant bewilderment. Uh, you guys sent me
to my dreamland every night with your friendly voices. Thanks
a lot. Perhaps I would just follow the advice of
one of those funny T shirts, I reject your reality
and substitute my own, because no matter how hard I try,
I always see Josh with a beard and Chuck with
a buzz cut. You got it wrong, pal, and that
(46:45):
even though I did have a buzz cut recently. It's
from Avalon. Thanks a lot of Avalon. We appreciate you writing,
and we do hear that a lot. So for everybody
who that's ever happened to. Um, I'm sorry, I guess,
but not really, because there's something we could do about.
It's your brain. You look like what we look like.
If you want to share something from your brain with us,
you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
(47:08):
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcasts at how stuff Works dot com, and as always,
check us out at our home on the web. Stuff
you Should Know dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it How Stuff Works dot
(47:28):
com
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.