A son's diary of Mieneke Weide-Boelkes' final days to euthanasia

Mum's sisters and their husbands are there for a last family dinner, together with Dad, Maarten and me - wearing my expensive new pair of shoes. Mum, even more energetic than the week before, decorates the table lavishly.

My uncles shake their heads with incomprehension. As Mum shows off her china plates, my aunts have distracted looks on their faces.

Whispering to Dad and me in the hallway, they struggle to understand why Mum is choosing to die the next day when she is bouncing around like a 40-year-old instead of a terminally ill 65-year-old. But there is also shock at her fixation on material objects and the little interest she shows in how the people around her actually feel.

Viva Calaca -- animation celebrating Mexico's Day of the Dead

World's creepiest death rituals

Tibetan sky burial:

A corpse is sliced up, usually atop a mountain, and left for the birds. Tibetans call the practice jhator, which means giving alms to the birds. And also legs, torsos and heads as well.
The bodies, wrapped in white cloth, are bought to the burial site, where the monks have enticed vultures and other airborne scavengers. Monks unwrap the bodies, a process that probably isn't all that pleasant considering they've been left alone for three days (per Tibetan custom).

How to pull a Reggie (fake your death)

Your debts are piling up; the job's getting on your nerves, and maybe your partner doesn't look as hot as he or she once did. It's that John Darwin canoe moment – when you think the unthinkable and wonder if life would be better if you ended it all for the old you and started over with a shiny new one. Not a real death, of course.

More historical cases from the BBC here.

The original American cannibal

Alferd G. Packer holds a unique spot in American jurisprudence. He is the only U.S. citizen ever charged, tried, and convicted for the crime of murder and cannibalism.

The crime was committed in 1873, but the trial began in 1884.

Woman who died watching TV sat unfound for 42 years

Uh, well... maybe?

People killed by their own inventions

Franz Reichelt was a tailor who was convinced that the next big thing was a coat that doubled as a parachute. So he got busy sewing and developed just that. To test the coat/parachute (coatachute? Paracoat?), Reichelt climbed up to the first deck of the Eiffel Tower. He told authorities that he was going to use a dummy to test the invention, but at the last minute he strapped himself in and jumped to his death in front of a large crowd of spectators.

Scientiest killed or injured by their experiments

In 1898, Curie and her husband, Pierre, discovered radium. She spent the remainder of her life performing radiation research and studying radiation therapy. Her constant exposure to radiation led to her contracting leukemia and she died in 1934. Curie is the first and only person to receive two Nobel prizes in science in two different fields: chemistry and physics. She was also the first female professor at the University of Paris.

Apache and Predator attack camviews

Life Before Death -- before and after portrait series

Short profile and a quote excerpted from interviews with the photographers.

Historical figures with the weirdest deaths

Like sex unto death and farting out your innards.

Odds of dying from...

2004 numbers for various manners of injury from the National Safety Council.

Prepare for your death online

Mailouts, obits, wills.

Strange ways we deal with the dead

Couple of threads here like preservation, fancy cremations, and burying high up.

Video of autopsy

Didn't watch it straight through, but gets creepy when the body hollows out from so much being removed and also when the head flops about.

Sherwin Nuland and his story of electroshock therapy

Meant to recommend his book, How We Die, a while back after finishing it. It's a summary from a doctor's perspective of the more common ways we die. A bit of pathophysiology; the graphic descriptions were illuminating. For the med crowd, there's a consideration of the psychology of life extension on both the patient and care staff side.
Allow me to take this moment to recommend Wit, starring Emma Thompson, about an English prof being assailed by cancer and chemo. Lots of talking to the camera as she shares each step.
It's amazing to hear this surgeon's account of mental illness which did not come out in his personal anecdotes in the book. This important video helps to dispel some of the stigma surrounding ECT and depression in general for those who think that it's just people complaining.

How does it feel to die?

Different ways with physiology, some survival tips. More detail in the book How We Die (almost finished!).

Death by numbers

Just a reminder of how more spectacular and uncommon deaths catch our attention more than high-count, repetitive deaths, like malaria-stricken children and auto accidents. Resources need to be diverted appropriately.

YouDeparted.com -- online lockbox of info for when you die

Template for:

• Assets, liabilities, insurance, wills and estate plans.
• Locations + copies of essential documents.
• All of your online account information.
• Private messages with pictures, audio, and videos.
• Funeral arrangements, people to contact.

Death bonds

"Life settlements" are arrangements that offer people the chance to sell their policies to investors, who keep paying the premiums until the sellers die and then collect the payout. For the investors it's a ghoulish actuarial gamble: The quicker the death, the more profit is reaped.

It's still new enough to be not-so-regulated.