What Makes Flamingos Pink?

by Bill McLain

  Death did not stop Karl from being a faithful lover. He built a large mausoleum for Elena and visited her daily. One night, while visiting Elena, he was startled by a noise, opened the girl’s outer casket, and later claimed that Elena started talking to him. From that time forward he conversed with her every night. Eventually, he took her body out of the casket, cleaned it, reconstructed it with wax and plaster, dressed it, and kept it propped up in his bed. Karl believed that he could resurrect Elena and then fly away with her in his airplane.

  Key West was a small town in 1940, and rumors that Elena was not in her casket reached her sister, Nana. To prove that he was treating Elena well, Karl took Nana to his home, showed her Elena’s body, and claimed that she was still alive.

  Karl was arrested shortly thereafter. However, he was not convicted because of the statue of limitations. While he was in jail, the authorities buried Elena’s body in secret so he couldn’t find it. Because Karl had lost his job and was broke, after he got out of jail he charged tourists who wanted to see his home and sold souvenirs of Elena to raise money.

  Because of his notoriety, Karl left Key West and moved to Zephyrhills, Florida, where he sold postcards of the dead girl.

  FACTOIDS

  The practice of firing three rifle shots over a grave during a funeral is based on the old custom of stopping the fighting to remove the dead from the battlefield. Once the dead had been cared for, three volleys were fired to signal continuation of the battle.

  When Elena’s body was moved to a funeral home, over 5,000 people came to see it. Some suggested that she be put in a glass case like Sleeping Beauty and displayed as a tourist attraction.

  Pygmies in the African Congo are not comfortable with death. When a tribe member dies, the tribe pulls down the hut on top of the deceased person. While relatives cry, the rest of the tribe move their camp to a new location. The dead person is never mentioned again.

  It is not uncommon for a corpse to be left for the animals. Solomon Islanders used to lay their dead on a reef for the sharks to eat, and the Parsees of Bombay, India, used to put their dead on top of towers to be eaten by vultures.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  When we think of famous burials, we don’t often think of a horse, but perhaps we should recall Ruffian, the racehorse who refused to be beaten.

  Ruffian was a filly that won her very first race by 13 lengths and broke the track record. In her first two years of racing she won every race she entered. Late in her second year of racing she fractured a bone and was retired to rest for a while. Even so, she was crowned two-year-old filly of the year.

  As a three-year-old, she raced longer distances and won every time. She won all three legs of the Filly Triple Crown and seemed destined for greatness. But there was one more test.

  It was decided to hold a match race between Ruffian and the winner of that year’s Kentucky Derby, Foolish Pleasure. Over 31,000 people watched the match.

  Foolish Pleasure took an early lead but Ruffian came on strong and pulled in front by half a length. As they reached the mile marker, the two great horses were running neck and neck. Then it happened. There was a sickening crack. Ruffian had broken her leg.

  Her jockey struggled to pull her up but she was fighting him. She wanted to continue the race in spite of her shattered leg.

  A team of four veterinarians and an orthopedic surgeon worked for 12 hours trying to save her leg, during which time she stopped breathing twice and had to be revived. When the anesthetic wore off, she was disoriented, and although they tried to restrain her, she flailed about and broke her other leg. The veterinarians knew she could not survive further surgery so they put the gallant horse to sleep to end her suffering.

  Ruffian was buried at Belmont Park, near the flagpole. As a fitting tribute, they buried her with her nose facing the finish line.

  Flags flew at half mast that sad day.

  Who was the famous bandit who wore a metal bucket on his head? (It wasn’t for fashion.)

  In the 1800s, outlaws in the rural parts of Australia were known as “bushrangers”: after they had robbed a stagecoach or bank, they would head for the bush to escape. The last, and probably most famous, bushranger was Ned Kelly. Some people considered him a criminal; others considered him to be a folk hero, much like Billy the Kid and Jesse James in the United States.

  The government in rural Australia in those days was badly administered, and many people believed that it was corrupt. Wealthy landowners, called “squatters,” had all the best land. People who were poor, such as Ned Kelly’s family, could buy land from the government. They were called selectors. The government required the selectors to improve the land, but the soil was so poor the families couldn’t make a living. In order to survive, the selectors had to resort to stealing.

  Ned Kelly was only 15 years old when he was arrested for stealing a chicken, but was found not guilty. Three weeks later, he was arrested for having a stolen horse in his possession. Although he had no idea that the horse had been stolen, he was sentenced to three years of hard labor. When he was finally released from prison, he discovered that the local police had stolen all but one of his 32 horses. In spite of feeling cheated and persecuted, he tried to stay on the right side of the law, for a while. When police arrested Ned’s mother, he feared that he might be next, so he and his brother decided to hide in the bush, and the Kelly gang was eventually formed.

  The Kelly gang began staging a series of daring robberies. Ned wore a handmade suit of armor to protect him from police bullets. The helmet was fashioned from a metal bucket and looked bizarre at best. Because they only robbed from the rich, they soon captured the public’s imagination. People felt that they were striking out at a corrupt system that was suppressing the poor.

  When the gang ran across three policemen, Ned thought they meant to kill him and in the ensuing gun battle, he killed all three. He was able to escape because the Kelly gang had become folk heroes and many people helped them elude the police.

  Ned made his last stand in 1880, when police surrounded the hotel where he was staying. Rather than try to escape, he decided to fight the police, believing his armor would protect him.

  In a blazing gun battle, Ned Kelly’s gang fought off 30 policemen for seven hours. Although Ned looked comical in his homemade suit of armor, the police bullets just ricocheted off him. Finally, a police officer realized that Ned’s legs were unprotected and starting shooting at his legs. Once he was wounded, the police captured him.

  All of the Kelly gang except Ned were killed in the gun battle. Ned’s armor saved him from the bullets but not from the gallows. He was hanged on November 11, 1880. He was only 25 years old.

  FACTOIDS

  Ned Kelly’s complete suit of armor weighed 97 pounds.

  Whenever he robbed someone, Ned gave the person a letter explaining to the government how the police had persecuted him.

  The reward for the capture of the Kelly gang eventually reached 8,000 pounds, which today would be almost $2 million. The reward didn’t help much.

  Just before Ned Kelly was hanged, 60,000 people signed a petition seeking mercy for him.

  After being captured, Ned Kelly said, “If my lips teach the public that men are made mad by bad treatment, and if the police are taught that they may exasperate to madness men they persecute and ill treat, my life will not be entirely thrown away.”

  DID YOU KNOW?

  Until around 1850, most bushrangers were escaped convicts. After that they were mostly settlers who had run into trouble with the law. Although some were ruthless killers, others treated their victims humanely. In fact one of them, Edward Davis, shared his loot with the poor. But whether they were humane or ruthless, they usually ended their career at the end of a hangman’s rope. The bushrangers disappeared after 1880 when the last one, Ned Kelly, was hanged.

  Although Ned Kelly has been dead for over 120 years, Australians still argue about the truth of the legend. Some see him as a hardened killer who deserved to
be executed. Others see him as the victim of a corrupt system which forced him into crime. They think he was a martyr.

  What is the real truth? Probably somewhere between the two, but no one knows for certain.

  Who was Dr. H. H. Holmes? (Elementary, my dear Watson.)

  In 1896 no one could have imagined that the “Monster of 63rd Street” and his “castle of horror” would ever be forgotten. Yet today few people know his name or have any idea that he murdered more than 200 people, one by one.

  The mass murderer’s real name was Herman Webster Mudgett. While attending medical school in Michigan he stole corpses, used acid to disfigure them so they couldn’t be identified, and then collected on the life insurance policies he had bought using fictitious names. When he was finally caught stealing a corpse, he ran away, moved to Chicago, and changed his name to Dr. H. H. Holmes.

  In Chicago he opened a respectable pharmacy and eventually built a drugstore empire that made him a fortune. In 1890 he bought a vacant lot and started construction of a magnificent mansion that had 100 rooms. However, it was not a typical mansion. It had a maze of secret passages, trap doors, chutes, fake walls, acid vats, and secret entrances.

  In 1893 Chicago was filled with tourists who were taking in the great Chicago Exposition. The timing was perfect for Holmes. His mansion had just been completed and he began renting rooms to the tourists. Very few ever returned to visit the Chicago Exposition. He killed most of his lodgers, using the same insurance fraud scheme he had used in the past.

  He also lured young women into his “castle,” promising to marry them. Instead, after forcing them to sign over their life savings, he drugged them and threw them into one of the empty shafts in the house. When a victim awoke, she found herself trapped behind a glass panel and struggled vainly as Holmes pumped lethal gas into the chamber. The unfeeling Holmes shoved the body down a chute to the basement, where he had acid and lime vats waiting to disfigure the corpse.

  When police began to be suspicious of Holmes’s activities, he set fire to the mansion and left Chicago. He continued his grisly activities in Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Texas was his undoing. He made the mistake of stealing a horse, which was a capital offense in Texas. After being arrested as a horse thief, police searched his burned-out mansion and found the remains of over 200 corpses.

  He was hanged in 1896.

  FACTOIDS

  Murder was not the only illegal activity of H. H. Holmes. Once he flavored city water with vanilla and sold it as a cure-all called Linden Grove Mineral Water. Another time he used his credit to buy a very large safe, which he moved into his mansion. He built a room around the safe. When he refused to pay for the safe, his creditors came to take it back, but they could not get it out of the tiny room.

  Holmes’s record of 200 murders was only broken 80 years later when Pedro Alonso Lopez, a native of Colombia, murdered 300 people in a bloody orgy that covered three countries. Known as the “Monster of the Andes,” he was discovered when a flash flood uncovered some of his early victims.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  The doors that opened into brick walls and the stairs that led nowhere in the mansion of H. H. Holmes bring to mind another bizarre mansion, the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California.

  Sarah Winchester was the wife of William Winchester, who made a fortune as the owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, manufacturer of the famous Winchester repeating rifle. When William died of tuberculosis, Sarah was instantly wealthy with an income of over $ 1,000 a day, but the money meant nothing to her. She grieved so much at her husband’s death that she sought solace from a medium. The medium told her that the family was cursed because the firearms produced by the company had killed so many thousands of people. She told Sarah to move west and build a home for herself and the spirits of those who died as the result of the Winchester rifles.

  Sara bought a 17-room house in San Jose, California, and started building, and building, and building. The medium had said that if Sarah stopped construction, something terrible would happen to her. She kept an army of workmen busy day and night for 38 years. Eventually the house grew into a 160-room Victorian mansion seven stories high. It was a modern marvel at the time, with heating and sewer systems, pushbutton-operated gas lights, three elevators, and 47 fireplaces.

  It had numerous staircases that went nowhere, a chimney that stopped inside the house, doors that opened to blank walls, trap doors, and doors that opened straight out onto the lawn, several stories below.

  Sarah also had an obsession with the number 13. Most of the windows had 13 panes of glass, walls had 13 panels, there were 13 cupolas, and all but one staircase had 13 steps.

  In 1922 Sarah Winchester died in her sleep at the age of 83. All construction on the house ended the next day.

  More questions? Try these web sites.

  CRIME LIBRARY

  http://www.crirnelibrary.com/

  This Web site has five major sections, each containing a great deal of information.

  “Classic crime stories” includes detailed stories about the Black Dahlia, Lizzie Borden, the Borgias, and Leopold and Loeb.

  “Serial murders” starts out with a profile of serial killers to help you understand what makes them tick and then includes stories about famous serial killers, including the Son of Sam, Jack the Ripper, and the Hillside Strangler.

  “G-Men” talks about famous lawmen such as Wyatt Earp and Eliot Ness, as well as famous criminals such as Al Capone, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Murder Incorporated.

  “Spies” has stories of famous spies and assassins such as John Wilkes Booth, the Cambridge spies, and Carlos the Jackal.

  The site also has “Crime news,” which is updated daily, covering major crimes occurring around the world.

  WINCHESTER MYSTERY HOUSE

  http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/

  The official site of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. It includes the history of the house, a list of amazing facts, and a QuickTime movie you can view. It also lists special events and tours.

  FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

  http://www.fbi.gov/

  This is the official site of the FBI and lists the most wanted criminals, current major investigations, and crime reports. It also tells you how to apply for a job with the bureau and what the benefits are.

  FORENSICS

  http://library.thinkquest.org/17049/gather/

  Click on “Reference” and you’ll see a number of topics that you can check out such as ballistics, DNA, hair and fibers, fingerprints, and so on. These aren’t covered in detail but give you a quick overview of the topic.

  ARE YOU A POTENTIAL VICTIM OF CRIME?

  http://www.Nashville.Net/%7Epolice/risk/

  This is the site of the Nashville Police Department in Tennessee. If you click on “Rate your risk,” you can take various tests to see how likely you are to be mugged, murdered, or buglarized and what you can do to reduce your risk.

  If you click on “Safety tips,” you’ll see a list of topics you can select for more information, such as: “Learn some handy self-protection tips,” “Sprays? Shockers? Alarms? Which protective device is right for you?”; and “What do you do if you’re a victim of domestic abuse?”

  THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY

  http://www.fbi.gov/yourfbi/history/famcases/brinks/brinks.htm

  This is the story of the famous Brinks robbery in 1950. A group of armed men broke into a Brinks office, tied up the employees, and made off with over $1.2 million in cash and over $1.55 million in checks, money orders, and other securities. It took the FBI six years to solve the crime.

  3

  Customs

  How did the custom of kissing originate? (This isn’t about the chocolate kind.)

  One theory of kissing prevalent among anthropologists contends that kissing originated from “premastication.” Although today we can buy soft baby food, this is not true in many cultures and especially in an
cient primitive cultures. Premastication basically means “pre-chewing.” A mother chews the food and then pushes the soft, pre-chewed food into her infant’s mouth. This process involves mouth-to-mouth contact and is sometimes called “kiss-feeding.” Many anthropologists think that is how kissing originated.

  Another popular theory, and a less messy one, asserts that kissing originated from a custom symbolizing the union of souls. In many cultures, individuals put their faces together to symbolize a spiritual union. Because they believed that breath was part of a person’s soul, by exchanging breaths, they were intermingling their souls. Some authorities believe that this practice eventually led to the Inuit custom of rubbing noses together as a sign of affection and love, as well as to our custom of kissing.

  Our culture recognizes many types of kisses. There is the kiss between parent and child, which represents love and affection. There are social kisses, which might be a quick kiss to the cheek when friends meet and occasionally when meeting someone for the first time. The ceremonial kiss, as the kissing on both cheeks when heads of state meet, is not a social convention but a political symbol signifying the good intentions of both parties.

  There is also the romantic kiss between lovers or spouses. There’s no need to explain that to anyone.

  FACTOIDS

  In the 1941 film, You’re in the Army Now, Jane Wyman and Regis Toomey kissed for three minutes and five seconds, the longest kiss in film history.