WHO REMEMBERS? The UK Nostalgia Podcast
Join amateur historians Andrew and Liam (thrice bronze medalists in 'The South Yorkshire Rememberers Chalice') as they take a trip back to life in Britain during the eighties, nineties and noughties to discuss the pop culture moments that defined a nation.
Do you remember when Del boy fell through the bar, when Marathon bars changed their name to Snickers or when Paul Sykes punched a shark? If so then come and remember with us. If not then stick around and we will remember for you. This is literally a no lose siduation (situation).
WHO REMEMBERS? The UK Nostalgia Podcast
Who Remembers........Spontaneous Human Combustion?
What happens when the human body mysteriously bursts into flames with no apparent ignition source? The phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion has puzzled scientists and fascinated the public for centuries, with approximately 200 reported cases over the last 300 years.
But spontaneous combustion is just the starting point for our exploration of history's most bizarre deaths. We'll take you through a gallery of strange demises: Franz Reichelt's fatal jump from the Eiffel Tower to test his flawed parachute design; Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe's death by politeness after refusing to excuse himself to use the toilet at a banquet; Frank Hayes, who became the only jockey to win a race while dead; and the Greek philosopher who literally laughed himself to death. Perhaps most disturbing is the tale of the Collier brothers, whose extreme hoarding led one to be killed by his own booby trap and the other to starve to death among mountains of collected junk.
These unusual exits from life's stage remind us how unpredictable our final moments can be. Whether scientifically explainable or genuinely mysterious, these strange deaths capture our imagination and make us wonder: could something equally bizarre happen to any of us? Listen now and decide for yourself which death is the most extraordinary—and perhaps check your home for fire hazards, just to be safe!
Hello and welcome to the podcast. Who Remembers this episode? We are remembering spontaneous human combustion.
Speaker 2:Britain's first mass-produced electrical car and something called the internet.
Speaker 2:Stop shacking. Thanks, steve, but none of the locals got paddling. Yeah, that's for me. No bottle this kids. I can't speak, you can't win anything with kids. Heck man, one of the superstar video games in the business. Did you threaten to overrule it Before we became a fool again? Remember when it's the lowest form of conversation, right? So a bit of a left field in it. I'm gonna say it's a clickbait title, but it's not because I don't know, I don't know anyone a clickbait. What we're going to use this for, realistically, I believe, is just basically people, unusual deaths of the past, but we wanted to use spontaneous combustion as the sort of the what's the word? The anchor to hold it all together.
Speaker 2:It's not an anchor is it that holds things together?
Speaker 1:No, this is how we're going to reel you in. That's it. And then, once we've discussed spontaneous human combustion, we'll go on to the broader field of unusual deaths. And the reason why we're not saying who remembers unusual deaths is because we don't necessarily remember some of these?
Speaker 2:No, but we do remember, or I remember my dad used to have loads of these unexplained books. I don't know if your dad had the same. I don't know where he'd gotten from Like about 12 unexplained chronicles, like books, and in almost all of them, if I remember rightly, there were pictures of people who had spontaneously combust.
Speaker 1:Well, the famous picture was like a set of legs next to some ash or some feet. That was, I mean. I don't know how much sort of research you've done. I'm not sure you've done very much, believe it or not? Yeah, so I don't know how it can be living or recently deceased. So it can happen to you when you're alive, or recently died, and without any apparent source of ignition, the body appears to burn.
Speaker 2:Burst into flames, basically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the unusual thing is it seems to burn in such a way that doesn't have much impact on the things around it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've got actually an example. Right In 1980, this is quite recent as well Henry Thomas was found or left at. Henry Thomas was found by the police in his home and they were greeted with just some legs below the knee and a skull and his legs had the socks and trousers on him, untouched by the fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which I mean as a sociological man. I don't understand. No, there are reported cases of this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if people are burned. Realistically, if people are burned, why would the whole of the bottom half or the extremities not have burnt with it? I don't understand it.
Speaker 1:So the characteristics and this is from Wikipedia, so as most things we actually research are. But British Medical Journal in 1938, there was a sorry no, they cited an 1823 published book, medical right jurors jurisprudence, which I don't even know what that means, but that there was reporting it back then of spontaneous human combustion and they found. They found the characteristics that they recorded were chronic alcoholics. Bad news for you. Yeah, I can take that one. They're usually elderly females. Again, another one for you Two out of two. The body has not burned spontaneously but some lighted substance has come into contact with it. So what they're suggesting is and this is the sort of thing I think- maybe like a smoker who drops a cigarette on themselves, yeah, or a candle.
Speaker 1:Someone was going to bed and they fell asleep.
Speaker 2:So I've read that there's been 200 cited reports in the last 300 years of people spontaneously combusting.
Speaker 1:Hold on, I've not finished the characteristics yet.
Speaker 2:I was saying, though, but you say, most forensic experts do believe that there were external causes, as you said, like dropping a match or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which then means it's not spontaneous combustion, is it? It's just something burning, so the whole thing is based on the premise that it's probably not a thing, but the hands and feet usually fall off. That's a mad characteristic, isn't it? That one?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, and this is one that makes it most interesting, the fire has caused very little damage to combustible things in contact with the body. So again, I can't give you a quotable example, but I'm almost certain. I've seen pictures where it's like the armchair somebody sat on has blackened but not fully burned, whereas the body seemingly has.
Speaker 2:And the last one.
Speaker 1:the combustion of the body has left the residue of greasy and fetid ashes Very offensive in odour. Again, I don't know what fetid means.
Speaker 2:No fetid ashes. Very offensive in order Again, I don't know what fetid means. No fetid cheese. I think that, like I say in my dad's unexplained books obviously these unexplained books there's a lot of shit in them, like you know a lot less monster, ufos and all that.
Speaker 1:But I always remember I lent one to your dad and the sheer joy on his face when he saw it oh, he loves them.
Speaker 2:It joy on his face when he saw it oh, he loves them. There was a talking mongoose in it. Oh, I remember that one. Yeah, talking mongoose, yeah, but he used to have them as a really young child. He used to shit me up seeing these, like like a chapter on spontaneous combustion and, like you say, that's one that you've just mentioned really sticks out to me where it would just be arms and legs and then a chair.
Speaker 1:And you be arms and legs and then a chair. And you thought that and you're thinking that could happen to me. You're a bit of a worrier, aren't you? Did you ever?
Speaker 2:oh, yeah, because I think you said that you messaged uh, you messaged ben, aren't you, and he always used to worry that he was going to spontaneously petrified, is it?
Speaker 2:I never actually thought it happened to me, but it was that sort of thing where I thought, well, I don't know, I've had lots of panic attacks and stuff in the past in my in my early in my early years, when my 20s and um the word. I never actually thought I'm going to burst into flames. But if anyone's ever had a panic attack, you feel like you're burning up and you sort of and I imagine I don't know maybe subconsciously something. We're in there thinking oh my god, I am going to explode and burst into flames.
Speaker 1:this could be be worrying for me because some research done into it did suggest high alcohol consumption, which and a woman yep. Yeah, I'm not an alcoholic, but I do have a drink at the weekends. Yep, Also ketosis, which is something that I do when I try and lose weight, which is like your body goes into a very acidic, flammable state apparently. So yeah, who knows, if you don't hear from me one week, just come to me.
Speaker 2:Well, just presume that you burst into flames.
Speaker 1:Just find my feet, yeah.
Speaker 2:Can I give you another story, another? What do?
Speaker 1:you call it case. Please do A case, yeah.
Speaker 2:Janine Safin. So someone actually witnessed this one. She was 61 years old when she died, but she had the mental development of a six-year-old, according to her father, who was 82 at the time. He and janine were both sitting in the kitchen and he saw a bright surge of light out of the corner of his eye and turned to ask his daughter if she'd seen it, to his amazement this is like a joke when he turned his head to look at her, she was completely on fire, but with her hands on a lap. So he yanked her over to the sink to try and put out the flames. He disfigured his hands in the. In the process she suffered full thickness on burns to her face, her hands and her abdomen, to the point where you know she that just burnt off. Uh, she died, but her legs were still there. She literally burst into flames, apart from her legs, which that's Janine Saffin's father saying it. So, unless you're calling him a liar, then.
Speaker 1:But again, it's anecdotal, isn't it? It's hearsay, there's. No, I get it. He thinks that's real. But if he, do you imagine looking at the?
Speaker 2:corner of your eye. You're sat there with your dad or something watching football, and then you just go what's that?
Speaker 1:he's literally on fire burning.
Speaker 2:It'd be absolutely incredible, wouldn't it?
Speaker 1:that'd be like the biggest double take of your life, wouldn't it? You would like I?
Speaker 2:think like, what the like I like? I just mad, mad. But we thought we'd use that to go into another unusual deaths. I used to have a book, which I can't find anymore, called uh, I told you was ill, which had loads of unusual deaths in it. Um, we're not gonna be having any from that because I can't find it despite searching for it. But what I want to bring up? Um, and I don't know if you watched it before we started liam, we're a french reichelt. Uh, the french inventor who invented a wearable parachute that he helped aviators would use to help them survive falls. So they need to jump out of a plane at some point. Did you watch this video?
Speaker 1:no, because on this laptop it's not signed into my youtube account and it said I must verify my age yes and so I assume it's fairly shocking. I'll as you sort of explaining it. I'll try and watch along on my phone. Yeah, fair enough so it is.
Speaker 2:You can get this on youtube. Um, just put in fries, france, reichel. So this guy like say he wanted to invent a parachute so people could jump out of airplanes, basically, and survive falls. But he had a lot of early experiments into this and he used to try and use his parachute to as high as 39 foot, but none of them were ever successful and he even once broke his leg. So what he thought is he had no doubt that his suit was the real deal. He never had any doubt that there were not.
Speaker 2:There was anything despite it repeatedly failing yeah, what he thought is, the heights that you were jumping from were too low, so he didn't have time for the parachute to expand. So what would you do next? He went to the eiffel Tower. Go higher, yeah. So on 4th of February 1912, we jumped from the lowest deck of the Eiffel Tower, which is still under an 87 foot, and, like I say, there's footage of this and it's really.
Speaker 2:It's one of those things that's so ridiculous that it's funny, but it isn't, because you can sort of see him teetering on the edge with his massive. He just looks like he's in rags of clothes, like he's got bedclothes on him and stuff. He's so big, he's so and he's like sort of teeter on the edge like an eiffel tower. And then he just jumps and I'm not messing, I mean, it's not, it's not a surprise, but he literally sinks like a stone, like so just there's not a bit of it that like sort of sort of floats at all. He is literally he may as well not be wearing anything and he just straight to the floor, bang, dies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I love the sort of faith in what he was doing, but he's had multiple failures so he's just gone higher. It's like if he survived that and shattered every bone in his body, would he just have gone higher again.
Speaker 2:The best thing about it is he's got people with him, like a crowd came to watch it, like, oh, here he is, oh he's going to fly. And then at the end of the footage, people like holding him. He's dead, obviously, and they're like holding his body. Everyone looked really concerned and really shocked that this has happened. Do shocked that this has happened.
Speaker 1:Do you know what I mean? Anyway, I mean, it's certainly unusual, I'll give you that.
Speaker 2:So he died and, yeah, unfortunately he's sadly no longer with us. What have you got for me, Liam? What other unusual deaths have you got for me? Where's your brother, he?
Speaker 1:died Just made me think of that.
Speaker 2:for any XFM fans what's?
Speaker 1:that he's talking about starving people in Africa. And Pilkington and Gervais. He offers to give him some grain and water and stuff like that. But anyway, pilkington says well, what's your solution then? Just give him a buffet. He says, give him a sandwich. Oh yeah, it turns up again the next year. Well, I want another sandwich. Where's your brother? He died. Well, I want another sandwich. Where's your brother?
Speaker 1:He died Anyway, so mine and I've gone for a. Well, the first one I think we might have nearly died from as well, so this is where I went for this one. It's listed on a website called Phonera my screen's cracked so that's why I'm struggling to read it. Phonera Unbelievable technology flying around today. Yeah, it's listed as death by politeness. So this is the death of the brilliant Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. He had an extraordinary life as well as a ridiculous death. Working without a telescope, he established positions of stars, true nature of comets, had a tame elk and a fake nose because he'd lost his own in a duel, so a bit of an eccentric character to start with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But basically, what happened? He was at a banquet.
Speaker 2:I love a jewel by the way, jewel is such a good word. What happened? How could you get into a fight? I was involved in a jewel. I was involved in a jewel, yeah, a jewel, go on, sorry.
Speaker 1:So he died at a banquet because he really really needed the toilet and he was too polite to say that. So he just sat and sat and basically his bladder burst, what. So people thought he'd been poisoned at the time. But yeah, people sort of said to him you know why haven't you been to the toilet? And he said that'd be an unpolite thing to do in the bank.
Speaker 2:And rightly so. You don't want to be disrespectful in someone else's house, do you?
Speaker 1:No, and what it made me think of is when we went to coventry away oh god, very similar to uh, what's his name, this guy?
Speaker 2:yeah, we lost our nose and a jewel on the way to coventry yeah, we, we had several cans.
Speaker 1:We positioned several comets in the sky.
Speaker 1:Um no, but we. We basically oh god, I know most people on a minibus have been drinking cans of lager. We'd either missed a stop or the toilet wasn't working on the minibus, or so there was some reason why everyone needed a toilet. And then it would get into a point where kind of everyone on the bus was saying, oh, we're really gonna have to stop here, we're really gonna have to stop, and the driver said, look guys, five minutes, and we're there. Honestly, just just give me five minutes. I need a wee now thinking about this.
Speaker 2:By the way, again we got we got there and he went.
Speaker 1:Oh no shit, sorry guys, I've put the training ground in the sat nav he tried to coventry city training ground. Yeah, so like what or he put something wrong in anyway, whether it was a training ground, and then it was like another 20 minutes and it was at a point where, like I honestly can't explain, it was just pure pain, like I didn't have any other experience other than it, just and everyone the coach to me in my I mean it can't have been like this.
Speaker 2:But every single person on this mini bus was just holding, holding the crotch, like looking like really ill, like everybody was getting like seriously, to within seconds of people just having to to piss themselves basically, weren't it and? The second you stopped. Everyone jumped off the bus and just released kind of almost unbelievable at the side of the road, didn't even find a bush or anything, there must have been 15 people at the side.
Speaker 1:All of them like unbelievable it's not pleasant, but yeah, I thought we nearly died and we weren't being polite, we were getting quite happy. No, no, no, really.
Speaker 2:There were no available toilets but the thing is with that as well is because this happens as well. When someone says, oh, we're nearly there, you can have a wee in a minute, you're relaxed, don't you?
Speaker 1:yeah, you think, oh yeah, it's not bad here we go.
Speaker 2:I've learned from then never do that again. So if I'm on a journey, you always get a bit mad with me, don't you? Because I, when we're, when we're at our chapel settling of roadshows, um you, I always have I always down a bottle of water and then need a toilet quite quickly.
Speaker 1:You get through a full bottle in about 40 minutes, yeah. And then last time we stopped and you bought a bottle of beer obviously I was driving and then you guzzled that down in about 20 minutes to a point where it was becoming a problem as we got there. But I think you made it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but what I've learned to do. If you'd have said oh, next ride, I think there's some services I wouldn't have relaxed after that day, because once you start relaxing, there's no going back. That's when the pain starts.
Speaker 1:It's the hope that kills you isn't it, it is.
Speaker 2:It's the hope that kills you. I've got one here, Liam the death of Frank Hayes. Have you heard about this? Don't think so. Don't think. I came across it. Irishman Frank Hayes wanted to be a jockey, but but he weighed around 142 pounds, which is much heavier than most jockeys. Anyway, he goes to New York to work as a trainer for racehorses.
Speaker 1:It's only 10 stone. It's not, I suppose, maybe in the jockey world, but that's not massively heavy, is it Right?
Speaker 2:don't come at me next, Liam, because you know more about science than I do, but this is what I've read. The owner of one of the horses says if you can lose 10 pounds in one day, you can ride my horse called sweet kiss. Somehow he lost 12 pounds in a day, is that?
Speaker 1:yeah that's all right, that's possible. I know sort of boxers getting sweatsuits and saunas and and it's it's very much frowned upon now. But I think a 24 hour fast and sort of extreme water weight loss, I think that's possible, I think it gets harder the smaller you are obviously, so that's probably a big weight loss for a smallish guy to start with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anyway. So he finally gets to be a jockey and his debut race is in 1923, where he rides Sweet Kiss, a 21 Outsider, a 20-to-1 Outsider at the Belmont track. He manages to get off to an unbelievable start and he's with the front runners. Then suddenly, the horse just goes into another gear and goes ahead of the other horses. Hayes passes the finish line, the horse wins by a head and the owner of Sweet Kiss, the guy who's obviously said you can ride my horse, comes running over to congratulate him. As it gets to him, hayes falls to the floor. Face down Turns. Hayes falls to the floor, faye's down Turns out he's had an heart attack halfway through the race and he was dead by the time he crossed the finish line. He's still the only person in horse racing history to win whilst dead.
Speaker 1:I mean, it'd be strange if it was a common feature, wouldn't it Imagine? If it was top of the list of like 20 people you'd think hold on something's going on here.
Speaker 2:I find that I don't know. Imagine that, I mean. I think that's a lesson for us all, isn't it? Don't give up, even if you die. Imagine being that good you die and you still win. This guy could have been the best jockey of all time.
Speaker 1:Died as a winner.
Speaker 2:But obviously you're right, what sudden weight loss.
Speaker 1:So don't try it at home, kids, I think. Yeah, there's a, I think, a loss of salt which can cause you to have a heart attack when you lose a lot of water. But in boxers it's normally brain injuries. I know it's different because they're getting hit, but it's normally. If the lining of your brain starts to lose moisture that I think your brain sort of shrinks away a little bit and it can bounce around sort of shrinks away a little bit and it can bounce around.
Speaker 2:Because I had a colonoscopy not too long ago and I took loads of laxatives, could I have died?
Speaker 1:What from laxatives? Yeah Well, no, because if you didn't have the ability to sort of drink water at the same time, I suppose so. But no, they didn't just lock you in a room and give you a load of laxatives did they?
Speaker 2:No, but it felt like that anyway. Anyway, the horse was obviously called Sweet Kiss. You know what they renamed it after Kiss of Death. Yes, the Sweet Kiss of Death. What a name for an horse. Yeah, old Frankie boy went out in the history books as the only rider only jockey ever to win whilst dead.
Speaker 1:So hope for everybody out there. Uh, yeah, okay, I'll. Uh, I'll move on to my next one. So I was surprised you didn't pick this one, because this came up quite high on a lot of the uh the charts, to be honest, like when I searched unusual deaths and things. So I I love this one. This is, I mean, it's one of these kind of greek philosophers. I think he's called chrysippus. Um, it was a.
Speaker 1:He moved to athens again. I'm doing some live wikipedia research here, but I have read this before but I can't remember the bit I wanted to read out. So he excelled in logic, theory of knowledge, ethics and physics. Um, he had a really good understanding of the universe, thought everything was sort of linked together. Um, the the death itself. So there's a couple of versions, but the one I'm going to go with, because it's the one that I really like, is that he basically saw a donkey eating some figs and he found it that funny. He laughed himself to death. He literally laughed himself to death. They had a fit of laughter why hang on a minute.
Speaker 2:There's a joke. There's a joke in monty pat. I don't know what monty python film it is. That was something completely different where he says a joke. A writer wrote a joke that funny that he laughed himself to death and didn't finish it. It's the funniest joke ever made.
Speaker 1:So actually there's another account as well. So there's one where he found it that funny that the donkey was eating figs that he laughed himself to death. There's another one where it was and he said he was watching the donkey eat some figs and he said out loud now give the donkey a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs. And he found his own remark that funny that he died laughing.
Speaker 2:That's worse. Laughing at your own jokes is worse, isn't?
Speaker 1:it. I don't know if it's good material.
Speaker 2:Imagine that laughing at your own joke we nearly died, actually ourselves, from laughing Another one that we nearly died from you might. This is my bit most I've ever laughed, I can't think of one. Our mate Russ. You know what I'm going to say here, liam we did have lots of good moments for us.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I don't know because I remember. I'm not sure I'm thinking the same one as you, but yeah, tell me what you're thinking of when we were playing pool, erm and er Dobson's funeral no, I wasn't at that uh but I thought that's where it was, was it not? But, yeah, okay, but we're playing, I think of it, jolly farmy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're playing pool and I don't know which one of us, or it might not even be one of us two. Someone put um a snooker ball in russ's pie.
Speaker 1:I'm claiming it, but it's not one of these things that I'm willing to sort of die on the hill, like certain phrases I think you've stolen from me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:One of us yeah. Well, Russ tended to get through his drinks quite quick and was sort of a little bit oblivious to what was going on around him. So, yeah, one of us put a pool ball in his pint of lager. Sorry, that's your story. You carry on telling it.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. I put a pool ball and we found that really funny and he couldn't get it out, could he? So he had to drink his pint really fast.
Speaker 1:He left it in to carry on drinking and then, as he turned away again, another one went in from someone, yeah and he stopped even trying. I think he ended up with three in his pint glass. And he stopped even trying to take them out. He was just drinking a pint of lager with three pool balls in it.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't even say I can't. Obviously you had to be there. But I wouldn't even say you were furious. You were just so straight-faced drinking the pint with three snooker balls and obviously, because of the glass, the snooker balls looked absolutely huge inside his glass?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because obviously it kept topping up the liquid because the balls were going in. So he got this nearly full pint.
Speaker 2:So every time he got down and pulled another one, another one would go in, so he could never finish his pint. Basically he was carrying around drinking this one pint.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to your. I think we've kind of gone three each, haven't we? So this will be your last one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my last one. Have you ever heard of the Collier brothers story? No, homer and Langley Collier. So these were two brothers who lived together in a four-story house in Harlem, new York, and they lived outwardly normal lives, churchgoers, good set of God-fearing lads. Harlem, at this point, late 1920s, was a really affluent area, but over the years crime obviously began to increase due to economic downturn and most of the wealthy people moved out. This scared the brothers, who began to leave their house less and less. Over time they'd stop paying the bills. They'd have no gas, no water, no electricity. They'd get water from a pump that was four blocks away and just live in total darkness. One of the brothers, zoma, went blind, um, and later was later paralyzed following a stroke, so his brother langley just spent all his time looking after him. They became really well known in the areas like weirdos and people would throw bricks at their houses and stuff like that. They're just total recluses.
Speaker 2:They stopped paying the mortgage at one point so police went round. They refused to open the door, so police slammed the door down. As they got there they found loads of boxes filled with all sorts of objects and garbage that piled up to six foot in the air, um, and they stretched all the way back to the, to the back wall. When they finally got in, langley just wrote a checkout for six thousand pound and gave it to him. Not what we worried about. Langley, by this point, had created tunnels out of all the garbage and there were rats and cats all over the place inside and outside.
Speaker 1:I mean not the rats and stuff, but this was making me think of you with the old 442 magazines.
Speaker 2:I genuinely have written down me with 442 magazines. Exactly the same, honestly, exactly the same gets worse, though. On March, the 21st 1947, someone tipped the police off that one of the brothers had died. So the police came round and they couldn't get in because even more garbage had been piled against the door. They tried to remove the junk on the various entrances on the first floor, but it was impossible. So they had to go to the second floor and they finally managed to get in after removing loads of garbage on the second floor. When they got in, they found that loads of traps had been made from all this junk, just hoping to kill intruders.
Speaker 2:After three hours of avoiding the traps and fighting their way through the junk, they found Homer the other brother, the paralysed brother, dead in a chair. The autopsy revealed that he'd died of starvation and he'd not eaten for over three days. Langley, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen. So after a large search of nine states over three days, the police decided to search the house again. For three weeks it took the workers to tear through all the garbage on the first floor. There were all sorts there, and this is weird over 25,000 books, 14 pianos and, most disturbingly of all, human skeletons and organs in the jar that apparently were the remains of their dad. Bit odd innit.
Speaker 1:Mm. Well, there's lots of odd stuff going on, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And anyway. Eventually they found the body of Langley buried below tons of rubbish just ten feet away from where his brother had been found. His face was unrecognisable because it had been mostly eaten by all the rats. The autopsy said he'd died of suffocation. Police think he accidentally set off one of his own traps. Loads of garbage fell on him before he died of suffocation. Homer obviously paralysed because he'd have just watched his brother slowly suffocate before dying of starvation himself because he couldn't do anything. That, my friends, is my final unusual death.
Speaker 2:That's a great story for a light-hearted entertainment podcast, bad doing it, that it's like there's so many weird things about it, like what I don't know. It's just bizarre. Like 25,000. I mean, obviously the 25,000 books is not the main thing here. The skeletons and organs and job, these were just normal people at one point.
Speaker 1:Hmm, I mean, yeah, I feel so it's odd to have like a sort of duo of hoarders like it. I get somebody sort of on their own, isolating themselves, hoarding, but they both and the traps is a bit odd as well, like I presume they wanted to be that secluded from the world.
Speaker 2:They thought, if anyone comes in, but he fucking, he got done by his own, didn't he? His own, petard hoisted yeah by his own petard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there His own petard Hoisted. Yeah, by his own petard.
Speaker 2:Hoisted by his own petard. Yeah, there are pictures of this, if people want to see, of when the police first, when they first got into the house. It's just unbelievable. There's just shit all over. I mean fucking hell. Do you know what I mean? I've been to some messy place. I've been to a guy's flat in London and I'm not going to say his name, but Christ, just shit everywhere. It's worse than that, yeah.
Speaker 1:I haven't been to that flat, so I have no context. But yeah, okay I think after that I'll change the tone, I'll keep it simple.
Speaker 1:So mine, is about a guy called Ascilius, a Greek playwright Again, I think Carl Pilgerton mentioned this, but I think he got it wrong. But basically he was a playwright who is kind of noted as an inspiration for a lot of the Greek tragedies. The plays that he left he was not necessarily his plays became famous, but they in theory inspired a lot of the things that followed. Um, the version that I read I'm going to go with is that it'd been predicted that his death would be by something falling on him. So he left the city and was sat outside the city gates to protect himself and an Eagle, flying over him with a tortoise in its claws, dropped it on his head Cause it thought it was a rock. So death by tortoise in its claws. Dropped it on his head because it thought it was a rock. So death by tortoise.
Speaker 2:Imagine that Of all the, that's probably the least likely one we've come near, isn't it?
Speaker 1:I've never been near a drop in tortoise.
Speaker 2:I don't think you nearly got. Well, you got into a couple of fights with some seagulls, though, haven't you? Yeah, I've had, yeah.
Speaker 1:I suppose, yeah, I've had, I've had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I suppose yeah so if you're in playing the eagle, planned it, then yeah, maybe I've come close to that because I haven't. Yeah, you're right, yeah, yeah uh right, well, that's my three. Have you got any more liam on your uh in your hit list or?
Speaker 1:no, I mean I came across a few others. I came across the story of a guy, um, who's kind of it implied it was his sort of party trick, but I don't. I don't quite know how often he did it, but he used to run and jump at his, his windows of his sort of uh like office, to prove, one, how brave he was, but two, how strong these, these sort of double glazed windows were. And on one occasion he did it and he just went straight through it and plummeted to his death. And the only other one that I had to mention was that and I mean, there's no humor in this at all, really, other than it's like it's more of this sort of irony of it um, what do you call those sort of gadgets that you, you sort of lean on to make a move? They're like, they're like a gyroscopic thing um scooter yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:What do you mean? What do you?
Speaker 1:call them People go on little tours of them, don't they?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, fucking hell.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I know what you mean. The name doesn't matter. I think either the owner or the director of the firm was out on one of those on a walk and he reversed to let a dog go past and fell off a cliff well, talking of cliffs, the one I saw it was the.
Speaker 2:It was the thing that we can't remember that killed him there were one that, yeah, the one I saw was a guy, I think he was on like a holiday with his family and they were doing climbing like climbing cliffs and stuff, and as a joke to his daughter he went oh I'm falling, and he actually did fall off and die, so don't fuck around. Basically, where you're on cliffs is the uh that's the moral there.
Speaker 1:The irony is, it was the, the pretending to fall, that made him fall yeah, how were you going by? The way irony at school. I wonder if it's the same, because I thought it was a really good explanation. I wonder if you were given the same explanation, did you have any english class where you learned what irony means?
Speaker 2:I don't think I can't remember it. I'm sure we will have, but I really can't it.
Speaker 1:So we were kind of told. It was taught as this. The line behind it is like little did they know, so they do something. Little did they know this would happen as a result of it. But it was told to us in the Roald Dahl story where, I think, a woman beats her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb. She then cooks the leg of lamb and feeds it to the detectives when they get there. And the irony there is little did they know. They were actually eating the evidence.
Speaker 1:So I thought that was a good explanation. I don't know if that's commonly taught. A lot of people get mixed up, don't they?
Speaker 2:with irony I mean, I think it's an easy one to get. You know, people say oh irony when they mean Sometimes you mean sarcasm. Yeah, that's really annoying that one. Someone will say I don't know, it's fucking football. Twitter is shit for this because they're all thickos. And someone will say I don't know, oh yes, I really think Brentford are going to win the league this year. The league this year. What do you? No, I was being ironic. No, you weren't, you were being sarcastic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah Anyway.
Speaker 2:I've enjoyed deaths.
Speaker 1:I always enjoy a death If anyone's got any funny deaths, if you remember anything about human, spontaneous human combustion, or if you remember any unusual deaths, let us know.
Speaker 2:And next week we're going to. I don't know what we're going to do. We're not going to announce episodes, but we are going to be getting on to some. We've had a lot of requests and we're going to be getting on to them, starting from next week. First come, first served. I think it's going to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we are going to try and get through them. So I mean, we've got other things lined up so we can't sort of jump straight into every request straight. We will pick them up if we have a look and see that they are worthy of an episode. So, yeah, keep suggesting things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and thank you for that, liam, and I will see you next time. Next place Same what is it? Same place?
Speaker 1:same time, same bat channel.
Speaker 2:What's that of Batman?
Speaker 1:Is it? Yeah? What am I mixing it up with Bat-think?
Speaker 2:Why would it not be Batman? Think about, why would it be Bat? Oh no, you might be right. No, it is Batman, it is Batman.
Speaker 1:But what does he mean? He?
Speaker 2:hasn't got a Bat channel. Who's saying that? Let me have a look. Who's saying it Bat channel, same Bat, same Bat.
Speaker 1:Hang on, it's not going to be the same Bat, same bat, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Same bat channel, same time, same bat channel 1966 Batman series. So it was the overdub at the end.
Speaker 1:So, like a sort of voiceover See you next week Same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same bat time, same bat channel. I'd like to do the old Batmans. To be fair, I nearly said Bruce Wayne, Adam West, but yeah anyway.
Speaker 1:Same bat time same bat channel.
Speaker 2:Bye, bye, bye. Thank you for listening to who Remembers. If you want to get in touch with us, you can find us at whorememberspod, at outlookcom. If you are a right-wing fascist, you can find us on Twitter at whorememberspod. Or if you're a Wokenor, you can find us on BlueSky at whorememberspod. Once, if you're a Wokenor, you can find us on Blue Sky at WhoRemembersPod. Once again, thank you for listening and we'll see you next time for more remembering.