Commonly referred to as ‘The Corpse Flower’ or ‘Stinky Plant’, a Titan Arum is about to bloom at the United States Botanic Conservatory and you can watch it bloom via streaming video.

The Corpse Flower doesn’t have a regular blooming cycle but the impending bloom can be seen in changes in the plant itself. When it does finally bloom it’s only for 24-48 hours and that’s when you fully understand where this bizarre, Day of the Triffids-looking thing gets its name.

Once the plant blooms it, unlike other plants which smell pretty, gives off the smell of rotting flesh. Not only that, the plant generates its own heat which cause the smell to linger and reach further into the surrounding area so that it can attract pollinating creatures like dung beetles. The more it reeks, the more its chances of survival.

Now you can watch via video both the amazing blooming of this sci-fi-looking thing and you can smirk at all the people smelling it and plugging their noses as they cruise by.

[United States Botanic Garden]

King Richard III’s body has been missing for several centuries now. Most historians figured the guy was buried near Leicester, England…somewhere. Nobody could figure out where the hell the body ended up after Henry VIII’s people lost the records showing the location of the remains.

Using other records of the day, archaeologists determined that the King’s remains were buried somewhere near the altar of the Grey Friars Church…

The very same Grey Friars Church that was about to become a parking lot.

After construction began and trenches were being dug for the new parking lot, things came to a screeching halt as workers found they’d unearthed a skeleton…a skeleton that had been there for a very long time.

Scientists and archaeologists descended on the future home of another forgettable strip mall to see if they could learn more about the skeleton who’d been chilling just a few feet below the surface of the area for what appeared to be several centuries.

After a lot of testing, retesting and verified tests….there was no doubt as to whose body this was.

Discovered last summer, this story has resurfaced (totally intentional pun) as the lab-coats have determined that this, in fact and without a doubt, King Richard III’s remains.

Makes you wonder what the hell’s under the nearest WalMart.

[Telegraph UK]

Clarence Bright passed away at 93 years of age and his corpse was being prepped for burial in his final resting place.

Key word in that last sentence? ‘Was’.

Just hours before being buried, the body of Clarence Bright went missing. After receiving tips from family members, authorities began searching for Clarence’s son, Vincent. Almost immediately their search turned up a van containing a casket but still no Clarence.

When authorities finally arrived at Vincent’s home, they also found out where Clarence had seemingly sauntered off to.

Vincent, who, according to his family, had extreme religious views, had taken his good ol’ Dad home, in a cliche’ rookie move put him in the freezer in the basement and was going to bring him back to life.

Authorities shook their heads, arrested him, plucked his dad-sicle from the freezer and slapped a $75,000 bond on him.

Wayne County Jail arraigned Vincent via video.

In an understatement to the media, Vincent Bright’s lawyer, Gerald Karafa said:

“It’s an unusual case. It’s not something you see every day.”

Obviously Gerald the lawyer isn’t a regular reader of WeirdThings.

[Associated Press]

Ever grill during the summer? Ever notice how much more the flames rage when they hit a nice piece of fat?

It’s no different for human beings.

A crematorium in Austria caught fire recently not because of an arsonist, not because of some kid playing with matches and definitely not because some some dude tried to torch another dude who’d done too many bath salts before he went out among the populace searching for his next meal.

No. This particular blaze was caused by burning fat. Human burning fat.

A 440-pound Austrian woman was being cremated when the device became overheated and thick black smoke bellowed out of the machine and into the building. When firefighters arrived and tried to put it out they realized that even the vent had been covered in burning fat and was also on fire preventing them from using it to clear the smoke.

After spraying water through the vents from outside and controlling the fire raging from the cremation machine, firefighters were covered in the thick, oily soot you see in the photo.

While several crematoriums around the world are installing larger machines to accommodate the world’s expanding waistlines, many have yet to jump on board.

[Daily Mail]

An 80-year-old South African man was reported dead by his family and taken to the morgue where the undertaker checked his vitals and verified the death. The body was then locked up in a morgue fridge for 21 hours when he suddenly woke up and started banging on the fridge door screaming to be let out. The morgue owner and employees first thoughts were “ghost” – even though everybody knows ghosts can just ooze right through walls. So they called the cops and once the cops came with guns, they bravely entered the morgue and luckily did not kill the man again.

The real kicker is how the morgue owner, Ayanda Maqolo, reacted to the poor old man screaming to freed. Especially after his employees seemed so sure it was a ghost:

“I couldn’t believe it!” Maqolo said. “I was also scared. But they are my employees and I had to show them I wasn’t scared, so I called the police.”

After police arrived, the group entered the morgue together.

“I was glad they had their firearms, in case something wanted to fight with us,” Maqolo said.

[Gizmodo]

In 1875 a body was dug up while building a new train depot in Philadelphia. Thought to have been buried originally in 1800, the entire body has been turned into soap.

“This unusual preservation occurred because water seeped into the casket and brought alkaline soil with it, turning the fats in his body to soap through a type of hydrolysis known as saponification.”

[Smithsonian]

“From a distance it resembled a rather large man in a fur coat, leaning tenderly over the grave of a loved one. But when the two women in the Russian village of Vezhnya Tchova came closer they realised there was a bear in the cemetery eating a body.”

Daniel Scott Lasky final wish was to be buried at sea. Unfortunately he accidentally set of a murder investigation when those hired to lay him to rest in a watery grave did not properly weigh down his corpse.

…Lasky’s body resurfaced Saturday. About 9:30 that morning, a fisherman reported a man’s body floating about four miles offshore. Its wrappings had come undone. Sheriff’s marine deputies raced to the scene, along with the Coast Guard. Homicide detectives waited onshore.

Investigators later found Lasky’s intended resting place in his obituary in the Hickory Daily Record: “Burial will be at sea.”

No word yet on if burial regulations were followed.

[Sun-Sentinel]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Cadillac of dead body retrieval technology…

The system involves a small aluminum pipette that can detect trace amounts of a chemical called ninhydrin-reactive nitrogen, which collects in air pockets around a grave site. It’s the only known example of testing the chemical in its vapor phase, NIST says. As an added bonus, the system works at ambient temperatures instead of freezing cold, which could make it easy to transport.

Chemists Thomas J. Bruno and Tara M. Lovestead tested it on dead rats, burying some in 3 inches of soil and laying others on top of the soil. For comparison, they also tested boxes with no dead rats in them. The NRN compound was still detectable after nearly five months, the researchers say. A paper on their findings was published in the journal Forensic Science International.

Cross that one off your Christmas wish list.

[PhysOrg via Pop Sci]

Flower, for my dearest?

A rare behemoth flower — dubbed the “corpse flower” for its rotting-meat smell — is set to bloom at Western Illinois University this week. It’s one of a small group of these flowers that have bloomed in cultivation since the 1880s.

As of Monday, the mega flower (one of four in the university’s greenhouse), was 44.5 inches (113 centimeters) tall, having grown nearly 4 inches (about 5.7 cm) in 24 hours. In the wild, the plant can grow as big as 20 feet (6 meters) tall and 15 feet (4.5 meters) across.

“The Titans in the WIU Botany Greenhouse will only get about half that in size,” said Jeff Hillyer, greenhouse gardner at WIU.

This one might be kind of redundant to leave on a grave stone…

[Live Science]