The Manchester Mummy, Hannah Beswick (1688–1758), was a wealthy woman
with a pathological fear of premature burial whose body was embalmed
and kept above ground for over 100 years after her death. The "cold
dark shadow of her mummy hung over Manchester in the middle of the
eighteenth century", according to writer Edith Sitwell. The mid-18th
century saw an upsurge in the public's fear of being mistakenly buried
alive, and Beswick had seen one of her brothers show signs of life just
as his coffin lid was about to be closed. Writing in 1895, the
physician J. C. Ouseley claimed that as many as 2,700 people were
buried prematurely each year in England and Wales. For more than
50 years Beswick's mummified body was kept in an old clock case in the
home of her family physician, Dr Charles White, and periodically
checked for signs of life. Eventually it was donated to the Museum of
the Manchester Natural History Society, where it was put on display in
the entrance hall. Beswick's home was converted into workers' tenements
following her death; several of those living there claimed to have seen
an apparition dressed in a black silk gown and a white cap, and
described it as Hannah Beswick.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Mummy>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1517:
According to traditional accounts, Martin Luther first posted his
Ninety-Five Theses onto the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg,
present-day Germany, to protest what he believed were some of the Roman
Catholic clergy's sinful abuses, marking the beginning of the
Protestant Reformation.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther>
1864:
The territory that is well known today as the home of the "City of
Sin", legalized gambling, legalized prostitution, and other devilish
vices became the 36th U.S. state.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada>
1941:
Several witnesses first reported seeing clearly visible images of four
deceased former U.S. Presidents on the face of Mount Rushmore in South
Dakota.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rushmore>
1973:
Three Provisional Irish Republican Army members imprisoned at Dublin's
Mountjoy Prison vanished into the sky, embarrassing the government of
Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave as it launched a manhunt involving twenty
thousand members of the Irish Defence Forces and Garda Síochána for the
escapees.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Mountjoy_Prison_helicopter_escape>
1999:
All 217 people on board EgyptAir Flight 990 perished when the aircraft
suddenly plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nantucket,
Massachusetts, USA.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
fetch (n):
1. The source and origin of attraction; a force, quality or propensity
which is attracting.
2. A stratagem by which a thing is indirectly brought to pass; a trick
or artifice.
3. The apparition of a living person; a wraith
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fetch>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth.
--Natalie Clifford Barney
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Natalie_Clifford_Barney>