Interesting facts

APCRP houdt zich bezig met het vinden en in kaart brengen en beschrijven en beschermen van de graven van de pioneers.
In Arizona.
Daarover sturen ze me een paar keer per week berichten.

Soms is er iets grappigs bij, iets wetenswaardigs, een combi daarvan.
Zoals dit. Waarbij ik vaak denk: zou het wel wáár zijn.
En dan: het zóu kunnen.

Interesting facts about the 1500s dus.

Holding a wake
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey.
The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days.
Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.
They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up.
Hence the custom of “holding a wake”.

The graveyard shift
England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people.
So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave.
When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive.

So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, “saved by the bell” or was “considered a dead ringer”.

FYI.