|
Taphophobia
Taphophobia (from Greek τάφος - ''taphos'', "grave, tomb" and φόβος - ''phobos'', "fear") is an abnormal (psychopathological) fear of being buried alive as a result of being incorrectly pronounced dead. Before the era of modern medicine, the fear was not entirely irrational. Throughout history, there have been numerous cases of people being buried alive by accident. In 1905, the English reformer William Tebb collected accounts of premature burial. He found 219 cases of near live burial, 149 actual live burials, 10 cases of live dissection and 2 cases of awakening while being embalmed. The 18th century had seen the development of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and crude defibrillation techniques to revive persons considered dead, and the Royal Humane Society had been formed as the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned. In 1896, an American funeral director, T. M. Montgomery, reported that "nearly 2% of those exhumed were no doubt victims of suspended anima ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Phobias
The English suffixes -phobia, -phobic, -phobe (from Greek φόβος ''phobos'', "fear") occur in technical usage in psychiatry to construct words that describe irrational, abnormal, unwarranted, persistent, or disabling fear as a mental disorder (e.g. agoraphobia), in chemistry to describe chemical aversions (e.g. hydrophobic), in biology to describe organisms that dislike certain conditions (e.g. acidophobia), and in medicine to describe hypersensitivity to a stimulus, usually sensory (e.g. photophobia). In common usage, they also form words that describe dislike or hatred of a particular thing or subject (e.g. homophobia). The suffix is antonymic to -phil-. For more information on the psychiatric side, including how psychiatry groups phobias such as agoraphobia, social phobia, or simple phobia, see phobia. The following lists include words ending in ''-phobia'', and include fears that have acquired names. In some cases, the naming of phobias has become a word game, of not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of the Continental Army, Washington led the Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War and served as the president of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which created the Constitution of the United States and the American federal government. Washington has been called the " Father of his Country" for his manifold leadership in the formative days of the country. Washington's first public office was serving as the official surveyor of Culpeper County, Virginia, from 1749 to 1750. Subsequently, he received his first military training (as well as a command with the Virginia Regiment) during the French and Indian War. He was later elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses and was named a delegate to the Continental Congress ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snopes
''Snopes'' , formerly known as the ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', is a Fact checking, fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and Debunker, debunking urban legends and similar stories in Culture of the United States, American popular culture. History 1990s In 1994, David and Barbara Mikkelson created an urban folklore web site that would become ''Snopes.com''. ''Snopes'' was an early online encyclopedia focused on urban legends, which mainly presented search results of user discussions. The site grew to encompass a wide range of subjects and became a resource to which Internet users began submitting pictures and stories of questionable veracity. According to the Mikkelsons, ''Snopes'' predated the search engine concept of fact-checking via search results. David Mikkelson had originally adopted the username "Snopes" (the name o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dead Ringer (idiom)
Dead ringer is an idiom in English. It means "an exact duplicate" or "100% duplicate", and derives from 19th-century horse-racing slang for a horse presented "under a false name and pedigree"; "ringer" was a late nineteenth-century term for a duplicate, usually with implications of dishonesty, and "dead" in this case means "precise", as in "dead centre". Citing the '' Manitoba Free Press'', October 1882. The term is sometimes said to derive, like "saved by the bell", from a custom of providing a cord in coffins for someone who has been buried alive to ring a bell to call for help, but this appears to be a folk etymology Folk etymology (also known as popular etymology, analogical reformation, reanalysis, morphological reanalysis or etymological reinterpretation) is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more famili .... References English-language idioms {{vocab-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saved By The Bell
''Saved by the Bell'' is an American television sitcom created by Sam Bobrick for NBC. The series premiered, in primetime, on August 20, 1989, a Sunday night. Targeted at kids and teens, ''Saved by the Bell'' was broadcast in the United States on Saturday mornings, later as the flagship series in NBC's TNBC lineup. A spin-off (media), retooling of the Disney Channel series ''Good Morning, Miss Bliss'', the show follows a group of high school friends and their Principal (school), principal at the fictional Bayside High School in Los Angeles. Primarily focusing on lighthearted comedic situations, it occasionally touches on serious social issues, such as recreational drug use, drug use, driving under the influence, homelessness, remarriage, death, women's rights, and environmental issues. The series starred Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Dustin Diamond, Lark Voorhies, Dennis Haskins, Tiffani Thiessen, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, Elizabeth Berkley, and Mario Lopez. The series ran for four seasons, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Safety Coffin
A safety coffin or security coffin is a coffin fitted with a mechanism to prevent premature burial or allow the occupant to signal that they have been buried alive. A large number of designs for safety coffins were patented during the 18th and 19th centuries and variations on the idea are still available today. History The fear of being buried alive peaked during the cholera epidemics of the 19th century, but accounts of unintentional live burial have been recorded even earlier. The fears of being buried alive were heightened by reports of doctors and accounts in literature and the newspapers. As well as dealing with the subject in "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Cask of Amontillado", Edgar Allan Poe wrote "The Premature Burial", which was published in 1844. It contained accounts of supposedly genuine cases of premature burial as well as detailing the narrator's own (perceived) interment while still alive. The general fear of premature burial led to the invention of m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Black Cat (short Story)
"The Black Cat" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in the August 19, 1843, edition of ''The Saturday Evening Post''. In the story, an unnamed narrator has a strong affection for pets until he perversely turns to abusing them. His favorite, a pet black cat, bites him one night and the narrator punishes it by cutting its eye out and then hanging it from a tree. The home burns down but one remaining wall shows a burned outline of a cat hanging from a noose. He soon finds another black cat, similar to the first except for a white mark on its chest, but he soon develops a hatred for it as well. He attempts to kill the cat with an axe but his wife stops him; instead, the narrator murders his wife. He conceals the body behind a brick wall in his basement. The police soon come and, after the narrator's tapping on the wall is met with a shrieking sound, they find not only the wife's corpse but also the black cat that had been accidentally walled in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Cask Of Amontillado
"The Cask of Amontillado" (sometimes spelled "The Casque of Amontillado" ) is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the November 1846 issue of ''Godey's Lady's Book''. The story, set in an unnamed Italy, Italian city at carnival time in an unspecified year, is about a man taking fatal revenge on a friend who, he believes, has insulted him. Like several of Poe's stories, and in keeping with the 19th-century fascination with the subject, the narrative revolves around a person being buried alive – in this case, by immurement. As in "The Black Cat (short story), The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart", Poe conveys the story from the murderer's perspective. Montresor invites Fortunato to sample amontillado that he has just purchased without proving its authenticity. Fortunato follows him into the Montresor family vaults, which also serve as catacombs. For unknown reasons, Montresor seeks revenge upon Fortunato and is actually luring him into a trap. At ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Fall Of The House Of Usher
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in ''Burton's Gentleman's Magazine'', then included in the collection ''Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque'' in 1840. The short story, a work of Gothic horror, Gothic fiction, includes themes of madness, family, isolation, and metaphysical identities. Plot The story begins with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country, complaining of an illness and asking for his help. As he arrives, the narrator notices a thin crack extending from the roof, down the front of the house and into the adjacent Tarn (lake), tarn, or lake. It is revealed that Roderick's sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into catalepsy, cataleptic, deathlike trances. Roderick and Madeline are the only remaining members of the Usher family. The narrator is impressed with Roderick's paintings and attempts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Premature Burial
"The Premature Burial" is a horror short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1844 in ''The Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper''. Its main character expresses concern about being buried alive. This fear was common in this period and Poe was taking advantage of the public interest. The story has been adapted to a film. Plot In "The Premature Burial", the first-person unnamed narrator describes his struggle with things such as "attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy", a condition where he randomly falls into a death-like trance. This leads to his fear of being buried alive ("The true wretchedness", he says, is "to be buried while alive"). He emphasizes his fear by mentioning several people who have been buried alive. In the first case, the tragic accident was only discovered much later, when the victim's crypt was reopened. In others, victims revived and were able to draw attention to themselves in time to be freed from their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States, and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. Poe is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career. Poe was born in Boston, the second child of actors David and Elizabeth "Eliza" Poe. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and when his mother died the following year, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. They never formally adopted him, but he was with them well ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
