Maria Elizabeth Macías Castro was posting details about drug traffickers to Twitter and a social media website called “Nuevo Laredo en vivo”. Her body and severed head was found last September, one of 46 journalists killed in 2011 according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Mukarram Khan Atif was number two. The second journalist killed so far in 2012, that is. He was gunned down while praying at a mosque in Shabqadar, in northern Pakistan. A terrorist group called the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility. Atif worked for a Pakistani TV channel and served as a stringer for Voice of America. “We have been warning him to stop his propaganda against us in the foreign media,” said a TTP spokesman. “He did not include our version in his stories.” The spokesman warned there were several more journalists on their hit-list.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 895 journalists have been killed since the group began counting journalist deaths in 1992. In 2011, 46 journalists were killed, including the well-publicized deaths of two of the West's most talented war photographers, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, killed while covering the uprising in Libya. But amidst the barrage of deaths occurring each day across the world's hot spots, many journalist deaths go unnoticed. Here are some of the more haunting ones from 2011...

Rafiq Tagi, freelance journalist in Azerbaijan – On November 19 Tagi was returning to his home in Baku, the capitol of Azerbaijan, when an unidentified man ran up behind him and without saying anything stabbed him seven times. Tagi underwent surgery for a damaged spleen but was recovering well and in stable condition when on November 21 he suddenly died. He was 61. Just ten minutes before his death doctors had checked on him and found him to be fine. His colleagues suspect foul play. In May 2007, he was convicted of inciting religious hatred and sentenced to three years in prison in connection with an article he published in an independent Azerbaijani newspaper. It stated that Islam was hampering the country's economic and political progress. Last October, he published an article criticizing Iranian authorities for their theologically based policies and suppression of human rights. The Iranian embassy in Azerbaijan denied involvement in Tagi's death. But the Iranian cleric, Mohammed Fazel Lankarani, published a statement saying that Tagi had received a “just sentence”.

Other Great Reads: What's the proper etiquette for a funeral?

Maria Elizabeth Macías Castro, social media user in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico – Castro's headless body was found along a road near Nuevo Laredo, a Mexican city on the Texas border and drug trafficking hot spot. She worked at a local newspaper there but also posted details about drug trafficker movements and drug gang lookout locations to Twitter and a social media website called “Nuevo Laredo en vivo”, using the pseudonym, “La NenaDLaredo” (The girl from Laredo). Her severed head was found on a large stone piling, with a note beside it that read: “Nuevo Laredo en Vivo and social networking sites, I'm The Laredo Girl, and I'm here because of my reports…” It is uncertain how her killers discovered her identity. According to CPJ, it is the first time a journalist has been killed directly because of something published to a social media site. She was 39.

Other Great Reads: Narco lives means narco-wives and narco-tombs

Hadi al-Mahdi, Iraqi radio host – Al-Mahdi was shot in his Baghdad home by an assailant using a pistol with a silencer. He had spent 18 years in exile and returned to Iraq in 2008, to live with his wife and three children. He hosted the show, “To Whomever Listens”, which aired on independent Radio Demozy. The show covered social and political issues and he often criticized politicians, including the former prime minister Ayad Allawi, and the current prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Mahdi regularly organized pro-democracy demonstrations via Facebook and publicized threats that he received. During Arab Spring protests Al-Mahdi and four other journalists were picked up by security forces and driven to the headquarters of the Iraqi Army's 11th Division, according to a Washington Post article. There they were beaten, given electric shocks and threatened with rape, then asked to sign a statement saying they were not tortured.

Growing fearful of his safety, about two months ago Al-Mahdi stopped his radio show. He told a friend that he believed Prime Minister Maliki had assigned mercenaries to stab him on the street. The week he was killed he had been preparing for a pro-democracy protest in Baghdad's Tahrir Square. “I will take part in the demonstrations,” he wrote, in a post on his Facebook page left just hours before he was killed. “The political process embodies a national, economic, and political failure. It deserves to change, and we deserve a better government. In short, I do not represent any political party or any other side, but rather the miserable reality in which we live.”

Susan Atkins, part of the murderous Manson Family, was sentenced to life in prison. She was denied parole 18 times and after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer she was denied a compassionate release. “She will be set free when judged by God,” said a family member of one of her victims.

Diane McCloud was freed from jail earlier this week, but only so she could die. McCloud, 48, was in Nassau County jail for shoplifting more than $3,500 worth of goods from Target. “She's terminal,” said her lawyer. “It's just so she can die easier and pain-free.” McCloud's case was unusual, usually dying prisoners end up dying in prison. Many large correctional facilities have nursing homes, and some, like Louisiana State Penitentiary, in Angola, the largest maximum security prison in the United States, even offer hospice care—the program was recently highlighted in a documentary shown on the Oprah Winfrey Network. According to a 2005 New York Times article, the number of lifers has almost doubled in the last decade. In 2005, some 132,000 prisoners were serving life sentences, according to the article; for murder, burglary, drugs and other crimes. Many prisoners will die without anyone noticing. But not all. Here are a few of the nation's most famous prison deaths..

Susan Atkins, member of the Manson Family – Manson and his followers murdered nine people in California during the summer of 1969. Atkins, known within the family as Sadie Mae Glutz, later said that she believed Manson to be Jesus. She bore a son by one of the group's members that Manson named Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz. Atkins was convicted for her participation in eight of the killings, including the murder of Sharon Tate, the wife of famous French-Polish film director, Roman Polanski. Tate was eight months pregnant at the time. Atkins received the death sentence but it was commuted to life in prison. She became a born-again Christian, taught prison classes and received a commendation for assisting officials in a suicide attempt.  Yet she was denied parole 18 times, becoming the longest-incarcerated female inmate in the California penal system.

Other Great Reads: The sad slow death of female serial killers, from “Monster” to Mary Ann Cotton

In April 2008, it was revealed Atkins had terminal brain cancer. One leg had already been amputated and she was given less than six months to live. Her lawyer said she could barely speak and that she couldn't sit up in bed without assistance. He requested a “compassionate release”, something that many in the prison reform community, who regarded keeping Atkins in prison as akin to torture, supported. But the victim's family members reacted strongly. “She will be set free when judged by God,” said Debra Tate, a relative of Sharon. “It's important that she die in incarceration.” And she did, on September 24, 2009, at a nursing center in the Central California Women's Facility, in Chowchilla, California.

Jeffrey Dahmer, serial killer and cannibal – Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. The twisted details, which involved dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism, made him one of the most famous, and ill-liked American serial killers. Dahmer was found guilty on 15 counts of murder and sentenced to 15 life terms, a total of 957 years in prison. He served his time at Columbia Correctional Institution, in Portage, Wisconsin. In July of 1994 an inmate attempted to slash Dahmer's throat with a razor blade while he was returning to his cell from church service in the prison chapel. Dahmer escaped the incident with superficial injuries, but in an attack later the same year he was not as lucky. While doing janitorial work Dahmer was attacked by a prisoner who beat him to death with a 20 inch steel bar he'd taken from the prison weight room. “God told me to do it,” the man told a guard. “You will hear about it on the 6 o'clock news…Jeffrey Dahmer is dead.” In 1996, Dahmer's possessions were purchased by a Milwaukee civic group, destroyed and buried in an undisclosed Illinois landfill.

Other Great Reads: Dealing with grief after an accidental death

John Gotti, mob boss – Gotti had two famous nicknames: the Dapper Don, for his penchant for expensive suits, and the Teflon Don, because he gained acquittals on three separate high-profile trials during the 1980s. But in 1992, after his underboss, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano testified against him, Gotti was convicted of five murders as well as racketeering, obstruction of justice, illegal gambling, extortion, tax evasion and loan sharking. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole and transferred to the United States Penitentiary, in Marion, Illinois. He spent most of his time in solitary confinement, allowed out of his cell for just one hour each day. In 1998, Gotti was diagnosed with throat cancer and sent to a prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri. The tumor was removed but returned two years later. On June 10, 2002, at the age of 61, he died in the Springfield prison hospital. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn ruled that Gotti would not be permitted a Christian burial. His funeral was held in a non-church facility, the procession included helicopters, a stream of black limousines and nearly two dozen cars containing cigar, royal flush and martini glass shaped floral arrangements. “Some might say he was notorious, law enforcement might say he was infamous,” said his lawyer, Bruce Cutler. “I say he was a sincere man, a remarkable man, an extraordinary man.”

Planking is a trending internet craze where people take photos of themselves in Superman-like poses, lying flat on surfaces like railings, rooftops and police cars. A 20 year old Australian man recently fell to his death from an apartment balcony while planking.

It was a strange year for weather and perhaps an even stranger one for dying, here are some of the weirdest deaths of 2011:

Stabbed to death at a cockfight - Jose Luis Ochoa was attending an illegal cockfight in Tulare County, California when he was stabbed in the leg by a cock that had a knife attached to one of its limbs. Ochoa was taken to the hospital where he was declared dead. He was reportedly a regular participant at organized cockfights and had previously been fined for owning or training animals for fighting.

Fell from a balcony while planking - Acton Beale, a 20 year old Australian, fell from the balcony of an apartment in Brisbane while trying to plank on the railing. Planking is a trending internet craze where people take photos of themselves in Superman-like poses, lying flat on some surface, with arms at their side. Plankers then post the photos to social media websites like facebook and YouTube. Just weeks before, in Brisbane, another 20 year old was arrested for planking on the roof of a police car. Other plankers have been photographed lying on railroad tracks, in the middle of the road, and in trees.

Other Great Reads: The world's dumbest deaths, now on TV

Suffocating in a recycling bin - A 62 year-old Toledo, Ohio woman died from asphyxiation after falling head first into a recycling bin. She was discovered by her husband, upside down in the 65-gallon plastic bin, wearing pajamas. It is thought that she either lost her balance and fell off a porch into the bin or fell in while trying to retrieve an object. She died from positional asphyxia, which means because of the way she was stuck she couldn't breathe, the county coroner explained.

Mixed martial artist crushed to death by falling cow - A 23 year-old man known as McCrazy died from a heart attack after being crushed by a cow carcass at a slaughterhouse just outside Glasgow, Scotland. The man was a member of a group called the Dinky Ninjas Fight Team and was known as a prankster. Upon hearing the news, most of his friends assumed it was a joke. It is thought that the carcass, which weighed about a ton, fell off a conveyor belt hook and landed on him. He was a blue belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and was also trained as a Thai boxer.

Other Great Reads: Dealing with grief after an accidental death

Elite German handball referee twins die in car crash on way to game – Bernd and Reiner Methe got married on the same day, lived in homes just 50 yards away from one another, both once worked for a Mercedes-Benz dealership and in 1987, took up handball refereeing together. By 1993 they were refereeing for the Handball-Bundesliga, the best professional handball league in Germany. Their highest profile match was the 2010 European Men's Handball Championship, in which Croatia played France. On November 11, 2011 they were on their way to a Bundesliga match between HBW Balingen-Weilstetten and SC Magdeburg, when their Mercedez-Benz E Class, a car they had gotten just one day before, collided with a furniture truck, killing them both. Together they had refereed nearly 700 Bundesliga matches. The game they were on their way to was canceled.

Suffocating in a clothes drying rack - A 38 year-old man from Bradford, England was hanging his clothes out to dry on a plastic clothes drying rack when he tripped over a stool, fell backwards into the rack and suffocated to death. His neck and chest became stuck between the rungs as the rack collapsed under his weight. He struggled to free himself but this further compressed the rack and only made the situation worst. The clothes on the rack were wet, which would have put even more weight on his neck, explained a detective who surveyed the scene. “I have never come across a case like this,” the coroner who handled the incident explained, adding that the chances of such an accident were less than that of being struck by lightning, or a meteorite.

Couple killed by a horny black bear that catapulted through their windshield - A man from Quebec and a woman from Ontario were killed when a 440 pound black bear smashed through their windshield on a highway in rural Quebec. The bear was struck by a separate car, catapulted into the air, and landed on their windshield, which it crushed. It  then swept through the car and exited through the back window, dead from its injuries. A local hunting guide instructed drivers to be careful during mating season. “What happens,” he said, “is these guys are roaming a little bit out of their territory, looking for sows in heat.”

A number of famous figures died last week, among the less well known famous that also died was a New Zealand drag queen named Carmen Rupe.

The past week saw the death of three very different famous figures: North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Il; Czech playwright and president, Vaclav Havel and Cesaria Evora, a musical sensation from the Cape Verde Islands known as the Barefoot Diva, because she never performed in shoes. Of course, many less well known famous people died as well. Among them was a New Zealand drag queen, an early Soviet rocket scientist, a Japanese professional wrestler, an American rapper and a legendary British serial killer:

Umanosuke Ueda, Japanese professional wrestler - Ueda was famous for his bleached blond hair and handlebar mustache. He was born Yuji Ueda, but changed his name to Umanosuke, inspired by a famous late Shogunate Period samurai of the same name. Ueda fought in the Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance through the 1960s. From June 11, 1976 to July 28, 1976 he was the International Wrestling Alliance World Heavyweight Champion. During the 1980s, he appeared as a henchman on a cult Japanese television show called Takeshi's Castle, about a count who owns a castle and sets up impossible challenges for players to get to him. Ueda died of respiratory failure on December 21, 2011.

Donald Neilson, British serial killer – Neilson was born Donald Nappey but changed the family name after his daughter was repeatedly bullied at school because her last name sounded like the word nappy. He worked as a builder but turned to crime when his business failed, committing house burglaries by the hundreds. He went by a variety of nicknames, including The Phantom and Handy Andy, but the most popular was The Black Panther. By the 1970s he was robbing small post offices and in 1974, he committed his first murders, shooting dead two sub-postmasters and the husband of a sub-postmistress. He became the most wanted man in Britain. In 1975, he kidnapped the heiress to a large bus transport company fortune and demanded a 50,000 pound ransom. Due to a series of police bungles he never got the money. The girl was later found hanging from a wire at the bottom of a drainage shaft. Neilson was finally arrested in 1975, convicted of murder and sent to prison to serve five consecutive life sentences. He died on December 18, 2011, after suffering from breathing difficulties.

Other Great Reads: Famous death row last words and the weird art they inspired

Slim Dunkin, American Rapper – Slim was a rising star in the Atlanta rap group 1017 Brick Squad, which is led by rappers Waka Flocka Flame and Gucci Mane. He featured on several tracks by Waka Flocka and had recently released a 20-song mixtape which featured Gucci Mane and Roscoe Dash. Last Friday, December 16th, Slim was preparing to record a video in the studio when an argument broke out. The man he was arguing with produced a handgun and shot Slim in the chest. Waka Flocka Flame and Gucci Mane are covering funeral expenses, an elaborate ceremony that will include a white horse-drawn carriage, massive white floral arrangements and a white dove release ceremony.

Other Great Reads: The etiquette of funeral flowers

Carmen Rupe, New Zealand drag queen – Rupe was a drag queen, brothel owner, wannabe politician and cultural identity. She was born in 1935 as Trevor Rupe, into a family of 13 children on a Taumarunui farm. Trevor trained as a nurse in Auckland and Wellington then moved to Sydney's notorious Kings Cross district in the late 1950s. Here, he became a she, taking the name Carmen and becoming Australia's first ever Maori drag performer. She got a breast job, worked as a prostitute and danced with snakes. She spent many nights in prison. In 1968, she returned to New Zealand and opened up her famous, Carmen's International Coffee Lounge, which doubled as a gay brothel. The lounge had red walls, purple carpets and drag queen and transgender workers. Rupe ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1977, promising the legalization of gay marriage and brothels. Just three years ago she appeared on a motorized scooter at Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, completely topless. She died on December 15, 2011, at the age of 75.

Boris Chertok, Soviet rocket designer – Chertok worked on the control systems for the world's first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. He was born March 1, 1912, in Lodz, Poland, and moved to Moscow where he was trained as an engineer. His first work involved developing electronics for Soviet polar expeditions. In 1940, he began work on ignition and control systems for one of the world's first rocket planes, known as the Bereznyak-Isayev-1. He also worked on the control systems of the first manned spacecraft, the Vostok. He wrote the definitive history of the Soviet space program, a four-volume book entitled, Rockets and People. Chertok died on December 12, 2011, at the age of 99.

People come to Paris to shop and eat but also for the cemeteries, such as the Montparnasse Cemetery in the south of the city. Cemetery visitors may not know it but they are part of a growing movement known as grief tourism. (Photo by Justin Nobel)

People come to Paris for the food, the museums and the shops but also for the cemeteries. There is the Pere-Lachaise Cemetery, which opened in 1804 and receives more than a million and a half visitors a year, many of them coming to see the grave of legendary rock singer Jim Morrison. At Montparnasse Cemetery, a grid of mossy tombs and stark stone crosses, are literary luminaries such as Susan Sontag, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Baudelaire and Jean-Paul Sartre. And in Saint-Denis, on the northern outskirts of the city, are buried many of the most famous kings and queens of France, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who were reinterred here after being removed from their mass grave near the Madeleine. Few people would admit to having come to Paris to see cemeteries but dark tourism, also known as grief tourism, is a very real phenomenon. Each year people travel far and wide to see sights linked to some of the world's greatest massacres. Here are just a few.

Dachau Concentration Camp, Germany – Between 1933 and 1945 more than 31,000 people were murdered at Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. It is located near the medieval town of Dachau, in southern Germany and is now a memorial site. Visitors can see several rebuilt prisoners' barracks as well as a number of chapels. Dachau is only about ten miles northwest of Munich and several local tourist outfits run tours of the camp. “Join us to explore the dark side of Munich's history,” reads one. “We take you to the site of mass party rallies at Königsplatz and stop in the Hofgarten to talk about The White Rose resistance movement. The tour covers all important facts and sites that played a role in the origin of this black chapter.”

Other Great Reads: Good grief – The path to healing from a loss

Pablo Escobar's Compound, Colombia – In 1989, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, then in his mid-thirties, was ranked among the world's ten richest men by Forbes magazine. He was also one of the most murderous, supposedly responsible for more than 4,000 deaths. His massive estate, known as Hacienda Napoles, lay just off the main road between Medellin and Bogota. It had a bullfighting ring and a private zoo with giraffes, elephants, kangaroos and hippopotamuses. On an arch above the entrance was one of the small planes Escobar used to run drugs into the US. In 1993, US Drug Enforcement Agents helped Colombian police gun Escobar down on a Medellin rooftop. After his death, his estate was looted by locals and torched. Convinced gold was hidden around the compound, locals dug up floors, knocked down walls and even burrowed into the concrete dinosaurs. Doors, window frames and bathroom fixtures were carried away. Escobar's collection of vintage cars was set on fire and many of the exotic animals starved to death. Recently, the provincial government turned the estate into a theme park. His collection of burnt-out vintage cars are still there, as are an entire pod of giant concrete dinosaurs and what has grown into the largest collection of hippos outside of Africa.

“This place is really nice and tranquil,” a 24 year-old university student recently told the BBC as she took a dip in one of the compounds' two pools. “If one judges him by the estate, you have to say that he was a really intelligent guy.”

Other Great Reads: Narco lives means narco-wives and narco-tombs

Poenari Castle, Romania – The castle was ruled during the 15th century by the murderous Vlad III the Impaler (Vlad Tepes), who was said to have been responsible for more than 80,000 deaths and was the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. It is perched on a cliff along a steep river valley on the edge of the Fagaras Mountains, near the village of Arefu. The castle was erected in the 13th century but abandoned during the 14th century. In the 15th century, Vlad III moved in. His father, Vlad II, was a member of a group founded to protect Christianity in Europe called the Order of the Dragon (Dracul). As the son of Dracul, Vlad II was also known as Dracula. He was famous for his excessive cruelty, burning entire villages to the ground and torturing and often impaling his victims. According to one story, an invading Ottoman army turned back in fright when it encountered thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the Danube.

Sometime during December 1476 Vlad III was assassinated and his head taken to Constantinople as a trophy. His castle fell into disrepair and by the 17th century was in ruins. In 1888, a landslide brought a portion of it crashing down into the river below but most of it remained intact. To reach it today, visitors must take a bus along the Transfagarasan road and ask the driver to stop in a certain spot. One Dracula enthusiast named Manning Krull recently did that and posted about the experience on his blog: “I rode through 20-some kilometers of beautiful hills and farms and tiny villages, going basically in a straight line the whole time, then we reached a point where the bus was going to make a left, and the driver pulled over and gestured to me to get out and walk straight down the road…Soon, on my right, I saw a small house with a carved wooden image of Vlad Tepes!”

In 1854, Balthasar Gerard assassinated the popular Dutch independence leader, William the Silent. City magistrates decreed his flesh be torn from his bones with pincers in six different places and his heart ripped from his chest while he was still alive.

Last week marked the 38th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an event that only grows more epic with time. Several new books address the assassination, including one by horror guru Stephen King, entitled, 11/22/63, about a Maine school teacher who travels back in time in an attempt to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from killing Kennedy. While JFK's death still burns bright in the mind of Americans it is only one in a long list of historic assassinations. Some of them are even more complex and vicious than the simple case of a “lone gunman.”

Other Great Reads: The history of manhunts, from Sabbah the Assassin to Yahya the Engineer

Ehud ben-Gera and King Eglon - In the year 1200 B.C., according to the Book of Judges, an Israelite named Ehud ben-Gera was sent by God to assassinate the Moabite King Eglon. Ehud had blacksmiths craft an 18 inch long double-edged sword which he concealed under his clothing, strapped to his right thigh. He traveled under the pretext of delivering the Israelites' annual tribute. Upon meeting, Ehud told the king he had a secret message for him. Eglon dismissed his attendants and Ehud drew his sword and stabbed him in the abdomen. The blade tore out Eglon's intestines and caused him to leak excrement. He was so fat the sword actually disappeared in the wound. Ehud left it there, locked the door to the king's chamber and escaped to the town of Seriah, where he sounded the shofar and rallied the Israelite tribes for an all-out attack against Moab.

Cassius Chaerea and Caligula – Cassius Chaerea was a professional soldier in the Roman Army and bodyguard for the lascivious emperor Caligula. Although Caligula built several important aqueducts and expanded the Roman Empire into Mauretania he was considered by many to be a self-absorbed braggart and insane. He slept with other men's wives and wasted money on useless bridges and personal statues while his people starved. Once, at games at which he was presiding, he ordered an entire section of the crowd to be eaten by animals during intermission because there were no criminals to be prosecuted and he was bored. Such ineptitude angered Cassius, who was also mad at the constant jokes Caligula made about a wound he suffered to his genitalia while serving Caligula's father, Germanicus. At games held in Rome in late January Cassisus murdered Caligula. Conspirators in the Roman Senate killed Caligula's wife and daughter. Unfortunately for Cassisus the entire family was not exterminated, Caligula's uncle, Claudius, became emperor and had Cassisus killed. He requested to be executed with his own murder weapon, a wish that was granted.

Balthasar Gerard and William the Silent – No assassin suffered a more gruesome fate than Balthasar Gerard, who on July 10, 1584, shot and killed the popular Dutch independence leader, William the Silent (William I of Orange). Gerard had snuck into the royal chambers and hid in a dark corner. As William's sister attended to her dying brother Gerard fled through a side door and ran across a narrow lane towards the palace walls. His plan was to jump into the moat, using a pig's bladder wrapped around his waist to keep him afloat but he stumbled over a pile of trash and was caught by one of William's servants. Gerard underwent a preliminary examination before the city magistrates, who decreed his right hand should be burned off with a red-hot iron, his flesh torn from his bones with pincers in six different places, that he should be quartered and disemboweled, then, while still alive, his heart ripped from his chest and flung in his face.

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What actually happened was even worst. He was hung from a pole and lashed with a whip. His wounds were smeared with honey and a goat—the animals have sharp tongues—was brought in to lick the honey off. Gerard was left the night with his hands and feet bound together in a ball, making sleep impossible. Over the next three days, he was repeatedly hung on a pole in this manner. Then a weight of 300 metric pounds was attached to each of his big toes for half an hour. After this, shoes made of raw well-oiled, dog's leather, two sizes too small, were put on his feet, which were then put before a fire, causing the shoes to warm up and contract even further, reducing his feet to useless stumps. His armpits were branded and he was dressed in a shirt soaked in alcohol, then doused with burning bacon fat. After four days of torture, he died. All the sudden Oswald's fate, killed by a gunshot to the abdomen fired by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, doesn't seem so bad.

Disgusted by what they did to Balthasar Gerard? Remember where you were the day JFK was assassinated? Leave a comment below..

Record droughts in Texas have lowered the level of Lake Buchanan, revealing long-forgotten tombstones.

Hurricane Irene roared up the East Coast last August, leaving a wide and varied path of destruction: in New Jersey at least one woman drowned in her car, Virginia experienced the second largest power outage in the state's history, in Delaware a tornado tore off the roof of a house and in Rochester, Vermont a river flooded its banks and swallowed a large section of a graveyard. “A terrible and sad situation,” read one local report. “Homes are destroyed, so are roads and bridges and even a cemetery…the final resting place for Rochester residents.” Much of the nation has seen weird weather lately, putting a crimp on lives and also affecting the dead. Some cemeteries have been submerged by flood waters, in other cases a lack of water has brought old graveyards back to life.

Flooding along the Mississippi River over the summer popped three caskets out of the ground in the cemetery of a 150 year-old Baptist church in Yazoo City, Mississippi. “It was just shocking,” a church deacon with a mother and a sister buried in the church cemetery told a local paper. The flood inundated the entire cemetery with two and a half feet of water, leaving only the tops of the headstones showing. Even a concrete vault was set afloat. The unearthed bodies were brought to the state medical examiner's office, which soon became full, forcing officials to keep bodies in a refrigerated truck.

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Just to the west, in Texas, the story has been drought. Water levels in area lakes have dropped by more than a dozen feet, unearthing surprises across the region. Along the Oklahoma border, a town flooded in 1944 when the Red River was dammed to make Lake Texoma has reemerged and at Falcon Lake, along the Rio Grande, on the Mexico border, a century-old church has reemerged. Other objects reappearing from Texas lake beds have included, prehistoric skulls, ancient tools, fossils and a small cemetery that appears to have contained the graves of freed slaves. At Lake Georgetown, near Austin, fishermen found what seems to be the skull of an ancient American Indian. The discoveries have attracted interest from local historians and also looters. At Lake Whitney, south of Fort Worth, more than two dozen looters were arrested for removing Native American tools and fossils that experts believe could be thousands of years old.

In Bluffton, a small town in the center of the state, the past 12 months have been the driest on record. The receding waters of nearby Lake Buchanan have revealed the concrete foundations of a two-story hotel, scales of an old cotton gin and concrete slabs from a Texaco gas station that also served as a general store. A handful of graves have appeared too, including the cracked marble tombstone of one Johnny C. Parks, who died October 15, 1882, two days before his first birthday.

But usually it is a flood that unearths old graves, and also puts people in new ones. In Terrell County, Texas in June of 1965, thunderstorms dropped nearly a foot of rain in only a few hours. Sanderson Canyon Creek, typically dry, turned into a furious 15-foot high wall of water. It struck the town below without warning, wrenching homes from their foundations, destroying businesses, washing out bridges and laying waste to five miles of Southern Pacific railroad track.

Entire families were swept away, others barely survived. A railroad brakeman named Charles Horsely was stranded atop an apartment for three hours and watched helplessly as the raging waters engulfed the town. Another brakeman nearly drowned in a futile attempt to save a family of children, clinging to a collapsing motel roof. “It just started crumbling and went over and everybody was going to die and I couldn't help them,” said the brakeman. Amazingly, one of the children actually survived. “I grabbed a tree, but there was a snake on it and I let go,” he later told a reporter at the hospital. “I went under 5 times, maybe 10 times. I thought  I was going to die.” He didn't, but unfortunately all his siblings did.

Other Great Reads: How to help others in a time of grief

Mixed in with the new bodies were old ones that washed out of Sanderson Cemetery. These bodies were later recovered and, to eliminate additional health hazards, mass-buried in a bulldozed pit.

Ned Kelly, a famous Australian cop killer from the 1870s, will finally receive a proper burial. Some people are rejoicing, others are mighty pissed.

Ned Kelly murdered three police officers in Australia during the 1870s and was hung in 1880, sometime this month he'll finally be properly buried, but not everyone is happy. “He was an outlaw, a thief and, unfortunately for my family, a murderer,” said Mick Kennedy, a police officer near Melbourne whose great grandfather, Sergeant Michael Kennedy, was shot dead by Kelly in 1878. “My great grandmother was left a widow with six children and there was no public service for her.”

Ned's remains were found in a mass grave in Melbourne's Pentridge Prison, in 2009. Most Americans have never heard of Ned Kelly but in Australia the man is a legend. And just who was he?

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First, a bit about his father, nicknamed Red, born in Ireland and a convicted criminal. His court records were destroyed but it is suspected his crime was stealing two pigs. Red was sentenced to seven years penal servitude in Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania. Afterward he moved to Victoria, got a farm job and married the farmer's 18 year-old daughter. They had seven children; Ned, born in either 1854 or 1855, was the oldest son. When Ned was 11, Red was arrested for killing a neighbor's calf. Given the option of a 25 pound fine or six months hard labor he chose the hard labor, because he was broke. It ruined his health and led to his death. Ned never forgot how harshly the police treated his dad.

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At age 14, Ned was charged with the assault and robbery of a Chinese pig farmer named Ah Fook. Fook said that as he was passing the Kelly house Ned beat him with a long bamboo stick and robbed him of 10 shillings. But the Kelly's claimed Fook had asked for a drink of water and when they gave him creek water instead of rainwater became enraged and hit Ned with the bamboo stick. Ned sat in jail for a week but the police couldn't find an interpreter and eventually the case was dismissed.

A few years later he got in a fight with a man named Jeremiah McCormack, who had accused one of Ned's friends of using his horse without permission. To get even Ned sent McCormack's childless wife a note with a pair of calves' testicles. For this stunt he was sentenced to three months' hard labor. When he returned home he met Isaiah “Wild” Wright, who was as much trouble as his name suggests. Wild rode into town on a stolen chestnut mare but while staying with the Kelly's it went missing. Sometime later Ned found the mare and was approached by a police constable who recognized the horse as stolen property and arrested him. Ned got three years hard labor; the crime, “feloniously receiving a horse”. Upon his release him and Wild allegedly fought a bare-knuckle boxing match that lasted 20 rounds.

In 1878, Ned became involved in a cattle rustling operation with the children of his mother's new husband, a Californian named George King. Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick showed up at the Kelly house to question them about some stolen cattle. The Kelly's claimed that Fitzpatrick made a pass at Ned's sister, inspiring Ned's mother to smash his hand with a coal shovel. Fitzpatrick insisted the wound was caused by a bullet. His word ruled and Ned's mother and sisters were convicted of attempted murder. Ned, a brother and some friends went into hiding in the Wombat Ranges. A police posse was fast on their trail but Ned and his brother, figuring their chances at escaping alive were slim, ambushed them, killing three officers. An award equivalent to almost half a million Australian dollars in today's currency was put on Ned's head. Over the next few months his gang robbed a series of banks and stayed on the lam. In 1879 he issued The Jerilderie Letter, which famously paints the Australian police as crooked racists with a grudge against Irish Catholics like himself:

A Policeman is a disgrace to his country, not alone to the mother that suckled him, in the first place he is a rogue in his heart but too cowardly to follow it up without having the force to disguise it.

In June of 1880 Ned's gang was raided by police at the Glenrowan Inn. The gang members each were wearing nearly 100 pounds of homemade armor, thick enough to stop a bullet. Ned was shot once in the helmet and twice in his body, then repeatedly in the legs, which were unarmored. He survived but the rest of his gang perished in the raid, including Joe Byrne, shot in the thigh while at the bar pouring himself a glass of whiskey. Ned was convicted of first degree murder. Some 30,000 people supposedly signed a petition requesting his life be spared. On November 11, 1880, he was hung.

With a proper funeral at last at hand, nearly 131 years to the day, Ned's family is overjoyed. “Our family, like every family, likes to be able to bury their own family members,” said Anthony Griffiths, a great grandson of Ned's sister. “Our aim is to give him a dignified funeral.”

Weird funeral crimes are on the rise. Some of the strangest of the year include two Denver men who allegedly took their dead friend to a strip club and a New Hampshire man who stole a priest's Subaru while he was giving a funeral sermon.

Maybe it's the bad economy but weird funeral crimes are on the rise. Earlier this fall a Wisconsin cemetery worker allegedly swiped a $2,000 guitar from the casket of a 67 year-old grandfather. “It was his pride and joy,” said one family member. “This isn't something I normally do,” said the robber. “I just have a respect for fine musical instruments.”

The dead grandpa guitar thief is only the beginning, below is a list of weird funeral crimes that have occurred within the past year…

Accidentally Carjacking Grandma - In West Virginia, 23 year-old Angela Jeanette DeHart was accused of stealing a hearse from a funeral home that contained the dead body of an 85 year-old woman. The driver had left the trunk door open and the engine running when someone jumped inside. Police found the black Cadillac Fleetwood hearse parked next to DeHart's house. The corpse “had been jostled around,” said police, “possibly from reckless driving.”

Dead Friends, Burritos and Strippers - Two Denver men allegedly took their dead friend for a night on the town, visiting several bars, a burrito joint and a strip club. They also took his credit card. It went down something like this, according to a Denver police officer: “Rubinson and Young go into the restaurant and drink. Jarrett is in the back seat of the car…[They] use Jarrett's credit card to pay for the drinks they consumed.” The pair stopped at a diner before taking their dead friend back home and putting him to bed. They kept his bank card, withdraw $400 then went to a burrito restaurant and a strip club. Robert Young, 43, and Mark Rubinson, 25, were charged with identity theft, criminal impersonation and abuse of a corpse.

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Priest's Subaru Stolen During Sermon - Michael Kanclerowicz snuck into a church in Massachusetts during a funeral, stole the priest's Subaru then drove to the beach. Kanclerowicz was arrested at a hotel on charges of using someone else's credit card. He had apparently entered the church through a back entrance and sat behind mourners, wearing a large knapsack on his back. He was witnessed kneeling down and making the sign of the cross. Kanclerowicz then reportedly exited the church, entered the sacristy, took the keys and hopped in the Subaru. He has been sentenced to 4 to 12 years in prison. “My message to him,” said the priest, “is to not steal.”

Would You Ever Take Your Girlfriend's Urn? - In Connecticut, a 37 year-old man named Mark Kzakrzeski, armed with a handgun, took an urn containing the ashes of his girlfriend's grandmother and chucked it into the woods behind her home. Kzakrzeski was charged with larceny, illegal possession of a firearm and disorderly conduct. The urn is yet to be recovered.

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Stole the radio, left the 98 year-old - In South Florida, a man stole a mortuary company van, only to discover the body of 98 year-old Matilda Kazimir inside. She had recently passed away at a nearby nursing home. The van's driver had left the keys in the car and run back in to get his cell phone. When he returned the van was gone. Police found the vehicle a few blocks away, minus the radio. Kazimir's body was still inside, seemingly undisturbed.

Game Boy Swiped from Dead Teen's Coffin - In Hillsdale, Pennsylvania, 37 year-old Jody Lynn Bennett reached into the coffin of an 11th-grader and stole his Game Boy. The teen had died Christmas morning, when his SUV skidded out on a snowy road and struck a utility pole. The crime occurred just after the funeral service. The boy's uncle approached Bennett just as she was about to drive away and asked about the missing Game Boy. What Game Boy, she asked. Bennett could see it in her car. She had also taken three games. The total value of the stolen goods was placed at $46.90.

Charlie Chaplin's Corpse Stolen by Auto Mechanic Duo, No Joke! – Not recent but it may be the best funeral heist of all time. The legendary silent film star died on Christmas Day 1977 and was buried in a 300-pound oak coffin in the village of Corsier, Switzerland. The following March his body was stolen by a pair of crooks who demanded 400,000 pounds for its return. Chaplin's widow, Lady Oona Chaplin, refused to pay, saying, “Charlie would have thought it rather ridiculous.” Police set up false pay-offs but the robbers didn't show. The police, expecting a call from the robbers, then tapped the Chaplins' phone and assigned officers to monitor more than 200 phone booths across the area. The call came and the police traced it back to the originating booth. Roman Wardas and Gantscho Ganev were arrested, both auto mechanics. They led police to Chaplin's remains, buried in a cornfield about 10 miles from the graveyard.

Know of a weird funeral crime we missed? Tell us about it in a comment..

Gary Gilmore was the first person executed in the U.S. after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. His last words—“Let's do it”—have inspired art and advertising.

“You're not about to witness an execution; you're about to witness a murder,” said Stephen Woods, just over a month ago, from the execution chamber at Texas State Penitentiary, in Huntsville, Texas. The prison, nicknamed the Walls Unit, is the oldest state prison in Texas, opened in 1849. It is also the most active execution chamber in the country, it has carried out more than 450 executions since 1982. Woods, a drug dealer, was sentenced to death for a double murder that occurred in May 2001. He claimed he was high on LSD the night of the killings and that he was lighting a cigarette for one of the victims when an accomplice, now serving life in prison, shot the man in the head then killed the other victim. “I've never killed anybody, never,” Wood's final statement continues. “This whole thing is wrong…Warden, if you're going to murder someone, go ahead and do it. Pull that trigger…Goodbye.” At 6:22 p.m., on September 13, Woods was executed.

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Along with the last meal, last words are one of the few rights granted prisoners in the moments before they die. No matter what a prisoner says in their final statement, they will die. But that doesn't mean their words can't live on. Some final statements are remembered for their brazenness—“Kiss my ass” said John Wayne Gacy, a Chicago-born serial killer who murdered more than 30 teenage boys between 1972 and 1978, burying many victims in the crawlspace of his home—while others for their hokiness: “I'd rather be fishing,” said Jimmy Glass, put to death in Louisiana in 1987 for robbing and murdering an elderly couple. Some are witty, as is the case with George Appel. Scant information is available regarding his life and crime but his last words pop up across the internet: “Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel.”

The zingiest Death Row last words belong to Gary Gilmore, the first person executed in the U.S. after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Gilmore also famously demanded that his death sentence be fulfilled. He had been convicted of murdering a gas station operator and a motel manager. On January 17, 1977 he was executed by firing squad at Utah State Prison, in Draper, Utah. His last words were, “Let's do it,” inspiration for countless TV shows, films, rock songs and one of the most successful advertising campaigns of all time.

Norman Mailer's 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Executioner's Song, documented Gilmore's execution. In 1982, The Executioner's Song was adapted into a TV movie starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gilmore. Jones won an Emmy for the role. In 2001, HBO popularized  a lesser known portion of the story, turning a memoir written by Gilmore's brother, Mark, once a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, into a movie called, “Shot in the Heart”. Seinfeld wanted to include a reference to Gilmore's final words, in an episode titled, “The Jacket”, but the scene was changed at the last minute. In it, Jerry was unsure whether or not he should buy a famous leather jacket and in the end decides to: “Let's do it.”

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The strangest tribute belongs to artistic provocateur Matthew Barney. His epic Cremaster Cycle project uses sculpture, video, photographs, drawings and installations to depict the cycles of the male cremaster muscle, which controls testicular contractions in response to external stimuli. The aim of the project, which uses graphite and petroleum jelly, is to explore the process of creation. Mark Gilmore stars in one of The Cremaster Cycle videos.

Of course, the biggest plug was when Dan Wieden, of the powerful Wieden+Kennedy ad firm, used Gilmore's last words to come up with the slogan for a new Nike campaign: Just Do It. “We thought, ‘Yeah. That'd work,'” says Wieden, explaining in a recent New York Times article his decision to use the phrase. “People started reading things into it much more than sport.”

In 1988, in a statement marking the tenth anniversary of the campaign, Nike U.S. advertising director Chris Zimmerman went even further: “It captures the whole sense of people realizing their self-potential and just being able through athletics to strive for goals and achieve a lot of things that people might think were unachievable.”

Thoughts on whether or not it was appropriate for Nike to use Gilmore's last words? Have some clever final statements of your own? Leave a comment below...