Via Museum of Hoaxes: A Hungarian police Web site reports that workers in the town of Szeged made a grisly discovery after sampling rum from a 300-liter barrel found on a construction site. When they attempted to move it, the barrel broke open and a well-preserved corpse spilled out. Investigators said the dead man had been stuffed in the barrel and shipped from Jamaica 20 years earlier by his wife, who evidently sought to avoid the cost and paperwork of following official procedures. The workers described the taste of the rum as "special."
"The report is the latest such account to emerge of bodies discovered preserved in liquor, some of which have been discounted as myths," reports BBC News. Actually, the "myth" part has more to do with the drinking of said liquor than the uncoventional embalming technique.
Going back a few hundred years, it wasn't unheard of to submerge dead bodies in whatever alcoholic beverage was available for transport over long distances. This was the fate of Admiral Horatio Nelson, in fact, whose body was pickled in a cask of brandy after he died in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. According to legend, the sailors charged with transporting the cask had drunk the better part of the brandy by the time their ship reached Gibraltar, giving rise to the nautical phrase "tapping the admiral," meaning the illicit drinking of booze. Historians are fairly sure no such imbibing occurred.
Update: Reuters Withdraws 'Body in Barrel' Story
"The report is the latest such account to emerge of bodies discovered preserved in liquor, some of which have been discounted as myths," reports BBC News. Actually, the "myth" part has more to do with the drinking of said liquor than the uncoventional embalming technique.
Going back a few hundred years, it wasn't unheard of to submerge dead bodies in whatever alcoholic beverage was available for transport over long distances. This was the fate of Admiral Horatio Nelson, in fact, whose body was pickled in a cask of brandy after he died in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. According to legend, the sailors charged with transporting the cask had drunk the better part of the brandy by the time their ship reached Gibraltar, giving rise to the nautical phrase "tapping the admiral," meaning the illicit drinking of booze. Historians are fairly sure no such imbibing occurred.
Update: Reuters Withdraws 'Body in Barrel' Story
Comments
This entry doesn’t seem to get as much of a careful review as your others. So, is it a HOAX, or what??
Sometimes the best we can do with the information at hand is say we’re skeptical. This incident might well have happened just as the workers described it. On the other hand, we know that the story contains elements of an old, familiar urban legend. And we know that urban legends do sometimes get reported unwittingly as fact. In the absence of follow-up reportage out of Hungary, we just don’t know…
thanks!
The word is “grisly,” not “grizzly.” Unless the guy was gray-haired or some sort of bear.
Well, he may in fact have been “grizzly” for all I know, but “grisly” was the word intended. Thank you for catching it!
You’re welcome. I’m an editor by profession, and seeing things like this is something of a curse. I enjoy the weekly updates anyway.
I too picked up on that. We who admire and practice good English are anal about goofs like that – but of course the other 99.9% of readers are oblivious. In fact, there is no market for us spellers and grammarians anymore, anyway! Cheerio – and watch out for those grizzlies!
Apparently, this did happen, but the report is ten years out of date- a very old story.
Well, the questions that stand out in my mind are: How did they know it had been 20 years? How did they know the man was Jamaican? How did they know his wife put him there? and How did they know what his wife’s intentions were if she had put him there? Hmmmm?
well bone reasearch and decaying reasearch then dental records then follow-ups or maybe theyre just that awesome
this story dosent really make any sence because it is point less if they cant move the barrel then y didnt they do what they last frist duh comin scence people duh well yea
Watch out lady or the grammar nazis wil get ya^