The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories (15 page)

No list of botanical oddities would be complete without the one and only corpse flower. Named for its extremely potent, corpselike smell,
Amorphophallus titanum
is also one of the largest flower structures in the world. Growing up to twelve feet tall and five feet wide in the wild, with leaves that can exceed twenty feet, the corpse flower, also known as the titan arum, is both ghastly and breathtaking. (You actually will want to hold your breath when near it in its fullest bloom.) The flower comes before the leaves, although the plant needs to be at least six years old before it can bloom. When it does, a large mottled spike pushes up from the ground, slowly unfurling to reveal a beautiful, deep red, velvet outer spathe and a three-foot, dirty green spike in the center. When fully opened, the bloom of the corpse flower begins to live up to its rotten reputation, for it emits the strongest and most foul of decomposing fleshlike odors. The smell is caused by the most wicked of essential oils—putrecines and cadavarines.
A foul beauty, the corpse flower looks like something from the musical
Little Shop of Horrors
, and anyone who has seen and smelled it will not quickly forget its cadaverous horrors.

OTHER FREAKY, STINKY PLANTS

There are, besides the vampire lily, the voodoo lily, and the corpse flower, many other unusual plants in the
Araceae
family. For blood red and blackish flowers, check out
Arum apulum
,
A. dioscoridis
,
A. oriental
, and
A. pictum
, as well as
Biarum tenufolium
and
Biarum tenufolium var. zeleborii
. Another plant that smells of rotting flesh is the aptly named dead horse arum,
Helicodiceros muschivorus
.

“The professors must not prevent us from realizing that history is fun, and that the most bizarre things really happen.” —BERTRAND RUSSEL

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S DEATH

Benjamin Franklin died, strangely enough, from complications from sitting in front of an open window. Franklin was a big believer in fresh air, even in the middle of winter. He slept with the windows open year-round, and, as he wrote, “I rise almost every morning and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season.” In April 1790, the eighty-four-year-old Franklin developed an abscess in his lungs, which his doctor blamed on too many hours spent sitting at the open window. The abscess burst on April 17, sending him into a coma. He died a few hours later.

THE DEATH OF JOSEPH STALIN

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who murdered millions of his own country's people, may have been the last
victim of his own reign of terror. On the evening of March 1, 1953, the seventy-four-year-old Stalin stayed up drinking with his cronies until 4
A.M.
His normal habit was to rise again around noon, but that day he didn't.

As the hours passed and Stalin did not emerge from his private quarters, his aides began to panic. They didn't want to risk his wrath, but they were worried. At 10:30
P.M.
, they finally worked up the nerve to enter his apartments, where they found him sprawled out on his living room floor, paralyzed by a stroke, and unable to speak. The terrified aides still did not know what to do, so they didn't call for the Kremlin doctors until 8:30 the following morning! By then it was too late: according to Stalin's daughter Svetlana, the dictator died a difficult and terrible death four days later.

THE EUTHANIZATION OF KING GEORGEV

King George V of England, grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II, was euthanized with morphine and cocaine to meet a newspaper deadline.

The king, a heavy smoker, was in the final stages of lung disease on January 20, 1936. His death was imminent. The date of the state funeral had been set, and the London
Times
had been instructed to hold the
presses—a death announcement would be coming soon. But that night, as the newspaper's deadline loomed, the king still held on. The king's doctor, who saw that the king's condition might last for many more hours and disrupt the arrangements, decided to euthanize him so that the morning papers could still make the announcement that the king was dead.

DIAMOND JIM BRADY