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An exploding corpse, a 45-minute car chase, and a horse-related mishap that lead to a century-long royal tradition. On this episode of The List Show, host Justin Dodd covers funerals gone wrong. Like, really wrong. 00:00 A potty-mouthed parrot 01:13 A knock from inside the coffin 01:52 A king's exploding corpse 04:44 A fight breaks out ... with the corpse 05:15 A queen's wild horses 06:31 Switched at death 07:23 An elephantine attack 08:29 A body drops in 09:55 A mid-funeral car chase About Mental Floss: Mental Floss is where curious people come for trivia-tastic information. Mental Floss produces lists of fun facts, debunks common misconceptions, and tells untold stories from history, science, culture and more. Follow Mental Floss: Website: https://www.mentalfloss.com/ Mental Floss Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mentalflossmagazine Mental Floss Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mental_floss/ Mental Floss TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mental_floss Mental Floss X: https://twitter.com/mental_floss Mental Floss Discord: https://discord.io/mentalfloss Copyright Notice: This video and YouTube channel contain dialog, music, and images that are property of Mental Floss. You are authorized to share the video link and channel, and embed this video in your website or others as long as a link back to this YouTube Channel is provided. 2025 Mental Floss 9 Funerals Gone Wrong | Mental Floss https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss
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0:00
In Western culture, funerals are often somber, sad occasions
0:04
Unless you happen to be at the funeral of 7th President Andrew Jackson in 1845
0:09
When Jackson died of natural causes at the age of 78, thousands showed up at his Tennessee home to attend the funeral
0:16
Among the mourners was Paul, a parrot Jackson had originally purchased for his wife Rachel in 1827
0:22
Rachel died just a year later, and Jackson left for the White House shortly thereafter
0:27
leaving Paul in Nashville. Bill. Perhaps still angry at being left behind, Pohl really let the deceased president have
0:33
it while folks were paying their respects at the funeral. According to one witness
0:37
before the sermon and while the crowd was gathering, a wicked parrot that was a household
0:42
pet got excited and commenced swearing so loud and long as to disturb the people and
0:48
had to be carried from the house. There's no record of what happened to Pohl after the
0:52
funeral, but these days he does serve as the narrator of the children's tour at Jackson's
0:57
hermitage estate, presumably without the colorful language. Hi, I'm Justin Dodd, and I will also
1:03
refrain from colorful language, probably during this list show about funerals gone wrong
1:13
There are a lot of things you expect from a funeral, but a knock from the coffin is not
1:19
one of them. In 2022, funeral goers in Peru were in the middle of a funeral procession when they
1:24
heard tapping from inside the coffin. When they opened it, the woman inside, Rosa Isabel Cespedes
1:30
Kalaca, was allegedly gasping for air. The cemetery caretaker called the police. He later said he
1:36
witnessed Kalaca opening her eyes and even sweating. She was taken to a nearby hospital and put on life
1:42
support, but ultimately died soon after. Family members believe she was incorrectly pronounced
1:48
dead after a car crash and had actually been in a coma. If you're at a funeral, you would think
1:54
the worst has already happened, the loss of a loved one. But William the Conqueror's funeral in
1:59
1087 proved that it could actually get a lot worse. William ruled England for more than two decades and
2:05
was known, as the name suggests, for winning battles, particularly the Battle of Hastings
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in which he defeated Harold II of England in a war for the throne. He squelched a number of
2:16
citizen rebellions after the win by burning villages, destroying crops, slaughtering herd
2:21
animals and even killing villagers. During this harrying of the North, as it's called
2:26
conditions became so brutal that some historians believe villagers resorted to cannibalism to
2:31
survive In 1087 William was campaigning in France when his horse reared up thrusting his saddle into his gut so forcefully that it punctured his intestines By this time in his life William had enjoyed many years of literally eating like a king
2:46
and his girth didn't do him any favors with this injury. When he died six weeks later, everyone attending him, including noblemen, knights, and all the
2:54
lesser attendants, either fled the scene or looted the castle. They took everything that wasn't nailed down, including royal furnishings, and left the
3:03
king's body nearly naked on the floor, according to an account by a Benedictine monk. So, with his
3:09
inner circle gone, the business of getting the king his final resting place in France fell to a knight
3:14
who used his own funds to get William embalmed and have the body shipped 70 miles to Cannes via boat
3:21
The slow trip was not kind to the king's corpse. Bacteria escaped his gut and leaked into the rest
3:26
of his body, accelerating the decomposing process and essentially turning his body into a gas bomb
3:33
And then more delays happened, starting with a fire that postponed the funeral. Once the service finally started, a man interrupted and declared the land the king was to be buried on actually belonged to his family
3:44
Nothing continued until he was compensated. All of these delays allowed time for the gas inside William to continue building
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And there was another problem. The masons who made the stone sarcophagus had made it too small, so they had to force William's body inside of it
4:00
And, well, his bowels burst. The gas exploded over the crowd and an intolerable stench assailed the nostrils of the bystanders
4:09
wrote the monk. The funeral quickly came to an abrupt close. The threat of lingering gas
4:14
apparently didn't bother curiosity seekers and grave robbers who opened or ransacked William's
4:20
tomb three times. The first time in 1522 was a relatively harmless look at the body
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Forty years later, a Calvinist mob looted the tomb for valuables, then scattered the king's remains when none were found
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The bits that were located were reinterred under a new monument in 1642
4:36
but even these were all thrown in the River Orne during the French Revolution
4:41
Today, all that remains in his grave is a thigh bone. In 2007, friends and family were attending a funeral for their loved one
4:48
at Harvest Baptist Church in Orlando, Florida. It appeared to be a fairly run-of-the-mill funeral
4:53
until a man came into the church uninvited, approached the casket and began punching and abusing the body inside
5:01
While this is very upsetting under any circumstance, of course, what's even more disturbing is that
5:06
it's not clear if the attacker even knew the deceased. He was arrested shortly after the
5:11
attack and was court to undergo a mental evaluation After Queen Elizabeth recent passing we were reminded that a royal funeral is full of pomp circumstance and tradition But sometimes even tradition goes awry When Queen Victoria died at the age of 81
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in 1901, she was given the full military funeral she requested before she passed
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Among other things, that meant a three-mile-long royal procession that included the queen's coffin
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draped in white satin and mounted on a military gun carriage pulled by white horses. The horses
5:43
however, had not been informed of how somber the occasion was. During the procession, they got
5:48
spooked, broke free of the gun carriage, and bolted, abandoning the queen's coffin midway
5:53
through the route. When it became clear that the horses would not be returning, Louis Mountbatten
5:58
Prince Philip's grandfather, suggested the Royal Navy use ropes to tow the gun carriage the rest of
6:04
the way. They did. The funeral was saved, and a new tradition was born. When Queen Elizabeth died
6:10
last year, 142 Royal Naval Raidings pulled her coffin in the procession, just like what had been
6:15
done for Queen Victoria more than 120 years before. Naval officers also pulled gun carriages for the
6:21
funerals of Queen Victoria's son, King Edward VII, her grandson, King George V, Elizabeth's father
6:27
King George VI, and Winston Churchill, among others. Imagine showing up to a loved one's funeral
6:34
approaching the casket to say your final goodbyes, gazing down to look at them one last time
6:38
and realizing that the person in the coffin is a complete stranger
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Well, that's exactly what happened to two South Philadelphian families in 2009
6:46
when a funeral home sent the wrong bodies to the wrong services
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They kept trying to tell us that it was him and I knew it wasn't him
6:54
said the wife of Kenneth Roberts, one of the deceased men. The funeral directors eventually acknowledged the mistake and corrected the issue over an hour later
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But when the right body finally arrived, it was face down and partially hanging out of the casket
7:09
To add to the chaos, one funeral-goer suffered a seizure during the whole snafu
7:14
and another one had an asthma attack. The funeral was ultimately canceled, and a private gathering
7:19
hopefully one with the right honoree, was scheduled at a later date
7:24
In 2022, the family of an Indian woman found the old adage
7:27
an elephant never forgets, to be true in the worst way possible
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A 70-year-old woman was collecting water in the Meirbanj district of Odisha, India
7:36
when she was attacked by an elephant said to have escaped from a nearby sanctuary
7:40
She initially survived the attack, but later died of her injuries in the hospital
7:44
When her family held her funeral, an elephant, believed to be the same one
7:49
charged up to the funeral pyre. After trampling on her body, the elephant picked it up and tossed it aside
7:55
But according to the Economic Times of India the carnage didn even stop there The Times reported the elephant roared to incite other elephants to attack the village They allegedly destroyed the woman house and killed
8:07
her goats. Several other houses were also apparently damaged in the attack. Despite their
8:12
gentle reputations, elephants are known to attack and wreak havoc in India. The country's elephant
8:18
population is 30,000 strong, and they're running out of places to live. They also come into direct
8:24
conflict with humans when raiding crops like bananas, sugarcane, and rice. We could have told
8:30
you about a dozen regrettable incidents where a body fell out of the coffin, whether it was from
8:35
muddy conditions, broken straps, or dancing pallbearers. Seriously. But we could only find
8:41
one incident where a body fell from a helicopter. In 1967, Mary Follin died of cancer at the young
8:47
age of 56. Though she had moved to the U.S. during the 1920s, one of her last wishes was to be buried
8:53
on her native island off the coast of Galway, Ireland. Rather than risk a water voyage, they
8:57
decided to do it by helicopter. But when the helicopter picked Mary up from the Shannon Airport
9:03
the sling that transported her coffin was not secured properly. They'd only flown a few kilometers
9:08
when one end of the sling opened and dumped Mary's coffin into a nearby field. What remained of her
9:14
remains was transferred into a lighter coffin, and the helicopter ran a successful test with a box
9:20
carrying a similar amount of weight. All went well with the test, but when they tried to transport Mary again
9:25
the sling failed again. And this time, the coffin fell into the sea
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The good news? It floated. The bad news? They lost sight of it
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After days of looking, a priest was brought in to bless the sea where Mary's coffin was last seen
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Rumors later swirled that there was never a body in the coffin at all, and that the helicopter debacle was a failed attempt
9:46
to smuggle arms or drugs into the country. None of this was ever substantiated, and Mary Fowlin's family had to live with a burial at sea
9:55
There's nothing to take your mind off of grieving like a mid-funeral car chase
10:00
In 2021, a man led police on a 45-minute car chase in the San Diego area
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He eventually pulled over in a residential area in Chula Vista and fled on foot directly into the most precious blood Catholic church, where a funeral was already in progress
10:15
As police followed the felon up the aisle and to the altar, dozens of funeral attendees
10:20
escaped out the front door. The man, wanted for a felony arrest warrant, was handcuffed
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and taken into custody at the altar without incident, and the funeral resumed as planned
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Here's hoping the next funeral you attend is a little less eventful than these. But
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if something wild does happen, well, we'll make sure to cover it in our next video
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Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time
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