Today’s Hopeless Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Between February, 1864 and April, 1865 it is estimated that 45,000 Union prisoners were confined in the Confederate stockade, Camp Sumter, near Anderson Station, Georgia, forever to be remembered as Andersonville. Of that number, approximately 25,000 men survived their prison experience and returned home to tell their tale of suffering. It is unknown how many survivors, with their health and lives shattered, died as a direct result of their captivity after returning to civilian life. Close to 13,000 Union soldiers did “give up the ghost” at Andersonville, and it was the ghost of Andersonville that haunted the survivors for the rest of their lives.
The following is an excerpt from the account of Private George Weiser, who arrived in Andersonville on May 25, 1864.
“In July and August we had about six thousand sick men in the prison, about three thousand of whom were almost helpless and dying. The dead averaged about one hundred a day and one day we had two hundred and four deaths. Every day the dead were carried out to the dead house by four of his friends. We had a sick call every day at ten o’clock. This call was at the gate where the doctor would come in and look at the sick. I will explain the sick call: At ten o’clock a drummer boy would come in near the gate to beat the drum, about three thousand of the sick would then start for the gate and about three hundred would hold out to reach there, the rest of the men would all give out before they got near the gate and they would hear, ‘the sick call is over’ and they had to get back to their shanties the best they could.
“A great many of these men had their friends to help them; these too would start to answer the sick call. Each one would have three or four friends who would pick them up and start for the gate; some of these were carried in blankets, some on sticks of wood and some on shoulders of their friends, each party trying to rush their man in ahead of the other. Some of these would run into each other, throw down their men and fight for the right of way. Very often when the fight was over one or the other of the sick men would be dead. This surely was a sad sight. About three hundred would reach the gate, and carried up in this way, it took a long time to reach there for our motion was very slow, we had been so reduced that we could not move fast.
“The sick are at the gate near the dead-line – that is all that were able to get there – about six or seven hundred and these hope to get medicine; two doctors come in and look at them, pick out three or four and send them to the hospital, the doctors then give a little red root or a few pills to about fifty of the sick men, and then the doctor says ‘that’s all we can do’ and tell the men to come again to-morrow, then the men are taken back to their holes and shanties again disappointed and dying.
“Sometimes the sick would be waiting for the doctor and word would come that he would not be in today, and some of the men would give up all hope and die.”
Culled from: Andersonville Giving Up the Ghost: Diaries & Recollections of the Prisoners.
Ghastly: Winter 2014 Car Crash Edition!
Thoughts that I had upon watching the following video of Russian car crashes:
1) I guess I won’t drive to the coffee shop in the slush after all.
2) Now I know what it’s like to die in a car crash.
3) Do all Russians have dashboard cams?
So I did a little quick research and per Wikipedia, yeah, those Russians love their dashboard cams:
“Dashcams are widespread in Russia as a form of surveillance, additional evidence in court, and as a guard against police corruption and insurance fraud. They have been called ‘ubiquitous’ and ‘an on-line obsession’, and are so prevalent that dashcam footage was the most common footage of the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor, which was documented from a dozen angles. Thousands of videos showing automobile crashes, close calls, and attempts at insurance fraud have been uploaded to video sharing websites like YouTube, an oft-gruesome genre which has generated its own Russian lexicon[6] such as:
слабоумие и отвага (slaboumiye i otvaga): ‘Courage and dementia’
железобетонное очко (zhelezobetonnoye ochko): ‘Anus of Reinforced Concrete’ (i.e. ‘one whose anus is made of reinforced concrete”, an honorific for an especially skilled driver reacting adequately to an emergency situation).'”
Anus Of Reinforced Concrete: Your metal band name.
Okay, here’s the video. Remember, be careful out there! Don’t drive like a Russian!