Morbid Fact Du Jour for June 20, 2015

Today’s Foreshadowing Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

On February 24,1989, a forward cargo door on a Boeing 747 on United Airlines flight 811 from Hawaii to Auckland blew out over the Pacific at 23,000 feet. The resulting decompression smashed a hole in the front of the aircraft, and nine passengers were sucked to their deaths. One was 24-year-old New Zealander Lee Campbell. His grieving mother later told The Wall Street Journal how a strange and very clear vision of her son had appeared to her as she lay in bed in Wellington in the early hours of the fatal day, at around the time of the incident. Later, she found a poem he had written, called Was That Me?, which also seemed to foreshadow his death. It read:

Waves hypnotizing me with green, beckoning fingers
A dream of space flight weightlessness
Air rushes past to fill a vacuum
Progressive holes which must be filled.

Culled from: Black Box: Inside the World’s Worst Air Crashes

Brain Du Jour!

Here’s another excerpt from Malformed: Forgotten Brains of the Texas State Mental Hospital.

From Medline:

Subarachnoid hemorrhage is bleeding in the area between the brain and the thin tissues that cover the brain. This area is called the subarachnoid space.
Subarachnoid hemorrhage can be caused by:

• Bleeding from an arteriovenous malformation (AVM)
• Bleeding disorder
• Bleeding from a cerebral aneurysm
• Head injury
• Unknown cause (idiopathic)
• Use of blood thinners

Subarachnoid hemorrhage caused by injury is often seen in the elderly who have fallen and hit their head. Among the young, the most common injury leading to subarachnoid hemorrhage is motor vehicle crashes.

The main symptom is a severe headache that starts suddenly (often called thunderclap headache). It is often worse near the back of the head. Many persons often describe it as the “worst headache ever” and unlike any other type of headache pain. The headache may start after a popping or snapping feeling in the head.