1- The Nazis made it illegal on pain of death for apes to give the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute.
2- Emissions from car exhausts are responsible for more deaths every year than road accidents.
3- After his wife’s death, a heart-broken Benjamin Disraeli found that she’d kept all the hair from the haircuts she’d given him in 33 years of marriage.
4- Prisoners waiting to be executed on Death Row in America are given a physical beforehand, to ensure they are fit enough to die.
5- In his last week on Earth, Troy Davis, who was executed in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2011, was put on ‘death watch’ to stop him taking his own life.
6- The Death House at the State Prison in Huntsville, Texas, offers wheelchair access.
7- Kali is the Hindu goddess of death, violence, sexuality and motherly love.
8- In 2007, a Bosnian called Amir Vehabovic faked his own death to see how many people would go to his funeral. Only his mother turned up.
9- Deathwatch beetles attract mates by repeatedly banging their heads on the floor.
10- In 1568, the Catholic Church condemned the entire population of the Netherlands to death for heresy.
11- Pol Pot, the Cambodian dictator responsible for the deaths of 21% of his country’s people,
was a former geography teacher.
12- The sloth is the only animal named after one of the Seven Deadly Sins. During the rainy season, its metabolism slows down so much that it can starve to death on a full stomach.
13- In 1811, crimes punishable by death in Britain included sheep stealing, impersonating a Chelsea Pensioner, ‘strong evidence of malice’ in children aged 7–14, living with gypsies for a month and stealing cheese.
14- The Czech general Jan Zizka ordered his skin to be turned into a war drum after his death. It was beaten at times of national emergency, such as the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618.
15- The NHS has halved superbug deaths and saved 10,000 lives in the last four years simply by getting doctors and nurses to wash their hands.
16- Areas of the Moon include the Ocean of Storms, the Marsh of Decay and the Lake of Death.
17- The playwright Tennessee Williams (1911–83) choked to death on a bottle cap.
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