40 Fun Facts About Funerals

Which actor paid to have writer Hunter S. Thompson's ashes fired from a cannon at a private funeral?

Johnny Depp funded the send-off for his close friend, with the cannon set on a 153-foot tower shaped like a double-thumbed fist.

After a Japanese cremation, relatives move the bones into an urn using which everyday utensil?

Chopsticks are held by two relatives at once to lift each bone, which is why passing food between two pairs is taboo at Japanese tables.

At British state funerals, who traditionally pulls the gun carriage carrying the coffin in place of horses?

Sailors stepped in at a royal funeral in 1901 when the horses broke away from the gun carriage at Windsor, and the emergency fix became the custom.

Which American city is famous for jazz funerals, in which a brass band leads the procession?

New Orleans funeral bands play sombre dirges and hymns on the march, then switch to upbeat tunes while onlookers join in and dance.

In a Tibetan sky burial, the body is left on a mountainside to be eaten mainly by which birds?

Vultures are usually given the whole body, and the bones left behind are ground up with barley flour for the crows and hawks.

Which make of vehicle, customised to his own design, carried Prince Philip's coffin at his funeral?

Land Rover supplied the custom-built Defender hearse, which the Duke helped to design and which was finished in Edinburgh green.

Which British monarch left instructions for a white funeral, banning black drapes from the ceremony?

Queen Victoria disliked funereal black despite her decades in mourning dress, and she was laid in her coffin in a white dress and her wedding veil.

Which British admiral's body was shipped home in a cask of brandy for a state funeral?

Horatio Nelson was killed at Trafalgar in 1805, and the cask holding his body was lashed to the mainmast of HMS Victory and put under guard.

Which science-fiction creator's ashes flew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia and later launched on a memorial rocket?

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, became one of the first people to have their ashes carried into Earth orbit.

Which West African country is known for fantasy coffins built in shapes like a crab or an airliner?

Ghana's Ga people around Accra commission coffins that often symbolise the dead person's profession, a craft that took off around 1950.

Which singer performed a reworked tribute song at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in Westminster Abbey?

Elton John reworked a song first written about Marilyn Monroe, and the single became the best-selling in UK chart history.

Which US president's funeral train carried him through seven states to Springfield, Illinois?

Abraham Lincoln's train covered 1,654 miles after funeral services and a lying in state had already been held in Washington, D.C.

Operation Hope Not was the code name for the state funeral plan of which British prime minister?

Winston Churchill's funeral was planned from 1953, after he suffered a stroke in office, and the plan waited twelve years to be used.

Which Virginia burial ground holds the eternal flame lit at President Kennedy's state funeral in 1963?

Arlington National Cemetery saw his widow Jacqueline bring the flame to life with a taper at the end of the burial service.

Which of Alexander the Great's generals hijacked his funeral cart in Syria and took the body to Egypt?

Ptolemy first buried the body at Memphis, and it was later transferred to Alexandria and reburied there.

Which composer died in 1791 leaving his Requiem, a mass for the dead, famously unfinished?

Mozart had the piece on commission from a count who wanted it for a service in memory of his young wife, and it was completed by Süssmayr.

Which composer wrote the famous Funeral March that forms the third movement of his Piano Sonata No. 2?

Chopin wrote the march at least two years before the rest of the sonata, and it was later performed at his own funeral.

Which bugle call, also used to signal lights out, is sounded at American military funerals?

Taps was arranged in its present form in 1862 by Union general Daniel Butterfield, whose version replaced an older French call.

In a military funeral procession, what is placed backwards in the stirrups of the riderless horse?

Boots reversed in the stirrups were seen at Ronald Reagan's funeral, where a horse named Sergeant York followed the coffin.

Named after the heavy cloth draped over a coffin, what are the people who carry it at a funeral called?

Pallbearers take their name from the pall, and holding its ends at a funeral was once counted a tremendous honour.

Which word names a funeral speech in praise of the dead, often confused with the mournful poem called an elegy?

Eulogy comes from the Greek eulogia, meaning praise, which joins eu, meaning well, to logia, meaning words.

The word hearse first described a spiked frame set over a coffin to hold which items?

Candles burned on the frame's spikes, which looked like the teeth of a harrow, the farm tool whose Latin name gave us the word hearse.

Which word for a monument to people buried elsewhere, like the one on London's Whitehall, means empty tomb?

Cenotaph joins two Greek roots, and the Whitehall one, designed by Edwin Lutyens, replaced a wood-and-plaster version put up for a 1919 victory parade.

Which word for a stone coffin comes from Greek words meaning flesh-eating?

Sarcophagus first named a kind of limestone that was thought to speed up the decay of the bodies laid inside it.

The word mausoleum comes from the tomb of Mausolus, a Wonder of the Ancient World in which city?

Halicarnassus is now Bodrum in Turkey, where the tomb was built for Mausolus and his sister-wife Artemisia.

In ancient Egyptian funerals, which vessels held the organs removed from the body during mummification?

Canopic jars came in sets of four, but none was made for the heart, which stayed in the body as the seat of the soul.

Which Chinese emperor was buried near Xi'an with an army of thousands of life-size clay soldiers?

Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, was buried around 210 BCE, and local farmers stumbled on the figures in 1974.

In ancient Greek funerals, a coin was placed in the mouth of the dead to pay which mythical ferryman?

Charon carried souls across the river dividing the living from the dead, and his fee was a small coin called an obol.

Who delivered the funeral speech over Julius Caesar's body, showing the Roman crowd his blood-stained toga?

Mark Antony was Caesar's lieutenant and consul that year, so he was the one chosen to preside over the ceremony.

In Homer's Iliad, which Greek hero holds funeral games in honour of his fallen friend Patroclus?

Achilles has an echo in Virgil, whose hero Aeneas holds a similar competition on the anniversary of his father's death.

Which ancient religion builds Towers of Silence, where the dead are exposed to the elements rather than buried?

Zoroastrianism holds that a corpse would contaminate the soil, so the body is laid out on a raised circular structure instead.

In Judaism, which week-long mourning period for close relatives begins straight after the burial?

Shiva takes its name from the Hebrew word for seven, and it is a time for mourners to talk about their loss and accept comfort from others.

Which word names the watch kept over a body before a funeral, a custom central to Irish death rituals?

Wake once meant to stay up and keep watch, and one early purpose of the Irish custom was to make sure that death had really occurred.

In which island nation do families hold Famadihana, rewrapping their ancestors' remains and dancing with them?

Madagascar's Malagasy people call it the turning of the bones, and they rewrite each name on the fresh cloth so the ancestor is always remembered.

The Toraja people, renowned for lavish funerals and graves carved into cliffs, live on which Indonesian island?

Sulawesi's Torajan funerals are major social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.

Which Indian city on the Ganges is known for Manikarnika Ghat, its ancient riverside cremation ground?

Varanasi's Manikarnika Ghat is sacred to Hindus, who believe that a soul attains moksha, release from rebirth, when the body is cremated there.

Which site in Suffolk, England, held an undisturbed Anglo-Saxon ship burial with a famous ceremonial helmet?

Sutton Hoo's burial chamber also held a sword, a shield, a lyre and silver plate from the Eastern Roman Empire.

Which poet wrote Funeral Blues, the poem read aloud at the funeral in Four Weddings and a Funeral?

W. H. Auden first wrote it for a 1936 play, then reworked it as a cabaret song for the singer Hedli Anderson.

Which HBO drama follows the Fisher family as they run a funeral home in Los Angeles?

Six Feet Under was created by Alan Ball, and most episodes begin with a death that sets the tone for the story.

Embalming became common in the United States during which war, when servicemen often died far from home?

Civil War embalmer Thomas Holmes was commissioned by the Army Medical Corps to preserve dead Union officers so they could be returned to their families.