Journal of the Bizarre

When it comes to premonitions and nautical disasters, our thoughts naturally turn to the Titanic, whose legendary sinking was presaged by numerous passengers. The same can be said of the British liner Lusitania, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915, resulting in the deaths of 1,198 passengers and crew. One passenger who had a premonition of the sinking of the Lusitania was a rubber salesman by the name of William H.H. Brown.

Brown was a 34-year-old sales representative from Buffalo, New York, who was employed by the Continental Rubber Company of Erie, Pennsylvania. A third-class passenger, his ticket for the ship was D1349 and his cabin was D-34. Before leaving New York on the day of the ill-fated voyage, however, Brown informed his wife, Winnifred, that the ship would not reach its destination.

"If the Lusitania sinks," he told her, "you can picture me tossed about by the waves; but something tells me I shall be rescued if the ship goes down.&q…

Millions of people around the world have been watching the Ferguson saga unfold in all of its heartbreaking glory, and many of us whose eyes have been glued to the #Ferguson feed on Twitter have seen the same opinion expressed by pundits on both sides of the controversy:

If the grand jury made its decision at 1:00 pm, why didn't the announcement of Officer Darren Wilson's fate come until nightfall?



It's no secret that, for several days leading to the grand jury's decision, the powers-that-be in St. Louis County were preparing for riots, looting and violence. Yet, in light of recent developments, it almost seems like the powers-that-be were hoping for riots, looting, and violence by waiting until nightfall to announce that Wilson would not be indicted on any criminal charges. After all, streaming flares and tear gas canisters and burning police cruisers appear so much more dramatic against the backdrop of darkness than they would during early afternoon.

Indeed, the Fergus…

Those who lived in the 19th century faced numerous problems that are hard to imagine today: being trampled to death by a mule, getting run over by a stagecoach, contracting cholera and, of course, being buried alive.

When folks were buried alive, valiant (though often fruitless) efforts were made to rescue the unfortunate victim. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case with an eleven-year-old boy named Alexander Jones. What happened to poor Alex, you ask? Well, just read this newspaper article from December 16, 1873.