5 People Buried with Strange Objects

Tutankhamen, better known as King Tut, was an Egyptian pharaoh who ruled from 1333 B.C. to 1324 B.C. When his tomb was discovered by Howard Carter in 1923, the event received worldwide press coverage. Thousands of items were found buried with King Tut, including a solid gold mask that covered the head of the mummified king, hundreds of gold figurines, a small chair made of ebony inlaid with ivory, jewelry, ornamental vases, weapons, and enough seeds to plant a large garden.

Before he died in 1899, Reuben John Smith of Buffalo, New York, made sure that he would spend eternity in comfort. He was buried in a leather recliner chair with a checkerboard sitting on his lap. Smith also requested that he be dressed in a hat and warm coat with the key to the tomb inside his coat pocket.

Legendary actor Humphrey Bogart appeared in 75 movies, many of them classics like The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and The African Queen, for which he won an Oscar for Best Actor.

In 1944, he starred in To Have and Have Not with Lauren Bacall, who became his fourth wife. A famous line from the movie, delivered by Bacall to Bogart, was, "If you need anything, just whistle." So when Bogart died in 1957, Bacall placed a whistle inscribed with the line inside the silver urn with his ashes.

When California socialite Sandra Ilene West died in 1977 from a drug overdose, she was buried in San Antonio, Texas, in her 1964 Ferrari 330 America. She asked to be clad in her favorite lace nightgown with the driver's seat positioned at a comfortable angle. West and her car were placed in a large box, which was covered with cement to discourage vandals.

In 1977, Harry "The Horse" Flamburis, president of the Daly City, California, Hells Angels motorcycle club, was shot with his arms and legs bound together and his eyes and mouth taped shut. When he was buried, more than 150 Hells Angels members surrounded the cemetery on their bikes. Three months later, the Angels returned to the cemetery with Harry's motorcycle in tow. They placed the chopper on top of Harry's coffin and reburied him.

For more information see all Extraordinary Lists and check out 10 Bizarre Ways to Die.

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:

Helen Davies, Marjorie Dorfman, Mary Fons, Deborah Hawkins, Martin Hintz, Linnea Lundgren, David Priess, Julia Clark Robinson, Paul Seaburn, Heidi Stevens, and Steve Theunissen