cemetaries

• SOURCE: WaPo
  8-7-13
  

  At Congressional Cemetery, goats eating their way through an acre of poison ivy

  The herd of 25 goats rumbled into Congressional Cemetery in Southeast Washington on Wednesday morning, passing tombstones engraved with words such as “The Honorable” and “HOOVER” (as in FBI legend J. Edgar.)They had been taken there for a mission. Over the next week, the goats are supposed to eat more than an acre’s worth of poison ivy and English ivy, which are imperiling the historic cemetery’s trees and endangering the gravestones.The 206-year-old cemetery, owned by Christ Church of Washington and run by a nonprofit group, figures the goats are a cheaper, less toxic way of cleaning up the 35-acre property, which borders the Anacostia Watershed....

• SOURCE: Denver Post
  8-3-13
  

  Historic Riverside Cemetery embodies Denver's past

  Denver's city of the dead is very much alive.Like Mark Twain, Riverside Cemetery has had its premature demise reported more than once. The city's premiere burial ground opened on July 1, 1876, at 5201 Brighton Blvd. on the Denver/Adams county line.In 1901, historian Jerome Smiley gushed, "(Riverside) is a most beautiful city of the dead, adorned with shrubbery and lawns and costly monuments, so that one feels in the midst of it all, that rivers of human love and devotion flow up and down all its walks and drives."...

• SOURCE: Der Spiegel
  7-22-13
  

  'Vampire cemetery' found in Poland

  Construction workers building a road near the town of Gliwice in southern Poland this month came across four skeletons buried in a bizarre way. Their skulls had been cut off and placed between the knees or hands of the dead. Later, a further 13 skeletons arranged in a similar way were found.Adding to the mystery, nothing -- no jewellery, remains of clothing or coins, not even a button -- was found on the bodies.Archaeologists now believe that the bodies date from the 15th or 16th centuries, when the fear of vampires was widespread in Eastern Europe. Lukasz Obtulowicz, an archaeologist from the monument protection office in the nearby city of Katowice, said there were clear indications that this was the site of a vampire burial, noting that stones had been placed on the skulls. "All this served to prevent the vampires from returning to life," he said in a television interview....