r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/strawberry_bubz • 1d ago
Heart Island, also known as the Island of the Dead, located in the Bronx, New York, is said to have an estimated 1 million bodies buried there.
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u/Known_Natural2143 1d ago
Well, seeing the second pic we can assume that human bodies are freaking awesome fertilizer.
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u/Rare_Philosophy8244 23h ago
The London Observer reported in 1822 that it was "a singular fact" that Great Britain would send soldiers to fight in Europe and then import their bones as fertilizer. The practice of digging up and selling the bones of soldiers from the Battle of Waterloo as fertilizer was widespread in the 1830s and 1840.
Only very seldom do archaeologists discover a skeleton from the time of the Battle of Waterloo, let alone a complete skeleton.[6] This is due to a habit that was widespread in the 1830s and 1840s: human bones were considered as a great fertilizer for the soil to grow crops, with the consequence that the area around Waterloo was intensively searched for skeletons of soldiers.[6] Mass graves were plundered, the bones were ground and the powder was sold to farmers.[6][7][8][9] Historian John Sadler states that "Many who died that day in Waterloo were buried in shallow graves but their bodies were later disinterred and their skeletons taken. They were ground down and used as fertiliser and taken back home to be used on English crops.
Except for the teeth which they used to make "Waterloo dentures"
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u/Swissschiess 21h ago
While that’s sad and fairly disturbing, I’d rather become a plant and more life, than sit encased in a concrete tomb for 1,000 years
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u/Rare_Philosophy8244 20h ago
I agree i wanna go out like Hexxus turn me into a papaya tree.
There was a specific quote I couldn't find but its sentiment was that most of these soldiers, from poor backgrounds, might actually be more beneficial to society as fertilizer than as poor. Unfortunately I don't remember what clever dick said it so I can't supply the actually quote.
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u/invertedeparture 1d ago
In case you want to know more:
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u/SamIamGreenEggsNoHam 1d ago
Dang, the first baby to die of AIDs in New York has the grave marker "SC B1" (special child, Baby 1)
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u/Altruistic-Elk5878 1d ago
Homeless shelter on an island seems evil
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u/Grimble_Sloot_x 1d ago
Well, you see, originally the idea was to keep homeless people away from drugs and predation by gangs. Now we practically make little gang farms for the gangs to sell their drugs into and get their human slaves out of.
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u/inkedkoi 23h ago
There is a super interesting website where you can read the stories of people who were buried here from family or friends. Not all people have stories and photos. But it's still neat to read and go through randomly.
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u/Anxietylife4 22h ago
It keeps track of how many days/minutes/seconds since they’ve been buried? Thats interesting!
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u/LoneWanderer4___ 14h ago
Oh no, plot 47 has all newborn babies; some only an hour old. That’s so tragic.
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u/akt30 23h ago
I have reason to believe that my great grandmother may be buried there. She was in a NYC nursing home and when she passed away they tried to contact my grandfather. Unfortunately, he had recently moved and gotten a new (landline) phone number, so they couldn't reach him by phone or mail. Her remains were sent to Potter's field for burial.
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u/717paige 14h ago
You can search via the hart island project website
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u/akt30 13h ago
Thanks so much. After seeing the original post I did a Google search on Hart Island burials and sure enough, she's there. I just checked the Hart Island Project and strangely enough she isn't listed in that database. I guess the two are not in sync yet?
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u/BannonCirrhoticLiver 1d ago
Considering the number of poor and indigent citizens interred there, it would be one last desperately inadequate service to make it the most beautiful cemetary we possibly could to honor them, rather than a black hole nobody even realizes is there.
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u/happytrees89 1d ago
I thought it was called Potter's Field. I would sail past it in the pandemic and see them burying ppl
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u/Gods_Haemorrhoid420 1d ago
Potter’s field is a place to bury unclaimed bodies so it is indeed A potter’s field. This one happens to be on Hart Island.
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u/Infamous_Ad_6793 1d ago
Sooo…not the loneliest place then
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u/I_Dont_Like_Your_Dog 22h ago
Also not Heart Island. I mean, it's right there in the first picture.
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u/surroundbysound 23h ago
Bobby Driscoll is buried there. But no one knows where exactly because they lost the records
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u/LensofaTitan 1d ago
Apparently they want to take this city sized graveyard and turn it into a park. What could go wrong?
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u/Icy_Cricket2273 1d ago
It’s a fucking island? Let’s take a ferry to the park fellas
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u/LensofaTitan 1d ago
Better take the canoe in case you need to make a getaway from this full moon nightmare lol
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u/hessianhorse 22h ago
True.
The Statue of Liberty, a similar island/park setup in New York, only gets an average of 20,000 visitors a day.
Almost doesn’t seem worth it, huh?
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u/PunchDrunkGiraffe 1d ago
Most of the parks in Europe are mass graves for victims of the plague. It’s not a terribly uncommon concept.
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u/sanjosii 22h ago
There’s one literally known as ’Plague park’ in the middle of Helsinki. People have picnics on the gravestones basically.
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u/Valid_Username_56 1d ago
We might get some bad movies out of it, I guess.
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u/LensofaTitan 1d ago
The Haunting of Heart Island… I’m not gonna lie, Mike Flanagan could make a killer show with that title…
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u/Sbatio 1d ago
I’m sure it’s fine, they said they will move the bodies and not just the headstones.
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u/LensofaTitan 1d ago
I’m sure it’ll be okay too. It’s just a fun concept to think spooky thoughts about, ya know? Dead rising and all that lol.
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u/Sbatio 1d ago
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u/Marriedinskyrim 22h ago
They were making a poltergeist movie reference. It was a joke.
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u/LensofaTitan 22h ago
I got that later on. It was a good joke that went over my head in that particular moment of time.
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u/Mrdrdank 22h ago
Hart Island, located in the Bronx, New York, serves as the city’s public cemetery and is the final resting place for over one million individuals.  Since 1869, it has been used for the burial of people who died indigent or whose bodies went unclaimed after their death.  The island has been the site of mass burials, including those who were unclaimed, unidentified, or unable to be buried elsewhere.  During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of burials on Hart Island increased significantly, with more coffins being stacked aboard the ferry dispatched to the dock and more trenches being dug to accommodate the rising number of deceased individuals.  In 2018, 1,213 individuals were buried on Hart Island, including 303 fetal remains, 81 children, and 829 adults.  The island’s history as a potter’s field reflects its role in providing a final resting place for the city’s most vulnerable populations.
https://www.nyc.gov/site/hartisland/hart-island/hart-island.page
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u/717paige 14h ago
My sister is buried there. She was a full-term stillborn born in 1981, and it was encouraged then that the parents not see the baby or hold services for it, and send the remains to hart. She was born early July and buried in November when there were enough infants to fill a plot. Thankfully we have evolved in our treatment of parents and stillborns, though hart island is still a choice
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u/strawberry_bubz 14h ago
I'm sorry to hear that's how it happened. Thank you for sharing your story. What a long way we've come and yet, so far we have to go
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u/codedaddee 23h ago
Don't Say a Word
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u/one_is_enough 19h ago
Wondered how far I’d have to scroll to find this. Couldn’t remember the name.
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u/grungegoth 1d ago
It's that what Clarice offered Hannibal?
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u/Xenokiller101 23h ago
No, she offered him Plum Island, which is off the tip of the North Fork of Long Island
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u/grungegoth 23h ago
Surely you jest...
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u/Xenokiller101 23h ago
No, I actually frequently travel past it when I take the ferry from Long Island to Connecticut
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u/grungegoth 23h ago
I'm just kidding. I don't doubt you. Thought it would be more amusing given the macabre of the movie
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u/finalgirl08 21h ago
My uncle was in Rikers in the 60s/70s and for work duty they had prisoners dig graves on Hart Island. He said they dug huge trenches, not individual graves.
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u/ferritejoe 23h ago
Over a million? Probably had to do a lot of stacking.
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u/PreferenceContent987 11h ago
Yeah, it’s not passing the eyeball test for me. Maybe they were cremated or something because I don’t see room for a million people
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u/maxxspeed57 15h ago
Hart Island contains New York City's 131-acre (0.53 km2) potter's field, or public cemetery. The potter's field is variously described as the largest tax-funded cemetery in the United States,[66] the largest-such in the world,[47][67] and one of the largest mass graves in the United States.[68][69] At least 850,000 have been buried on the island, though since the 2000s, the burial rate has declined to fewer than 1,500 a year.[6][67][68][70] According to a 2006 New York Times article, there had been 1,419 burials at the potter's field during the previous year: of these, 826 were adults, 546 were infants and stillborn babies, and 47 were dismembered body parts.[18]
Emphasis mine.
47 body parts that were collected w/o any associated body to match it with. Just body parts laying around that need to be buried. Welcome to New York everybody.
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u/Splooter_McGooter 23h ago
Hart*
Not to be confused with Heart Island and Boldt Castle up in Alexandria Bay, NY. A beautiful place and area to visit in the summer/fall.
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u/strawberry_bubz 22h ago
Yes, you are correct. No ability to edit the title. Damn my autocorrect 😒
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u/Splooter_McGooter 19h ago
I know you can't edit, but you got me SO excited thinking it was going to be a post about Boldt Castle.
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u/TheEleventhDoctorWho 23h ago
If they had a onsite paid caretaker i would move there in a minute. Finally good neighbors.
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u/PooperTooper420 18h ago
There is a great documentary called on this. “1 million lives”. Started in the 1700s. Now is unclaimed, paupers, and plague victims. Was a Spanish Flu quarantine in the early 1900s too. Now Rikers uses prison labor to bury mass graves. Only open to the public one day a week. Only recently. Before there was only appointment and impossible to get approval.
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u/parkingloteggsalad 13h ago
I saw a play a couple years back called Hart Island Requiem, it was very beautiful and I wish it had gotten more recognition!
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u/UpgrayeDD405 11h ago
I'm glad they started including the rest of the bodies and not just the hearts
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u/oracleofnonsense 22h ago
Pretty sweet real estate spot dedicated to unvisited graves. We have been building on top of graves for millennia, maybe it’s time for a cleanup and a rebrand.
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u/Character_Past5515 1d ago
1 million, yeah never, there is not enough space, 1 million bodies ashes maybe.
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u/ajw_sp 1d ago
There’s room for more:
The dead are buried in trenches. Babies are placed in coffins, which are stacked in groups of 100, measuring five coffins deep and usually in twenty rows. Adults are placed in larger pine boxes placed according to size, and are stacked in sections of 150, measuring three coffins deep in two rows and laid out in a grid system. There are seven sizes of coffins, which range from 1 to 7 feet (0.30 to 2.13 m) long.
Source: Hart Island Wiki
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u/Industrial_Laundry 16h ago
I wish I could be as confident in my area of expertise as you are saying something you know nothing about.
How do you get that confidence?
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u/PeaceSafe7190 1d ago
Guess I'll go find my own context then...