Charles Blondin

popular name: Florence Bernardin Rees

date_of_death: February 7, 1862

age: 2

cause_of_death: Scarlet Fever

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: In 1862 two-year-old Bernardine died from Scarlet Fever and her grave is often found adorned with trinkets, toys, rings, flowers, and stones. But what makes Bernardine's final resting place such a tourist draw is that it is guarded by a black iron dog. How did it get there? Before the Civil War, the Richmond dog stood at a storefront of photographer Charles R. Rees (whose name is on the cemetery plot). Children loved the dog and his young niece was no exception. When his niece contracted Scarlet Fever and passed away (that area of the cemetery is loaded with plots of young children who passed in similar fashion) Charles had the statue moved to her grave as a tribute. Today the Iron Dog (aka the Black Dog) is one of the most visited gravesites in Hollywood Cemetery.

popular name: Robert Wadlow

date_of_death: July 15, 1940

age: 22

cause_of_death: Wound infection

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Robert Pershing Wadlow, also known as Alton's Gentle Giant and the Giant of Illinois, was an American man who was the tallest person in recorded history for whom there is irrefutable evidence. He was born and raised in Alton, Illinois, a small city near St. Louis, Missouri. His great size and his continued growth in adulthood were due to hypertrophy of his pituitary gland, which results in an abnormally high level of human growth hormone (HGH). By the time of his graduation from Alton High School in 1936, he was 8 feet 4 inches tall and measured almost 9 feet tall at the time of his death. Wadlow became a celebrity after his 1936 U.S. tour with the Ringling Brothers Circus, appearing at Madison Square Garden and the Boston Garden in the center ring (never in the sideshow). During his appearances, he dressed in his everyday clothes and refused the circus's request that he wear a top hat and tails. In 1938, he began a promotional tour with the International Shoe Company, which provided him shoes free of charge, again only in his everyday street clothes. Wadlow saw himself as working in advertising, not exhibiting as a freak. He possessed great physical strength until the last few days of his life. He was buried at Alton Cemetery (aka Oakwood Cemetery) in Alton, Illinois.

popular name: Berrien Upshaw

date_of_death: January 12, 1949

age: 47

cause_of_death: Suicide - leaped from building

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Berrien "Red" Upshaw was a mean, nasty, ill-tempered loser and wife beater - and those were some of his good qualities. But he did have one quality that served him well - he was known as a suave and charming man to the ladies. His charm wooed a young Margaret Mitchell and she married Berrien “Red” Kinnard Upshaw, an ex-football player from a prominent Raleigh (North Carolina) family, on September 2nd 1922. But after after 4 months Upshaw took off to the mid-west and engaged in bootlegging and other illegal pursuits. He returned back to Margaret but the family wanted nothing to do with him. The marriage was annulled two years later and Margaret married John Marsh (Red's best man at the wedding). Margaret went on to write the best-selling novel Gone With The Wind while Upshaw continued to drink heavily, was institutionalized briefly in the early 1940s and leaped to his death from the 2nd story of a Salvation Army flop-house in Galveston, Texas in 1949. In the end, Berrien Upshaw was so disliked, even by his own family, that his family in the last line of his brief obituary specifically requested no flowers be sent.