Robert Wadlow

popular name: W W Pool

date_of_death: February 26, 1922

age: 79

cause_of_death: Pneumonia

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: William Pool was a well respected account manager and bookkeeper for the wealthy and influential Bryan estate. His wife died in 1913 with William passing away several years later. They are entombed at Hollywood Cemetery and you would think that would be the end of the story. Years later local residents claim that the mausoleum of W. W. Pool (dated 1913) in Hollywood Cemetery holds the remains of a vampire with the rumor that Pool was run out of England in the 1800s for being a blood-sucking creature of the night. The legend may have been influenced by the architecture of the tomb, which has both Masonic and ancient Egyptian elements, and the "WW" over the entry to the crypt looking like fangs. At the same time another version of events began on October 2, 1925, when a disastrous cave-in at the Church Hill Tunnel occurred, with tons of rock and soil crashing down on a work train, killing, trapping and wounding several laborers. Shortly after the catastrophe, eyewitnesses saw a horrific creature running from the tunnel’s end – with fanglike teeth and rolls of decomposing flesh hanging from its body. The creature is said to have sprinted into Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery and disappeared into the mausoleum of W.W. Pool where today the iron doors remain sealed to prevent the creature from escaping.

popular name: Diana Mosley

date_of_death: August 11, 2003

age: 93

cause_of_death: Heat Stroke

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Diana Mosley (née Mitford) was a British aristocrat best known for her controversial political views and associations with fascist and Nazi figures. Born into the prominent Mitford family, she became one of the most notorious members due to her far-right ideology. She was initially married to Bryan Guinness, heir to the barony of Moyne, and both were part of the Bright Young Things, a social group of young Bohemian socialites in 1920s London. Her marriage ended in divorce as she was pursuing a relationship with Oswald Mosley (leader of the British Union of Fascists). In 1936, she married Mosley at the home of the propaganda minister for Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels, with Adolf Hitler as guest of honor. Diana was a fervent admirer of Adolf Hitler, whom she met several times and regarded with great affection—she even honeymooned in Nazi Germany and maintained correspondence with Hitler. Her views included openly racist and anti-Semitic sentiments, and she was a Holocaust denier who downplayed or dismissed the atrocities committed by the Nazis. During World War II, she and her husband were interned by the British government as threats to national security. Despite her privileged background and social status, Diana Mosley remained unapologetic about her extremist beliefs until her death in 2003, making her one of the most unsettling figures of British fascism. She joins her two sisters, Unity and Nancy, at the gravesite of Diana Mosley at St. Mary's Churchyard in Swinbrook, UK.

popular name: Amelia Maggia

date_of_death: September 12, 1922

age: 25

cause_of_death: Radium sarcoma, industrial poisoning

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Amelia ‘Mollie’ Maggia was the middle child of seven Maggia sisters; listed in order of age: Louise, Clara, Albina, Mollie, Quinta, Irma and Josephine. Children of Italian immigrants, Albina, Mollie, Quinta and Irma all worked in the radium-dial factory. Mollie was an exceptional dial-painter – but paid the price. She was the first dial-painter to die in September 1922. The initial effects of radium seemed harmless, and the substance was popular amongst the younger girls in the factory. They would go home from a day of painting with their clothes glowing from the radium exposure. Some would even paint the buttons on their dresses or their nails, but the joy of the radium glow was short lived. Long-term radiation sickness symptoms soon became present among many of the women who worked with radium paint. Common issues included bone cancer, anemia, lesions, and sores. These problems were exhibited in Amelia Maggia, the first dial painter to die from radiation sickness. Amelia worked in the factory for almost a decade and was known to be a diligent employee. Amelia had initially gone to the doctor complaining of a toothache and got an extraction. However, the ache in her jaw continued. During a routine exam, when the doctor gently probed here jaw, her jawbone literally fell out of her mouth into his hands. Upon closer examination he found extensive deterioration of her lower jaw bone and tissue damage from the radiation. Most of her jaw was removed and she developed severe anemia and lesions with massive infections. Amelia passed away in September of 1922 at the age of 25 when the radiation caused a jugular vein to rupture and she bled to death in front of her family. Her death was wrongly attributed to syphilis.