HORRIFYING PREMATURE BURIALS: These People Were Buried Alive

Being buried prematurely is one of the most terrifying of all fears. Edgar Allan Poe wrote about it and it has been the subject matter of many horror movies. Surprisingly real life cases of this terrible mistake are more common than one might think. Years ago when embalming wasn’t as common and because of inferior medical equipment to detect life there are numerous cases where people have had the terrifying experience of regaining consciousness in their own coffin. 

Below are a few of such cases.

Virginia Macdonald (1851)

Virginia Macdonald lived with her father in New York City and became ill, died, and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn. After the burial, her mother declared her belief that the daughter was not dead when buried and persistently asserted her belief. The family tried in vain to assure the mother of the death of her daughter. Finally the mother insisted so strenuously that her daughter was buried alive the family consented to have the body taken up. To their horror, they discovered the body lying on the side, the hands badly bitten, and every indication of a premature burial.

Interesting Fact: When the Les Innocents cemetery in Paris, France was moved from the center of the city to the suburbs the number of skeletons found face down convinced many people and several doctors that premature burial was very common.

Biggest Bluff Ever Made in History

This bluff was played by a Jewish Army officer, on a much senior officer and a Military Cross winning, World War II veteran, representing the opposing forces.

Let us call them Mr. A and Mr. B respectively.

First, a little known side story:

A senior officer once presented Mr. A with a Partagas Piresidente, a special cuban cigar of ill-repute - it was a big deal in those days - still is.

He promised himself, only to smoke it on a special day - perhaps a day when he really felt, he deserved it.

Now back to the original story:

On that fateful day, Mr. A arrived in Mr. B’s office, armed with just a briefcase and a stick, in a car provided by Mr. B.

On reaching there, he kept his stick on Mr. B’s table, refused to sit or even accept a glass of water - took out a single page document from his briefcase - started reading it out aloud, to the utter amazement of everyone present in the room.

Biggest Mysteries of London

The city of London has been shrouded in mystery for centuries. From serial killers to mysterious disappearances to ghost sightings, some of London’s most famous enigmas are still talked about today. However, recent developments in science and technology have shed new light on the many unsolved crimes and riddles that have left experts stumped for decades—and sometimes even centuries. Still, as more details are uncovered, even more questions follow.

What Really Caused The Great Plague?

During the 1660s, the Great Plague of London killed more than a quarter of the city’s population in just 18 months. For centuries, experts believed that rats were responsible for the disease spreading so quickly, but recent DNA findings have shown that this isn’t the case at all.

In 2016, scientists from the Museum of London Archaeology and the Max Planck Institute in Germany examined 3,300 skeletons that were discovered in a burial ground near Liverpool Street. During their studies, they found that DNA from the Yersinia pestis bacterium was present in 42 of the skeletons, and further analyses will reveal more about why it spread the way it did.

Researchers had already learned enough to refute the idea that the Great Fire of London was responsible for stopping the spread of the plague, as it was previously believed. Because the majority of the people dying from the plague were living in London’s suburbs around the time of the Great Fire in 1666, it could not have been a major cause of the disease being wiped out.

Was Walter Sickert Really Jack The Ripper?

Of all the greatest unsolved mysteries to come out of London, none are as well-known as that of Jack the Ripper, who terrorized the streets of East London during the late 1800s. As a matter of fact, the killer has become so infamous over the years that there is now a Jack the Ripper Museum in Whitechapel as well as a handful of tours to lead visitors around various Ripper-related crime scenes in East London.

German-born artist Walter Sickert has been accused of being Jack the Ripper by “ripperologists” since as far back as the 1970s. However, in recent years, author Patricia Cornwell has become so convinced of his guilt that she has written two books pinning Sickert to the murders. She even claims to have spent more than $7 million trying to solve the Ripper case. In her new book, Cornwell claims that Sickert used to write letters on the exact same pack of 24-page stationery that matches a letter once penned by Jack the Ripper and that the letters even have matching watermarks.

She also claims that Sickert would dress up as Jack the Ripper whenever he created his paintings and that he once told a friend that “he would not mind having to kill and eat raw flesh.” Also, in her new book, she provides evidence that Sickert was in Britain during the time of at least three of the Ripper murders (although he had previously claimed to be in France) and even claims that Jack the Ripper’s death toll may have been at least four times higher than previously thought.

Is There Really A Monster In River Thames?

We’ve all heard of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, but could there be a similar sea monster roaming around London’s River Thames as well? In 2016, a tourist in London was riding the Emirates Air Line cable car near the O2 when he spotted something “fishy” in the water. He decided to pull out his phone and film what he saw. In the 30-second clip, viewers can see a mysterious dark mass with two humps emerging from the river’s surface. To add even more mystery to the sighting, the day after the video was posted, another video was shared online showing a strange object near the Thames Barrier.

Marine biologists say they have no explanation as to what the creature could possibly be—if it is a creature—although some suggest it could be a whale or a pod of porpoises. Over the years, more than 2,000 seals and 450 porpoises and dolphins have been spotted swimming in the River Thames. Still, Ian Tokelove of the London Wildlife Trust said that the organization is “not aware of anything that large and moving in the Thames,” leaving the door open for further speculation.

Why Was A Walrus Buried At St Pancras?

Experts have been stumped ever since the remains of a 4-meter-long (13 ft)walrus were discovered underneath St Pancras Church in 2003. The nine bone fragments were found inside a coffin along with eight other human remains and three skulls, all of which were placed there sometime between 1822 and 1854.

In recent years, researchers came to the conclusion that the remains may have been used for medical science by one of the 40 different anatomy schools in London that were operating during the 19th century. This is backed by the fact that just like the human remains, the walrus’s remains showed signs of dissection, with the bones and skulls all having holes drilled in them. Others believe that the walrus may have been brought to the UK for trade purposes, as its ivory tusks were considered incredibly valuable at that time. However, no one can pinpoint exactly why, or how, the walrus came to the UK in the first place.

This isn’t the only puzzling discovery of animal remains in a London grave. During a recent excavation at the Royal London Hospital, various animal parts, including the remains of a rabbit, cat, dog, horse, tortoise, and even two monkeys, were discovered alongside the many buried human remains found underneath the hospital.

Why Was Richard III Wrongfully Accused of Murdering The Princess in The Tower?

It was discussed in Shakespeare and even hinted at in recent seasons ofGame of Thrones, but did Richard III really kill his nephews in order to secure his own place on the English throne? Experts think not.

The disappearance of Prince Edward and Prince Richard, often referred to as “the Princes in the Tower,” has befuddled historians for centuries. After twoskeletons were discovered in the Tower of London in 1674, many were convinced that the bodies were those of the two princes, so much so that the remains were even placed inside an urn at Westminster Abbey. Everything changed when Richard III’s body was discovered underneath a car park in Leicester in 2012. After a series of tests on the skull, it was discovered that Richard III had no genetic link to the remains discovered in the Tower.

Some believe that the remains may have been of Anglo-Saxon origin, but because the Church of England and the queen have turned down requests made by the Richard III Society to examine the remains, nothing can be proven either way. Furthermore, some claim that Richard III couldn’t have been guilty of the crime, as he never publicized the princes’ deaths or displayed their bodies in public.

Has Winston Churchill's Ghost Been Spotted In The London Underground?

Reports of ghostly sightings of former British prime minister Winston Churchill at various tube stations in London have been floating around since the 1980s, but a recent photograph has added more fuel to the fire.

In 2016, a Welsh tourist named Craig Cooper snapped a photo of a strange ghostly figure which was standing behind him at the Queensway station. Because the bald apparition in the photograph looks so much like Churchill, some have claimed that it is the ghost of the wartime leader himself.

Is There Really A Vampire At Highgate Cemetery?

Reports of a supposed “Highgate Vampire” have terrified North Londoners since the 1970s, but recent sightings have suggested that the vampire may have returned to Highgate Cemetery.

Witnesses have been reporting sightings of a “floating man” in Victorian clothing and a top hat floating through the cemetery’s locked gates over the past few decades, although David Farrant, who currently runs the British Psychic and Occult Society, was the first to spot the supposed vampire in 1969. Oddly enough, the charred, headless body of a woman was discovered nearby the following year.

In 2016, a man claimed to have seen the vampire silently gliding through a locked gate in 1991 when he was on his way to work. The man, Declan Walsh, claimed the figure was over 183 centimters (6′) in height and was wearing a long, black coat and a top hat. Some legends state that the vampire is a medieval nobleman who once practiced black magic in Romania, and after his body was brought to England in a coffin sometime during the 18th century, his spirit was awoken by modern-day Satanists visiting the cemetery.

What Really Happened To Lord Lucan?

During the 1970s, the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Lord Lucan, as well as the death of his supposed victim, was huge news in the streets of London. After being accused of killing his children’s nanny and attacking his own wife, Lord Lucan (aka Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan) seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth, and not much was known about where he disappeared to—until now.

Novelist Peter James has recently suggested that Lord Lucan’s aristocratic circle of gambling friends (known as the Clermont Set) helped him escape England in a “light plane” to Montreux, Switzerland. However, after Lucan began talking about how he wanted to contact his children to let them know he was alright, the group was spooked and had him killed “Mafia-style.” His body is believed to have been buried in Switzerland out of fear that the group’s involvement in Lucan’s escape would be revealed.

In recent years, some have even suggested that Lucan was in fact innocent of the murder. However, this fact continues to be disputed.

What Were Allen Boleyn's Last Words Before She Was Executed?

She’s been painted as everything from a seductive, conniving manipulator to a loving mother and wife—and this confusion extends even to her last words. Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII and the mother of Queen Elizabeth I, was executed and beheaded at the Tower of London for high treason, adultery, and incest in 1536. Over the years, there have been varying reports of what Anne Boleyn said the moment before she died, which have left historians scratching their head for centuries.

Some claimed her last words were, “I have not come here to preach a sermon; I have come here to die.” Others stated that she denied the charges against her, saying, “Everything they have accused me of is false, and the principle reason I am to die is Jane Seymour.” Still others asserted that she said, “Be not sorry to see me die like this.” Some witnesses to the execution even recounted that her lips continued moving for several seconds after she was beheaded!

Who Was Jack The Stripper?

We’ve all heard about Jack the Ripper, so for the residents of London’s Hammersmith district, Jack the Stripper’s 1964–1965 killing spree felt all too familiar. Often referred to as “the most infamous serial killer you’ve never heard of,” Jack the Stripper was believed to have killed several prostitutes during his lifetime. Although the official victim count is around six, some believe that he killed up to eight women in total.

All of the Stripper’s victims were female prostitutes, and their bodies were discovered naked and strangled with their teeth knocked out, which has led experts to believe that the killer may have kept them as souvenirs. One of the victims (30-year-old Hannah Tailford) was discovered with her underwear stuffed in her mouth, while some of his other victims were found with small specks of paint on their bodies.

Nearly 120,000 people were interviewed and 26 suspects identified by police, but the killer’s identity remains a conundrum to this day. Some have suggested that the murderer may have been a former Metropolitan Police officer, while others have put the blame squarely on Mungo Ireland, a security guard who committed suicide in 1965. His body was discovered next to a note that said, “I cannot stand the strain any longer.” What he meant by that, we may never know.

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The PEASANT who Became An Emperor

Born into a poor peasant family in a foreign land, no one had worse odds to become the ruler of the Byzantine Empire than Basil. Yet, through a combination of hard work, scheming, murder and competence, Basil ascended to the Byzantine throne and enjoyed 19 years of relatively peaceful rule.

A Rose for Carl- An Amazingly Horrific LOVE STORY!!

Born in Dresden, Germany in 1877, Carl Tanzler claimed to have descended from aristocratic stock. Fanciful even as a child, in later years he recounted a story of being visited in his youth by a long-dead ancestor, Countess Anna Constantina von Cosel, who gave him a vision of a beautiful, dark-haired woman whom she said was his one, true love.

As a young man he either forgot the vision, made the whole story up later in life, or decided to settle because in or about 1920 he married a different woman. Together (although in stages), they immigrated to the U.S. with their kids and settled in Zephyrhillis, Florida in 1926.

Perhaps realizing he couldn’t avoid his fate, by 1927, Carl had left Zephyrhillis (though they didn’t divorce), changed his name to Carl von Cosel and made a new home in Key West, Florida, where he found work as an x-ray technician at the U.S. Marine Hospital.

A few years later, in 1930, a young, beautiful dark-haired woman went to the hospital for treatment of a lung condition that was eventually diagnosed as tuberculosis. As x-rays were required, Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, known as Helen, ran into Carl who was awestruck – he claimed to have instantly recognized her as the woman of his childhood dream.

Although it’s not clear if Carl ever told Helen about his supernatural vision, he was soon professing his love for the young woman and showering her with jewelry and clothing. And, as she continued to decline due to her illness, when he offered to make house calls to treat her, the help was eagerly accepted. More enthusiastic than educated, however, Carl’s “remedies” were little more than additional x-rays and strange concoctions.

Despite his and the actual doctors’ best efforts, Helen died on October 25, 1931. Carl’s offer to pay for her funeral was gratefully accepted by her family, and rather than settling for a simple grave, he had a sizeable mausoleum built. In gratitude, Helen’s mother gave Carl some of Helen’s hair as a memento – a decision the family later regretted.

Visiting her crypt in Key West Cemetery nearly every night for the next year and a half, Carl later claimed that Helen’s spirit visited him and asked him to get her out of the tomb. Obliging, in April 1933 he crept into the cemetery (presumably after dark) with a small wagon and secretly removed her body and took her back to his home.

With the passage of so much time, Dead-Helen must have been quite a sight. To reverse the effects of time (and decay), Carl employed a number of techniques, including re-attaching her bones with wire and coat hangers and filling her now deflated torso with rags to get her back to the right proportions. Over these structural supports, Carl made a kind of skin out of silk, wax and plaster of Paris, put glass eyes in her sockets and fashioned a wig for her from the hair her mother had given him. Carl then dressed her in style, including jewelry, stockings and gloves.

To prevent any further decay and disguise the smell, Carl also employed a fair bit of preservatives as well as disinfectants and perfumes.

Not content to only be with Dead-Helen, Carl also hatched a plan to create a plane to carry her body, as he put it, “high into the stratosphere, so that radiation from outer space could penetrate Elena’s tissues and restore life to her somnolent form.”

Seven years later, Dead-Helen’s sister, Florinda, after hearing some strange rumors of Carl’s extracurricular activities, including someone spotting through a window Carl dancing with a life-sized “doll”, arrived at his home, demanding to see the doll. What she discovered was that it was no effigy of her sister at all, but the carefully preserved remains of Helen. The authorities were immediately notified and Carl was arrested, but as the statute of limitations for grave robbing had already ran, the charges were dropped.

Later investigations revealed a bit of Carl and Dead-Helen’s “life” together, which included dancing and spending each night lying in bed together. It’s not clear if Carl engaged in necrophilia; while some researchers claim that a paper tube had been inserted in Dead-Helen’s vaginal cavity, others claim that as this “evidence” was only revealed in 1972, it was not credible. Even if true, this also doesn’t say one way or the other whether he had intercourse with the corpse- a paper-tube being presumably… uncomfortable…

Moving on, as if Carl’s desecration of Helen’s corpse wasn’t enough, after the authorities were finished with the body, Dead-Helen was put on public display in a local funeral home – where more than 6,000 people came to gape at her. She was finally laid to rest in 1940 in a secret location and an unmarked grave.

Carl was able to keep a death mask he had made of Helen (or Dead-Helen, it’s not clear) and he attached this to a life-sized sculpture he had fashioned in her image. He returned to Zephyrhillis where his wife (they had never divorced) apparently helped to support him, although they lived separately. His autobiography, Fantastic Adventures, was published in 1947, and he became a U.S. citizen in 1950.

Dying at home in 1952, Carl was supposedly found with his arms wrapped around a Helen doppelganger. However, the accuracy of this report isn’t clear and accounts from otherwise reputable sources further differ as to whether this was the death-mask-sculpture Helen or if it was actually Dead-Helen, whom he had secretly re-acquired somehow.

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The Death of Che Guevara

On October 9, 1967, controversial Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed by members of the Bolivian army. Although he was active as a revolutionary for only a relatively short time, Guevara has become one of the most recognizable figures of the 20th century.

Ernesto R. Guevara de la Serna was born in Rosario, Argentina, on June 14, 1928 (though some claim it was really May 14th). After studying medicine in Buenos Aires, he traveled extensively around South America. The injustices he witnessed along the way were the catalyst for what he’d do with the rest of his life.

Guevara was working as a doctor in Mexico City when he met Fidel and Raul Castro. All three went to Cuba to overthrow Fulgencio Batista, whose rule President John F. Kennedy described as, “one of the most bloody and repressive dictatorships in the long history of Latin American repression…”

By 1959, Guevara and the Castro brothers formed a triumvirate of the most powerful men in the Cuban Revolution. Guevara’s first official assignment was at the infamous prison, La Cabaña. His job was to oversee executions and between the years of 1959-1963, hundreds of prisoners met their deaths under his watch. Cuban human rights activist Armando Valladares, who was arrested in 1960 for protesting communism and spent the next 22 years in prison for this, said of Guevara, “He [Guevara] was a man full of hatred … [He] executed dozens and dozens of people who never once stood trial and were never declared guilty … In his own words, he said the following: ‘At the smallest of doubt we must execute.’ And that’s what he did at the Sierra Maestra and the prison of Las Cabanas.”

Valladares went on to state, “For me, it meant 8,000 days of hunger, of systematic beatings, of hard labor, of solitary confinement and solitude, 8,000 days of struggling to prove that I was a human being, 8,000 days of proving that my spirit could triumph over exhaustion and pain, 8,000 days of testing my religious convictions, my faith, of fighting the hate my atheist jailers were trying to instill in me with each bayonet thrust, fighting so that hate would not flourish in my heart, 8,000 days of struggling so that I would not become like them.”

On October 24, 1963, President Kennedy shared his own thoughts on the situation in Cuba in an interview with journalist Jean Daniel (later published in The New Republic on December 14, 1963)

I believe that there is no country in the world, including the African regions, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime. I believe that we created, built and manufactured the Castro movement out of whole cloth and without realizing it. I believe that the accumulation of these mistakes has jeopardized all of Latin America. The great aim of the Alliance for Progress is to reverse this unfortunate policy. This is one of the most, if not the most, important problems in America foreign policy. I can assure you that I have understood the Cubans. I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will go even further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear.

With the revolution successful, matters of actually running the country came to the forefront and, although Guevara lacked any business training, he was eventually named Finance Minister and President of the Cuban national bank. He worked very hard at his post (all other controversies aside, no-one could ever accuse Che of being a slacker) and was very popular with the people, but he failed to produce results, and Cuba’s economy suffered greatly.

Guevara also began to openly question the Soviet Union’s commitment to global socialism, especially after Nikita Khrushchev removed nuclear missiles from Cuba during the 1962 Missile Crisis.

In that era of world revolution, Che Guevara became incredibly famous, even outside of Cuba. But in 1965, he dropped out of sight, and if Castro knew where he was, he wasn’t talking. At least not until that October, when Castro admitted Guevara had resigned his posts and left Cuba “to fight imperialism… in new fields of battle.”

Guevara made his way from the African Congo, back to Cuba, and finally, on the suggestion of Castro, to Bolivia. At first, he and his group of 120 guerrillas had some initial victories. Then a U.S.-trained battalion of Bolivian Rangers began hunting them down.

“Bolivia. July, 1967,” Guevara noted in his diary. “The negative aspects prevail, including the failure to make contact with the outside. We are down to 22 men, three of whom are disabled, including myself.”

Things got even worse by September when Guevara’s life-long asthma flared up, and he was also suffering from dysentery. The Bolivian Rangers were closing in to boot. On October 8, 1967, the Rangers finally got their man. He was executed the next day; his body photographed on a stone slab with the photographic evidence published world-wide to erase any doubt.

Many years after his death, Che Guevara’s role in history is still hotly debated, as are the many seemingly contradictory aspects of his life, such as being a rebellious young man who would state in 1961, “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of Government mandates, instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work, and military service.” Whatever one’s opinion on the man, one thing’s for certain– thanks to Alberto Korda’s photograph of Guevara taken in March of 1960 seen on everything from posters to coffee cups even today, he’s one the most recognizable figures of the 20th century.

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How Many Sense Organs Do Humans Actually Have

Humans have a lot more than five senses.  It turns out, there are at least nine senses and most researchers think there are more like twenty-one or so. Just for reference, the commonly held definition of a “sense” is “any system that consists of a group of sensory cell types that respond to a specific physical phenomenon and that corresponds to a particular group of regions within the brain where the signals are received and interpreted.”

The commonly held human senses are as follows:

§  Sight:  This technically is two senses given the two distinct types of receptors present, one for color (cones) and one for brightness (rods).

§  Taste:  This is sometimes argued to be five senses by itself due to the differing types of taste receptors (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami), but generally is just referred to as one sense.  For those who don’t know, umami receptors detect the amino acid glutamate, which is a taste generally found in meat and some artificial flavoring.  The taste sense, unlike sight, is a sense based off of a chemical reaction

§  Touch:  This has been found to be distinct from pressure, temperature, pain, and even itch sensors.

§  Pressure: Obvious sense is obvious. 

§  Itch:  Surprisingly, this is a distinct sensor system from other touch-related senses.

§  Thermoception:  Ability to sense heat and cold.  This also is thought of as more than one sense.  This is not just because of the two hot/cold receptors, but also because there is a completely different type of thermoceptor, in terms of the mechanism for detection, in the brain.  These thermoceptors in the brain are used for monitoring internal body temperature.

§  Sound:  Detecting vibrations along some medium, such as air or water that is in contact with your ear drums.

§  Smell:  Yet another of the sensors that work off of a chemical reaction.  This sense combines with taste to produce flavors.

§  Proprioception:  This sense gives you the ability to tell where your body parts are, relative to other body parts.  This sense is one of the things police officers test when they pull over someone who they think is driving drunk.  The “close your eyes and touch your nose” test is testing this sense.  This sense is used all the time in little ways, such as when you scratch an itch on your foot, but never once look at your foot to see where your hand is relative to your foot.

§  Tension Sensors:  These are found in such places as your muscles and allow the brain the ability to monitor muscle tension.

§  Nociception:  In a word, pain.  This was once thought to simply be the result of overloading other senses, such as “touch”, but this has been found not to be the case and instead, it is its own unique sensory system.  There are three distinct types of pain receptors: cutaneous (skin), somatic (bones and joints), and visceral (body organs).

§  Equilibrioception:   The sense that allows you to keep your balance and sense body movement in terms of acceleration and directional changes.  This sense also allows for perceiving gravity.  The sensory system for this is found in your inner ears and is called the vestibular labyrinthine system.  Anyone who’s ever had this sense go out on them on occasion knows how important this is.  When it’s not working or malfunctioning, you literally can’t tell up from down and moving from one location to another without aid is nearly impossible.

§  Stretch Receptors:  These are found in such places as the lungs, bladder, stomach, and the gastrointestinal tract.  A type of stretch receptor, that senses dilation of blood vessels, is also often involved in headaches.

§  Chemoreceptors:  These trigger an area of the medulla in the brain that is involved in detecting blood born hormones and drugs.  It also is involved in the vomiting reflex.

§  Thirst:  This system more or less allows your body to monitor its hydration level and so your body knows when it should tell you to drink.

§  Hunger:  This system allows your body to detect when you need to eat something.

§  Magnetoception:  This is the ability to detect magnetic fields, which is principally useful in providing a sense of direction when detecting the Earth’s magnetic field.  Unlike most birds, humans do not have a strong magentoception, however, experiments have demonstrated that we do tend to have some sense of magnetic fields.  The mechanism for this is not completely understood; it is theorized that this has something to do with deposits of ferric iron in our noses.  This would make sense if that is correct as humans who are given magnetic implants have been shown to have a much stronger magnetoception than humans without.

§  Time:  This one is debated as no singular mechanism has been found that allows people to perceive time.  However, experimental data has conclusively shown humans have a startling accurate sense of time, particularly when younger. The mechanism we use for this seems to be a distributed syste

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How powerful is the QUEEN of England

Most of the people are aware of the fact that Queen Elizabeth II needs neither a passport nor driving license thanks to a quirk of British law. But what other powers does the Queen of many titles have and what could she theoretically do if she decided to flex the full might of the authority she wields? As it turns out, thanks to the Royal Prerogative, a terrifying amount if she really felt like it, or, at least, assuming parliament went by the letter of the law and they and the people didn’t decide to stage a little revolt

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In reality, the Queen rarely exerts even a fraction of the power she theoretically wields as it’s kept in check by the only person in the UK who can tell her what to do- herself.

This is very much a calculated move on her part in order to stay in the good graces of her subjects (as is voluntarily paying taxes even though she’s technically not obligated to). Not only does she avoid openly flexing her political might, she also tends to keep her opinions outside of the public sphere.  As historian Frank Prochaska notes,

The real secret of royal influence is saying nothing. And anything the Queen does say publicly, is pretty anodyne. The minute a monarch, or any of the royals say anything remotely political or opinionated, they alienate people and they lose some power. This silence played a large part in how the British monarchy survived post World War One, when other European royal families didn’t.

In fact, for almost two decades now the monarchy has regularly had polls run and focus groups put together to keep track of how the general public feels about them and their various actions.  They also have on payroll individuals whose job it is to ensure the Queen stays in the public eye and in a way that is most likely to endear her to her subjects- as with politicians who rely on the voting public, with each public change she presents, right down to carrying a cell phone or not, carefully calculated in terms of the impact it might have.

While this may seem only self-serving, the Queen has a very lengthy track record as an admirable public servant and is also acutely aware that she is a prominent public face representing her subjects, so is keen on avoiding being viewed in a bad light lest she in turn paint them in a bad light by her actions. As she noted at the tender age of 21 in a speech to the Commonwealth she gave on her birthday,

I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.

Surprisingly, for many years the full extent of exactly what powers the Queen handed off to the government, but technically retained, weren’t publicly known. That is, until 2003, when the government released a partial list of the things it can do on the Queen’s behalf.

For the most part, the list confirmed that the government could do things to save the Queen time, such as issue or revoke passports which simply wouldn’t be a feasible thing to be the sole prerogative of the Crown in a modern society. However, many things were quite worrying to some, such as her ability to declare war, which under the rules of Royal Prerogative can be done without consulting parliament.

On top of that, the Queen is totally immune from prosecution and is considered above the law in the UK. And as a head of state, she enjoys diplomatic immunity in any foreign country she happens to visit. As such, she could commit any crime conceivable anywhere on Earth and, at least as the law currently stands, suffer no consequence for doing so.  However, as with everything, she’s generally exceptionally careful to ensure she doesn’t break any laws.

Of course, what she does in private is completely her own affair, despite her prominent political position, as she is exempt from Freedom of Information requests.

Moving on- because technically speaking “the people of Britain are not citizens, but subjects of the monarch” she could have anyone she wanted arrested and presumably seize their property or land for the crown.

Speaking of which, the Queen owns all of the sea beds around the UK and can commandeer any ship found in British waters “for service to the realm”. Oddly enough, she also has first dibs on any whales that wash up on shore.  The Queen could also administer any manner of punishment to an individual who offended or otherwise displeased her as the crown has “prerogative power to keep the peace within the realm”. And since she’s immune from prosecution, nobody could really do anything if this punishment wasn’t entirely within the scope of the law.

If the government tried to stop her, the Queen could decimate the British political landscape by dissolving parliament and appointing anyone she felt like as prime minister. This is because it’s the Queen’s duty to appoint the prime minister and she could, in theory appoint anyone she wanted to the position, regardless of the way the British public voted in an election.

On top of that, in the event the Queen didn’t like the outcome of an election, for instance if she didn’t like the replacement parliament members voted in, she could just call for another one using Royal Prerogative until she got the parliament she wanted. Not that she’d need to, because she could just bring in the army to keep everyone in line if she so chose.

How? Well, the Queen is also the Commander-in-Chief of the entire British military with every officer, soldier, sailor and pilot swearing allegiance to the Crown and nobody else. They’re not called Her Majesty’s Armed Forces for nothing. Noted as being the “ultimate authority” on all British military matters, the Queen could authorise a nuclear strike on France or make North Korea an ally as she has the power to declare both war and peace with foreign nations.

As for laws, while technically the Queen can’t create new laws, as she can only sign them into law after they’re decided upon by parliament (in fact, her Royal Assent is required to make the law official after being passed by parliament in the first place), she could appoint ministers who’d make any laws she wanted a reality and then just sign them into law that way.

Beyond Royal Assent, there’s also the Queen’s consent, which requires she give her consent before any law that affects the interests of the monarchy can even be discussed at all in parliament. (She actually has used this power before, such as in 1999 when she refused to allow the discussion of a bill that would have given parliament power to authorize military strikes in Iraq, instead of needing her authorization.)

So that’s on the political side- it doesn’t stop here. The Queen technically has a sort of power not only over her subjects’ physical beings, but also their souls. How?  She’s the head of the Church of England, including having the power to appoint Archbishops and power over many other such matters concerning the church.

As for most of these powers that technically allow her to rule with an iron fist, as previously mentioned, the Queen is hesitant to ever use them in such a way that would displease her subjects and certainly isn’t about to disregard their representatives in parliament. However, these powers still exist for a variety of reasons including potentially being needed in a time of extreme crisis where an individual ruling unilaterally for the good of her people can potentially be of benefit- one of the few scenarios her subjects might not mind her flexing her political muscles a bit without necessarily consulting parliament, depending on the circumstances.

That said, just because she isn’t in the practice of exercising her powers against the will of the people, it doesn’t mean she isn’t occasionally an active political powerhouse in private. Extremely well respected and known worldwide, with the ability to bend the ear of most heads of state, the influence the Queen wields is difficult to quantify, but, as noted in an article discussing why the BBC named the Queen the most powerful woman in the world in their list of 100 most powerful women,

Her Majesty’s power is more about influence – a discreet nod of the head, a polite word in the ear of a Prime Minister at their weekly meeting, or a strategic patronage of a cause being overlooked by the Government – is how she can indirectly effect our world without us even knowing.

To conclude, the Queen has many powers she could theoretically legally use to her own ends unless her subjects and parliament simply decided to stage a revolt. However, she generally avoids doing anything overt that might upset her subjects, and otherwise simply works in the background more or less in an advisory role when she feels there is need.

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