Don't I know You From Somewhere?

So I found myself awake at 2:00 AM a few nights ago.  I could NOT get back to sleep, and that's things got weird on the internet.  It all started when I got to googling random things like real faces of random dead people.  Before you start judging me based on how upsetting and super weird this sounds, remember there is a digital trail of bread crumbs that IS your search history.  I also watch enough true-crime based television to know that can and will be used against you the moment you slip up.   So just go along with this like it's normal behavior.  I promise it's worth it. 

Basically there's this thing that's been happening throughout history where molds are made of dead (and sometimes live) peoples faces.  These are generally the faces of famous or historically important folks.  Then there's a mold made of the face and we "normies" can forever know what that famous person looked like in real life.  A FAMOUS DEAD FACE FROZEN IN TIME.  They also did it before the golden age of photography so unidentified dead people could be identified before they started to decompose.  It makes so much sense that I am into this.  When I was a kid, I lived for everything Egyptian.  Turns out some of those mummy masks were sometimes made from molds of faces.  Does the name King Tut ring a bell??  Apparently this is his real time face... well his face minus those chola eyebrows.

So fastforward to my late 20's, and I discover death masks.  I cannot describe how cool this is. The most sad/romantical/sweet story is about L'Inconnue de la Seine, a young girl who committed suicide and her mold was so sweet and beautiful that it became the inspiration for a lot of things including CPR dummy faces.  Here is a to the wiki page.  How beautiful is it that in her death came the ability to save so many lives???  And all because of the coyness and serenity of her death mask cast.

So this is just a taste of the gold mine that is death masks.  I am just going to post a few of my favorites because I could go on forever about all these things. 

Mary Queen of Scots

Oliver Cromwell

Dante

Benjamin Franklin

John Keats (BABE ALERT)

Lincoln

Fun fact, apparently by examining the mask of Lincoln lead scientists to discover Lincoln had some kind of painful syndrome that would have killed him had he not gotten assassinated. 

There are so many more I want to post like Napoleon, Alfred Hitchcock, George Washington (his is a life mask), Beethoven and Tolstoy, but I will spare you and just give you some priceless links.  You're welcome.

http://www.kuriositas.com/2012/01/death-masks-of-famous.html

http://www.undyingfaces.com/info/death-mask-history/

http://itthing.com/life-and-death-masks-of-famous-people

http://www.biography.com/blog/famous-death-masks 

multiple mucosal  neuroma syndrome.mfdsfsdfdsfsdfsfdsfsdfsdfdsf

multiple mucosal  neuroma syndrome.

multiple mucosal  neuroma syndrome.