Electroplating the Dead

Electroplating is an electrical process that plates an object in dissolved metals. In the Nineteenth Century, some inventors thought that it would be an excellent way to preserve a dead body. Why rot away? Inside a thin but solid metal skin, your corpse could slowly mummify.

In a lengthy article, Atlas Obscura describes the history of this idea. Its proponents argued that it was an inexpensive and sanitary process. And since it preserved a body from decay, you could keep your relatives around the house as memorial statues.

-via VA Viper