Forest-dwelling creatures eat pineapples after they have ripened much more and fallen, usually from quite a height, to the forest floor. When sold commercially, pineapples are actually very far from ripe. When Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded in 1587, the axeman took three attempts to sever the head and even then had to finish the job with a knife. Why are pineapples so spiny?The prickly exterior of a pineapple seems to contradict its very purpose: how on earth are seed- dispensing animals supposed to get to the sweet flesh inside? When it comes to pineapples - and bananas, for that matter - humans are very impatient. It was only at the third attempt that the head gave no response. The exact of amount of pain of course relies on the proficiency of the executioner. The doctor claimed that when he repeated the dead man's name, the same actions took place.

The response was for the eyelids over the severed head to slowly lift up and then the pupils focused on the doctor before then slowly closing again. One particularly gruesome experiment in 1905 involved a French physician who called out the name of the condemned man in the seconds after decapitation. There are many accounts of the heads of executed people continuing to show movement or expression long after the final blow. Even so, at least two to three seconds of intense pain cannot be avoided. The guillotine, considered one of the more "humane" methods, relies on severing the brain and spinal cord after cutting the surrounding tissues. A medical study in 1983 concluded that no matter how efficient the method of execution, a few seconds of pain is inevitable when losing one's head. Does beheading hurt? Yes.

Two weeks ago, the cup was taken out of a police vault and returned to a triumphant Mr Smith after a court hearing in Newcastle.. After serving four and a half weeks, he battled on for ownership. He left the cup in 1973 to the family of Derick Smith, who used it as a vase. Mr Smith, 54, from Sunderland, held on to it until 2002, when it fell into the possession of a former girlfriend, who said she had kept it in place of a debt Mr Smith owed her.He allegedly then hatched a plot to retrieve it by kidnapping her dog, Benji.Mr Smith pleaded guilty to blackmail and was sentenced to jail. The £2m goblet was first removed from the ruins of Goering's home in East Prussia by a soldier, George Armstrong.