Top 10 Causes of Death

Heart disease and stroke were the leading causes of death in 2001, regardless of countries' incomes, the study shows. However, other leading causes of death differed depending on countries' incomes. Here is the list for high-income countries:

1. Heart disease
2. Stroke
3. Lung cancer
4. Lower respiratory infections
5. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
6. Colon and rectum cancers
7. Alzheimer's disease and other dementias
8. Type 2 diabetes
9. Breast cancer
10. Stomach cancer

Here is the list for low- and middle-income countries:

1. Heart disease
2. Stroke
3. Lower respiratory infections
4. HIV/AIDS
5. Fetus/newborn (perinatal) conditions
6. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
7. Diarrhea
8. Tuberculosis
9. Malaria
10. Road traffic accidents

10 things about death

1. When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go -- the first is usually sight, followed by taste, smell and touch.

2. A human head remains conscious for about 15 to 20 seconds after it has been decapitated.

3. 100 people choke to death on pens each year. One is more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a spider.

4. Alexander's funeral would have cost $600 million today. A road from Egypt to Babylon was built to carry his body.

5. When inventor Thomas Edison died in 1931, his friend Henry Ford captured his last dying breath in a bottle.

6. Over 2500 left-handed people are killed each year from using products made for right-handed people.

7. It takes longer than ever before a body to decompose due to preservatives in the food that we eat these days.

8. An eternal flame lamp at the tomb of a Buddhist priest in Nara, Japan has kept burning for 1,130 years.

9. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry is the first person to have his ashes put aboard a rocket and 'buried' in space.

10. Japanese factory worker Kenji Urada became the first know fatality caused by a robot in July, 1981, in a car plant.