FUNERAL FACTS THE MOST EXPENSIVE FUNERAL was that of Alexander the Great, which would equal about $600,000,000 in today’s money.   IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY, furniture makers designated shop space for caskets, and soon took over the coordination of funeral services.   LIZZIE BORDEN’S FATHER Andrew began his career as a casket builder, then cofounded a company which sold Crane’s Patented Casket Burial Cases.   ELVIS PRESLEY WAS buried in Memphis, next to his mother, but after grave robbing attempts and lack of security, their remains were reburied at Graceland two months later.   GENE RODDENBURY and Timothy Leary were the first celebrities to have their ashes sent into space (for $4,800 per ash capsule).   THE MOST ATTENDED dog’s funeral was in honor of Lazarus, belonging to Emperor Norton I, in San Francisco, in 1862. More than 10,000 people paid their respects.   THE ENGLISH WORD “Coffin” is derived from the Greek word “kophinos,” which means basket.   COFFINS WERE created to keep the spirit of the corpse trapped beneath the earth, out of fear that the spirits would haunt the living.   THE SUMERIANS of 4000 BC buried their dead in baskets woven of braided twigs.   TOMBSTONES were originally used to seal a grave, to prevent the dead from roaming the earth. It wasn’t until much later that names were engraved on them.   THE SLOW PACE of a funeral procession is left over from the days when caskets and carriages were adorned with candles (that blew out during quick movement).   ACTOR BELA LAGOSI was buried in his favorite black Dracula cape.   NEANDERTHALS provided their dead with tools, weapons, flowers and fire coals for their passage.   ANCIENT ROMANS believed that flaming torches guided departing souls to eternity.   THE ENGLISH WORD “funeral” comes from the Latin word “funus,” which means torch.   BLACK CLOTHING was worn by mourners as camouflage to prevent the prowling spirit of the dead from reentering the bodies of the living.     LIKELY THE MOST EXPENSIVE CASKET was that of 14th century pharaoh Tutankhamun, which was cast of 243 pounds of gold.     The greatest attendance of a funeral is an estimated 4 million mourners of President Gamal Abdel Nasser on October 1, 1970, in Cairo, Egypt.     The world’s largest provider of end-of-life services is Service Corporation International which operates over 1500 funeral homes and 400 cemeteries in the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico.     The earliest evidence of a funeral tradition can be attributed to Western Asia’s Neanderthal man.     It was the days of death of the saints, not their birthdays, which were celebrated as holidays. Birthdays were interpreted as a day of birth into the afterlife.     Almon Brown Strowger's undertaking business greatly suffered while his competitor’s wife (a telephone operator) redirected Strowger’s calls to her husband's funeral home, so Stowger invented the user-operated, direct dial telephone in 1891.     In some Amish communities the tombstones are not engraved, but a map is maintained to identify the occupant of each burial plot.     In 1845, President Andrew Jackson's pet parrot was removed from his funeral for swearing.     The most-visited presidential grave: John F. Kennedy's in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, VA.