"Sky-high metals prices combined with the weak U.S. economy in recent years have led brazen thieves to strip copper wire out of vacant homes, swipe stainless-steel beer kegs from bars and even make off with manhole covers, street lights and parts of fire hydrants. Just this month, Illinois officials reported that someone had stolen a three-foot copper sword from Abraham Lincoln's tomb in Springfield. But the theft of thousands of vases at cemeteries across the country has brought the thievery to new depths."

"Ok, so I'm an engineer and my engineering brain could come up with quite a few solutions that whilst might be good, could quite possibly make some wince. There is a method of shredding the body, then putting the remains into a super-compactor to reduce the size and remove all the liquids. This would make the human body take up about the same space as a couple of CD cases, which could be multi stacked in many ways." —Here are 20 suggestions for coping with the lack of space in Britain's blighted boneyards.