"In an area of less the 20 square kilometers, roughly an area the size of half of Manhattan over there were 700,000 casualties and some 230,000 men died, during the nearly year long battle of Verdun in WWI. Warfare on this scale, with such a machine efficiency of killing was new, WWI being the first industrialized war. As new war machines like the machine gun, poisonous gas, and thousands of round of artillery ammunition were introduced to the battlefield the death toll rose accordingly (8,500,000 military deaths as opposed to the compared to the 620,000 deaths in the civil war) and of course so did the number of bodies left over. Inaugurated on 7 August 1932 by French President Albert Lebrun, this house of death sits opposite a cemetery, and contains a death bell, tolled at official ceremonies, and a death lantern which shines out across the cemetery." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet