Alaric, King of the Visigoths, sacked Rome in 410, and then died shortly afterward, near the river Busento, in southern Italy. His soldiers had his slaves divert the flow of the river in order to bury him, along with his gold and jewels. Then they restored the river to its original course. The slaves who had buried him were then killed. His body has never been found.
“The burial of Alaric in the bed of the Busentinus,” 1895, via Wikimedia
Busento River, By Salatino (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons
The cask on a ship that held the day’s supply of water was known as a scuttled butt—a cask (butt) that had a hole bored in it (scuttled) for withdrawing water. Because sailors congregated around this nautical “water cooler,” the term “scuttlebutt” became navy slang for gossip and rumors.