body parts severed from their owners
left legacies beyond the grave Lord
Byron's heart Keith skull and Galileo's
finger reminding us of their Brilliance
immortality now let's go and find out
these weird and Eerie Adventures
Albert Einstein's brain
the great
theoretical physicist Albert Einstein
died on April 18 1955.
within a matter of hours an autopsy was
performed by a pathologist named Thomas
Harvey at Princeton Hospital
Harvey without permission took
Einstein's brain during the procedure
and brought it to a lab at the
University of Philadelphia
this went against the venerated
scientists last wishes he reportedly
wanted his body to be cremated and the
ashes scattered in a secret location so
as to deter idolatry
Harvey's theft of the brain was
discovered a few days after the autopsy
somehow he managed to convince
Einstein's reluctant son to Grant
permission for him to keep the brain in
the interest of scientific research
Harvey pictured sliced up the brain into
 |
| Einstein's Brain |
240 pieces preserved them in selordin
and stored them in two jars
he delivered several pieces to various
Pathologists and researchers around the
country but for many years these jars
sat untouched in his basement
it was 1985 before Harvey and the other
collaborating Pathologists finally
published a study on Einstein's brain
before his death in 2007 Harvey donated
the remaining pieces to the national
museum of health and Medicine near
Washington D.C
Santa Claus's bones
it was common
practice to save the bones and other
body parts of saints throughout history
and keep them as relics
they were given great religious
significance and were believed to
perform Miracles attracting pilgrimages
and giving Prestige to whoever had the
Relic in their possession
when Street Nicholas the saints that
inspired Santa Claus died many of his
bones were saved and displayed in a town
called Myra located in modern-day turkey
it was common for towns to organize the
theft of relics sobari in Italy hired a
group of Thieves who stole the bones and
brought them back
they are still displayed in the town of
Bari today
King Louis xiv's heart
when
King Louis XIV of France died in 1715
his heart was embalmed and displayed in
a chest beside that of his father's in a
church in Paris
the rest of his body was buried at the
Basilica of Saint Denis
during the French Revolution these
relics of the monarchy were removed and
fell into various different hands
after passing through different hands
over the years it's said that part of
the heart ended up in the possession of
the Gentile Harcourt family
Legend has it that a rather unusual
friend of the harcourts ultimately ended
up with the heart
the geologist William Buckland had a
reputation for eating anything and
everything
his scientific exploration of the animal
kingdom was also a gastronomical one
he is said to have enjoyed mice on toast
as a snack and tasted everything from
tortoises to puppies
upon visiting the harcourts and seeing
their unique possession he reportedly
said I have eaten many strange things
but have never eaten the heart of a king
before
he then allegedly proceeded to eat the
piece of mummified heart
Mata hari's head
Mata Hari was the name of a famous
exotic dancer who was convicted of
Espionage during World War One
she grew up in the Netherlands but left
her husband and changed her name to
become a dancer in Paris
the French believed that she was working
as a spy and sharing State secrets with
her German lovers during the war
whether this is really true or not
remains unknown but regardless she was
convicted and executed in 1917.
no family came to collect her remains so
they were donated to the Museum of
anatomy at the Museum her head was
embalmed and put on display along with
other war criminals from that era
decades later in 2000 archivists
realized that her head had gone missing
no one had been interested in seeing it
for a long time and it looked like it
had been missing for years
it's suspected that it was simply lost
or that someone stole it when the museum
changed buildings in 1954.
Galileo's tooth and finger
the famous
astronomer Galileo was lucky to be
buried with all of his body parts intact
however when his body was moved to a
much grander tomb in Florence almost a
century later some opportunistic fans
made off with a few pieces of his
remains
they got away with three fingers a tooth
and one of his vertebrae
one finger was taken by an antiquarian
named Anton Francesco Gori who took good
care of it
it was displayed in the famous
Laurentian library for a period but
ended up at Florence's Museum of the
history of science
the vertebrae can be traced to the
University of Padua where it's still on
display today
the two other fingers in the tooth
disappeared for several centuries but a
jar with those exact items was put up
for auction in Italy in 2009 and sold
for a pittance
the buyer took the bones to The
Institute and Museum of the history of
science where it was confirmed that they
belonged to Galileo
Napoleon bonapartes privates
the exiled
French leader Napoleon Bonaparte died on
the island of Saint
Helena in 1821 the doctor who performed
his autopsy claimed that he took a
rather intimate Keepsake from the famous
ruler's body
the doctor removed Napoleon's most
prized appendage and gave it to a priest
the priest left it to his family in
Corsica when he died
they sold it to an English Bookseller
who sold it to an American Bookseller
and it was even put on display in the
museum of French art in New York in
1927. after that it was purchased for
3000 United States dollars by a
respected urologist who considered it a
precious artifact of his field
while it's hard to keep track of the
authenticity of traveling body parts
over centuries it was verified that the
appendage in the doctor's possession was
definitely from a human male
however was it really Napoleon's
Buddha's tooth
the original Buddha
Gautama Buddha who founded the Buddhist
religion died sometime between 544 and
368 BCE
he was cremated but a disciple named
Kima is said to have saved a single
tooth from the funeral pyre
Pima brought the tooth to the Hindu
Kingdom where it was worshiped for
centuries
after that the tooth traveled far and
wide many rulers were desperate to
possess It While others sought to
destroy it
eventually the tooth was sent to the Sri
Lankan city of candy during the 12th
century where it has lived ever since
the Catholic Church tried to destroy it
multiple times but failed it can now be
visited at the SRI dalata malagawa also
known as the Temple of the tooth
Oliver cromwell's head
Oliver Cromwell
is another historic figure who went to
his grave without his head
Cromwell LED an Army against King
Charles in the English Civil War of the
17th century
the monarchy was reinstated after his
death and royalists decided to exhume
his body and remove it from its burial
place at Westminster Abbey
instead of re-berrying the body at a
less prestigious location they hung it
from The tyburn Gallows as a symbolic
execution
his head was later cut off and displayed
on top of a wooden Spike outside
Westminster for what might have been 30
years
pictured as his death mask it's said
that the head fell down during a violent
storm and a guard took it home
it traveled between different hands in
England for the next couple of centuries
and by the 1800s multiple people claimed
to have it in their possession
the most likely owner was a surgeon
named Josiah Henry Wilkinson scientific
tests in 1934 suggest that it may truly
have been cromwell's head
the Wilkinson family finally gave it a
proper burial in 1960.
George Washington's hair
George
Washington was most famous for his
wooden teeth but it's his hair that has
withstood the test of time
giving a lock of hair as a Keepsake was
a common practice during his lifetime so
these scraps of hair became hot
Commodities after his death
the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
inherited a lock of Washington's hair
from his grandfather a congressman who
had worked with Washington
he was given a lock of the founding
father's Hair by his wife Martha
Washington and it was passed down in the
family
in 1899 it was donated to the main
historical society
an archivist at Union College in New
York made an incredible Discovery in
2018
he found another strand of George
Washington's hair hidden in an envelope
inside a 1793 Almanac
it was accompanied by a letter that
showed it had belonged to Eliza Hamilton
the wife of the famous Alexander
Hamilton
Jeremy bentham's head
the English
philosopher Jeremy Bentham was an
advocate for donating one's body to
science after death
however he had some interesting ideas
about how it should work
years before his death Bentham wrote an
essay about what he called Auto icons
the idea was this when you die your
family donates your body to science but
get to keep the skeleton in the head
your skeleton is dressed in your clothes
which are then stuffed with hay to look
more realistic
they place your mummified head on top
creating a horrifying life-like statue
of you
although the idea is unbelievably
Macabre bentham's reasons were pretty
good
for one it meant that scientists would
have plenty of cadavers to study and
train with
additionally there would no longer be
any need for expensive cemetery plots or
graveyards
he also claimed that it would diminish
the horrors of death although some would
dispute that
bentham's own Auto icon still sits on
display in the Student Center at
University College London although his
real mummified head isn't with it
the head was originally placed at
bentham's feet but was stolen by
students from a rival College in 1975.
once it was returned they decided to
lock the head away in a safe
Street Francis Xavier's toe Street
Francis Xavier is remembered for his
missionary work and his help founding
the Jesuit order
when he died in 1552 his body was sent
to Goa where he had done a lot of work
the event was met with a great deal of
excitement with worshipers coming from
all over to view the body which hadn't
visibly composed at all
the supposed lack of decomposition is a
feature common in the Legends of many
Saints and was believed to mean that the
body was pure and incorrupt
further evidence of his sainthood was
discovered in a bizarre manner a woman
visiting his body reportedly bent over
and bit off one of his toes
fresh blood spurted everywhere as if he
was still alive the toe signified a
miracle and was passed down in her
family for Generations
the rest of his body is displayed as a
relic but the toe is still missing
Don Pedro the First's heart
in 1807 the
Portuguese royal family fled to their
colonized territory in Brazil to escape
the French invasion
however when Kingdom John VI returned to
Portugal in 1821 he left Brazil in the
care of his 22-year-old son Don Pedro
the first
Pedro served as Prince Regent for just a
short time before his loyalties switched
from Portugal to Brazil
in 1822 Don Pedro rejected his orders to
return to Portugal and declared Brazil
an independent state
Brazilian Independence was made official
on September 7th and Don Pedro became
the new country's first emperor
he ruled for almost a decade before
passing the crown to his son Don Pedro
II so that he could return to Portugal
to help his daughter whose Throne had
been usurped
Don Pedro the first caught tuberculosis
and died in Portugal at the age of 35.
on his deathbed he asked that his heart
be removed and sent to the city of Portu
in Northern Portugal
it is kept on the altar of the Church of
Our Lady of lapa however it was taken on
a tour of Brazil in 2022 to celebrate
200 years of Independence
thank you for Reading blog.
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