Historical Facts & FiguresA look at major events that happened a long time ago and the people who played the biggest roles in shaping the world as we know it.
Important people from history left behind art, innovative ideas, political change - and, on occasion, body parts. Placed for all to see in museums and mausoleums, historical figures' remains provide strange yet intriguing forms of remembrance.
Body preservation isn't a new concept; ancient Egyptians and Peruvian natives, for example, practiced mummification. During the Crusades from the 11th-13th centuries, people carefully preserved the bones of late members of the nobility. Embalming practices even allowed several world leaders to have open-casket funerals.
Body parts displayed in museums might seem creepy, but they also offer a glimpse into the past.
After famous physicist Albert Einstein passed in 1955, researchers dissected his brain, eventually donating a few slices to the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, PA, where it now remains on display.
Russian mystic and healer Grigori Rasputin famously passed in 1916. Someone supposedly either grabbed Rasputin's severed male member after his autopsy or fished it out of the river. Visitors can now view the 13-inch-long appendage believed to be Rasputin's member at the MusEros Museum of Eroticism in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Former US President Grover Cleveland passed in 1908. In 1893, during his second term in office, he had a secret operation to remove an oral tumor. A team of surgeons performed the surgery on a yacht and pretended it was a fishing trip.
The tumor found a new home in a glass tube at Philadelphia's College of Physicians' Mütter Museum.
While most people want to be buried or cremated after they pass, philosopher Jeremy Bentham wanted his skeleton dressed up, his head preserved, and the whole thing put on display with a sign reading "Auto Icon." But when Bentham passed in 1832, the embalmers accidentally disfigured his head. They replaced it with a wax version that's on display in a specially made cabinet at the University College London, England.
The museum also owns Bentham's real head, but they no longer display it for the public.
Galileo Galilei's many accomplishments in physics, philosophy, math, and astronomy earned him a place in the History of Science Museum in Florence, Italy. He passed in 1642, but someone dug him up 95 years later and removed several body parts.
More of Galileo's fingers and teeth eventually turned up in an auction and became part of the museum's collection.
The creator of the first mechanical computer, Charles Babbage inspired many devices people continue to use today. When he passed in 1871, Babbage donated his brain to science, giving half to the Royal College of Surgeons in London, England.
The other half went to the Science Museum in London to be displayed.
