Galileo’s Missing Fingers

(via Amusing Planet)  In 1737, the scientist Galileo Galilei’s body was exhumed and reburied in full honor in the main body of the Basilica di Santa Croce. However, before Galileo’s reburial, some of his morbid admirers, seeking to keep a few souvenirs, dismembered the poor Italian and denied him of three fingers from his hand, a tooth and a vertebra, from his body. The vertebra went to the University of Padua, where Galileo taught for many years, while the tooth, and the fingers were passed down the generation from collector to collector until they went missing in 1905.  The fingers and tooth turned up in 2009.