Hey Oh, Galileo!

This was too interesting to not post on this blog. In 1737, three fingers and a bottom tooth were removed from the corpse of Galileo. This was 95 years after his death while his body was being moved from storage to a monumental resting place (picture at left). The tooth, with two of the three fingers, were sealed in a jar and were not heard about again after 1905.

Recently, an anonymous person bought an urn at an auction. The auctioneers knew that the urn contained a tooth and some bones, but there was no description. There is, however, a description of the urn and contents written in 1905 with very good detail. This description matches the current findings perfectly. it is unknown yet whether or not they are ACTUALLY Galileo Galilei's body parts. They are determining whether or not there is enough DNA material to test the fingers against the third. The third has been under a museum's care for sometime.

Galileo, if you do not recall, was one of the first people to deny the Catholic Church's insistence that Earth was the center of the universe. Galileo had many reasons to believe that we actually circled around the sun. One of the earliest telescopes is also attributed to Galileo. There is also the matter of gravity and its affect on two objects of differing masses. You can watch a video about it here. Please ignore the ignorant comments. Sometimes YouTube scares me.