“Einstein brain was stolen.” However medical or macabre that may sound, I do get such morning bytes from Satyan, an info-junkie.
When Einstein died on 18th April, 1955, pathologist Thomas Harvey found himself alone in the morgue with the scientist’s body. Harvey stole his brain to study that special something between his ears.
Brains have long held a fascination, particularly for people wanting to study the secrets of the intelligent, talented and powerful. The Moscow Brain Institute collected and studied the brains of many prominent scientists and thinkers, including Lenin.
Where there’s life, there’s death. But for some, it seems that life and legacy continue long after death in one way or the other. Einstein, Kennedy, Beethoven, Napolean and Galileo are among many others who rest in pieces.
Who stole JFK’s brain? When Kennedy died, his brain was removed and stored in the National Archives. However, three years later, it was discovered that it had gone missing. Conspiracy theorists suggest that the missing organ was intentionally kept out of the public eye as it was a proof that the president was shot from the front, and not from the back as the official story claims. Some suggest that the brain was in fact, taken by his brother Robert, “to conceal evidence of the true extent of President Kennedy’s illnesses”. 
After Galileo’s death in 1642, most of his body parts eventually went missing including his bones which were taken by his followers as mementos.
Abraham Lincoln’s assassination sent a nation into mourning, and was followed by a two-week funeral tour. Everyone from thieves to politicians tried to take control of the corpse — even decades after it was finally buried.
Napoleon’s body parts are also thought to be scattered — intestines allegedly belonging to him were held in London and destroyed during a bombing raid during the blitz, but his reproductive organ is believed to be owned by the daughter of John Lattimer, a New Jersey urologist who bought it at an auction in 1977. In his will, Napoleon Bonaparte asked for his head to be shaved and divided amongst his friends.
William Buckland ate King Louis XIV’s heart.
André Tchaikowsky left his body to medical research, and donated his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company and asked to use it as a prop on stage.
Beethoven died in 1827 and during autopsy, his skull was shattered, his jaw was knocked out of alignment, and his ear bones went missing. When his body was exhumed in the late 1800s, a doctor at Vienna’s Pathologic-Anatomical museum, took some fragments of his skull.
Beethoven wasn’t the only composer to have his skull swiped. The heads of both Mozart and Haydn suffered the same fate.
Mata Hari’s head was embalmed and kept in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris. In 2000, archivists discovered that it had disappeared, possibly as early as 1954.
Wonder why would anyone steal a skull? Cranioklepty is a veritable subculture. One man’s macabre relic is another man’s trophy.
Welcome to ‘Nutty’s Infotainment. YAYS!’ 
And Your time starts NOW.


This fruit belongs to the rose family. Its fear is called Malusdomesticaphobia. In colonial times, it was known as ‘winter banana’ or ‘melt-in-the-mouth’. What are we talking about?
Apple.  


What is common to Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake and Ceres?
These are the five recognised dwarf planets in our solar system. 


The world’s largest earthquake had an instrumentally documented magnitude of 9.5. When did it occur and where?
On May 22, 1960 in southern Chile.
What is a group of owls called?
Parliament


In 1897-98, who wrote Savrola, a Ruritanian romance?
Sir Winston Churchill. 


Name the Portuguese sea captain who sailed round the Cape of Good Hope and reached Calicut in India in 1498?
Vasco da Gama.


“Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.”Who said this and in which movie?
Robbie Williams in Dead Poets Society. Williams play maverick English teacher John Keating and inspires a class of male students to seize the day and follow their dreams as unique individuals of value. 


Name the renowned Chinese activist-artist, who recently opened his Laundromat exhibition in Doha at the Garage Gallery in the Fire Station. The exhibition includes a large-scale installation Laundromat, featuring a collection of thousands of items of clothing worn by refugees.
Ai Weiwei


Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, earned a patent in 1993. What was it for?
Patent for “a method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion”. The patent allowed “a shoe wearer to lean forwardly beyond his centre of gravity by virtue of wearing a specially designed pair of shoes which will engage with a hitch member movably projectable through a stage surface.” 


A recent Andover graduate met the “strikingly beautiful girl” at the Round Hill Club in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1941 while on Christmas vacation. The rest, they say, is history. Identify the couple.


(Answer next week. Last week’s answer to photoquiz: Ernest Hemingway)




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