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August 29, 2007
Another reason to not be famous
There's a cemetery up on the North Side here, called Graceland Cemetery, where lots of Chicago's elite from the turn of last century are buried: Marshall Field, Phillip Armour, Louis Sullivan and the like. When rail czar George Pullman died, he was buried beneath a block of cement so that angry railroad men couldn't break into his tomb and desecrate his body.
After reading this article, I am tempted to also ask for a block of cement to protect me in the afterlife:
Remember that goofy uncle of yours who always tried to impress you by "stealing your nose" or pulling the ol' separating-his-thumb-from-his-hand move? Well, those parlor tricks are nothing compared to the appendage stunts pulled by these 10 famous people.
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Before he died, über-genius Albert Einstein considered donating his body to science. Unfortunately, he never put his wishes in writing.
When he passed away in 1955, Einstein's family and friends made plans to cremate him, but the pathologist who performed the autopsy, Dr. Thomas Harvey, had a different idea. Instead, he opted to remove the math man's brain and then tell the family about it.
For 30-some years, Harvey had Al's gray matter tucked away in his Wichita home in two Mason jars. Naturally, Einstein's loved ones weren't thrilled when they found out, but they eventually allowed the misappropriated mind to be sliced into 240 sections and disbursed to researchers for examination.
Today, many of the cerebral sections remain in scientific institutions, with the bulk held at Princeton Hospital. As for Einstein's body, that was cremated and scattered in a secret location.
entry no. 951
Posted by oz115 at August 29, 2007 12:26 PM