Grave robbing the crypt of Galileo.
Yeah you heard right. Hundreds of years ago, a couple of drunk Romans felt like they needed a piece of astronomical history, so what do they do? They open the casket of one of the world’s greatest theoreticians and steal parts of his body. What parts? his tooth and two skeletal fingers.
Remember the That’s Crazy Post a few weeks ago where Michael Jackson’s hair was being auctioned off? Collecting dead people’s body parts is not unheard of. Human Beings are freaks who haven’t changed much in 400 years, I guess.
Anyway, back to my story: For centuries these Galileo body parts are missing, presumably in the private collection of a guy who is really into ancient astronomers rotting bones.
Why is this such a big deal? Because Galileo was a big deal. He was the great great great grand daddy of the telescope. The tooth fell out of the face of one of the greatest interplanetary thinkers the world has every known. His fingers helped create the first telescope.
Galileo was born in the 1500’s. This astronomical wiz kid was one of the first humans to gaze at the stars over his native Italy and theorize that the sun was the center of the universe, and the Earth revolved around it, not the other way around.
That sounds like child’s play now. In fact, Kindergartners know the planets go around the sun. All they have to do is look at the solar system mobile hanging from the classroom ceiling to know that.
But 400 years ago, this concept was radical, even heretical. Remember it is the 1600’s and The Roman Catholic Church was the power of the day. The church subscribed to the theorem that the universe circulated around the Earth.
Back in the day, when people bathed in dirt, it took a lot of espresso and some pretty big juevos to gaze at the stars with the naked eye and dream of invisible Theorems that would change the way people think. To dream it was one thing. To shout it from the highest mountain top for all to hear, despite constant warnings from the church was quite another.
Reports indicate Galileo spent much of his final days imprisoned for his heretical philosophies.
Scholars and physicists speak of Galileo in the same breath as DaVinci and Michelangelo and to perhaps a lesser degree, Einstein.
To them, that tooth and those two fingers were part of a complex being that changed the way we Earthlings view the solar system and ourselves.
So after 400 years, the fossils show up? Where were they? According to the AP: Galileo’s tooth and two fingers were purchased by a private collector who was unclear who the bones belonged to. The buyer eventually contacted Florence culture officials, who concluded that the fingers and tooth were Galileo’s.
Galileo’s tooth and two fingers are now on display in a Roman museum. They are under lock and key and guarded by Museum Police who are well known for their savagery if you get to close to the display glass. The bony fingers and decrepit little tooth of the father of the telescope and celestial computations will be available for all to marvel at.
As renowned physicist Stephen Hawking says, “Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science.”
Can you imagine the thrill of standing before a 400 year old tooth and skeleton fragment. I wonder if women will swoon and men will grow misty eyed.
The scientific world will pause to acknowledge the awesomeness of the fingers and the tooth.
I have just done my part, writing a story about the ostensible greatness.
Weird and crazy!