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March 13, 2009

Strange But True!

Q. Maybe it took half a millennium for humankind to do right by the memory of the great Nicolaus Copernicus but finally we did. How so? Clue: He left no heirs but he did leave hairs.

A. The Polish scientist, “the man who moved the Earth” with the idea that our planet orbits the sun rather than the reverse, died in 1543 and was buried in an unmarked grave. Then in 2005, archaeologists used church records and ground-penetrating radar to unearth a skeleton from under a medieval cathedral in Frombork, Poland. Its age matched the 70-year-old Copernicus. Analysis of the bones and a reconstruction of the face supported the identification, but without DNA evidence, nobody could be sure because the Catholic priest had left no known heirs.


 
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