7 historical figures whose body parts were stolen after death

The heart of Anne Boleyn, the skull of Mozart and even the penis of Napoleon-you will agree, quite strange souvenirs in memory of the idols of the past. And someone here is just right!

One of the founders of the United States, a man who literally wrote the words "United States of America", died a poor drunk somewhere in Manhattan.

10 years after his death, his remains were dug up by William Cobbett and sent the body to England to bury it with proper honors and erect a monument. However, he failed to raise funds for a monument, and Cobbett kept Payne's skeleton in a chest in the attic of his house until his death. Now the location of the remains is unknown.

It is believed that the skull of the legendary leader of one of the Apache tribes was stolen by members of the secret society of Yale University students "Skull and Bones" in 1918 and placed it in a glass case in their headquarters.

Geronimo's ancestors tried to sue the secret society in 2009, but the lawsuit was rejected due to lack of evidence. However, back in 2005, historian Mark Wortman discovered a 1918 correspondence between two members of the society, which mentioned "the skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from his tomb at Fort Sill."

King Badu Bonsu II was the king of Ghana in 1838, when the Dutch tried to seize control of the territory. He cut off the heads of two Dutch officers and hung them on his throne.

After his execution, he was also beheaded, and the head of the former ruler was considered lost for many years, until one day it was accidentally discovered in a glass jar with formaldehyde in The Hague. Representatives of the Aanta people flew to The Hague to collect the head and take it back to Ghana, but first they held a funeral ritual, during which they poured gin on the floor at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In some parts of Europe, it is customary to release old graves in order to use them again. Mozart was buried in the St. Marx Cemetery in Vienna, and when the time came to move the remains in 1801, a music lover who worked at the cemetery appropriated the skull of a musical genius.

For some time the skull passed from hand to hand in Vienna, until finally, in 1902, it was presented to the museum of the Mozarteum Foundation, where it remains to this day, although it is not on display for visitors.

Perhaps the most famous "artifact" in this list is the penis of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

During the autopsy, which took place in Corsica, the organ was cut off and handed over to the priest. When it was shown at an exhibition in Manhattan in 1927, TIME magazine described it "like a piece of beef jerky or a shriveled eel." Then the penis of the famous commander was acquired by a rich urologist; he kept it under his bed for almost 30 years.

This is more of a legend than a fact, but it is believed that after the execution of Anne Boleyn, her ex-husband Henry VIII cut out her heart and placed it in a heart-shaped box.

The box is allegedly kept in a secret place in a church in Suffolk, where it was buried in 1836 under the church organ.

The brain of the fascist dictator appeared on the online auction eBay a few years ago, the starting price was 13,000 euros. The sale of body parts is prohibited on the site, so the post was deleted a few hours after publication.

No one knows where Mussolini's brain really is. He was shot and hanged upside down in Milan along with his mistress Claretta Petacci, and the government returned the body to the family after an autopsy back in 1957. Who knows, maybe the fascist brain is really stored in the house of some weirdo.