Trained body doubles have been used by politicians, artists, actors, and businesspeople for a variety of reasons. Political decoys have been sent into harm’s way to distract assassins, while wartime stand‑ins have confused enemy intelligence. Voice actors can mimic a leader’s cadence, and look‑alikes sometimes become part of avant‑garde performance art. Below we dive into ten of the most intriguing cases, ranging from verified historical decoys to eyebrow‑raising conspiracies.

Why Body Doubles Matter

10 Did Andy Warhol Use A Body Double As A Bizarre Form Of Performance Art?

On October 2, 1967, Andy Warhol took the stage at the University of Utah to deliver a lecture. By then, the “Father of Pop Art” was famous for his Campbell’s soup cans and silk‑screen portraits of Marilyn Monroe. Over 1,100 people packed the auditorium, and after a 40‑minute screening of his film ****, a Q‑and‑A followed.

Witnesses noted that Warhol seemed unusually detached, answering questions with vague remarks like “In the beginning, I think.” He wore dark sunglasses and a coat, and his answers were described as “inane” or nearly nonexistent.

Paul Morrissey, Warhol’s manager, later confessed that an impersonator had taken Warhol’s place for lectures at four universities, including Utah. The stand‑in, Allen Midgette, was considered more handsome and a better public speaker, making him “more suitable for public consumption.”

Some observers argue that the switch was itself a piece of performance art. After the hoax emerged, Warhol announced plans to build a robot version of himself for future lectures—an idea that mirrors his artistic practice of reproducing iconic images of Marilyn, Elvis, and Campbell’s soup cans.

9 Were Winston Churchill’s Most Famous Speeches Voiced By An Impersonator?

The notion that a voice actor replaced Winston Churchill on the BBC for some of his most iconic wartime speeches sounds absurd, yet it has persisted since voice‑over artist Norman Shelley claimed in 1977 that he delivered lines like “We shall fight on the beaches” and “This will be our finest hour.”

Historian David Irving promoted the claim, publishing it in his book Churchill’s War. Shelley allegedly told Irving that Churchill was too occupied with wartime duties to record certain broadcasts, so Shelley was tasked with reproducing the speeches over the wireless.

In 1990, U.S. speech‑analysis firm Sensimetrics examined 20 Churchill broadcasts and concluded that three of them were voiced by someone other than Churchill—two of which were the famed Dunkirk and “Finest Hour” speeches.

Two decades later, Shelley’s son Anthony produced a 78‑rpm record labeled “BBC, Churchill: Speech Artist Norman Shelley,” dated September 7, 1942, which he claimed contained the famous “We shall fight on the beaches” line.

However, the story unravels under scrutiny. Irving’s interview with Shelley was recorded in December 1981—16 months after Shelley’s death—raising doubts about its authenticity. Churchill biographer Richard M. Langworth points to eyewitness testimony that Shelley never delivered wartime speeches at the BBC, and he identifies the 1942 recording as an obscure address, not the Dunkirk speech.

Moreover, critics argue that Sensimetrics may have overlooked natural voice variations over time and possible changes in recording speed, suggesting their analysis might not be conclusive.

8 Felix Dadaev: Stalin’s Political Decoy

In 2008, a then‑88‑year‑old Felix Dadaev stepped into the public eye, revealing that he had served as one of four political decoys for Joseph Stalin. After obtaining permission from the Putin administration, Dadaev published Variety Land, detailing his secret career.

Dadaev’s double life began in 1943, when the NKVD (the KGB’s predecessor) selected him for a top‑secret makeover. Though only in his twenties, he underwent extensive cosmetic work, receiving Stalin’s distinctive haircut, mustache, and facial prosthetics, rendering him virtually indistinguishable from the 60‑year‑old leader.

To perfect his impersonation, Dadaev studied Stalin’s speeches and film footage, mimicking the dictator’s gestures and speech patterns. He eventually convinced Kremlin officials that he was Stalin, earning authorization to act as the leader’s political stand‑in.

Initially, Dadaev’s role was limited to riding in Stalin’s automobile. Soon, however, he was dispatched to meet party officials, and on one notable occasion he stood on the central dais of the Red Square mausoleum, presenting himself as Stalin during a parade.

Dadaev’s most dramatic moment came in February 1945, when a covert operation aimed to conceal Stalin’s travel to the Yalta Conference. Dadaev, dressed in Stalin’s uniform, boarded a highly publicized flight to confuse foreign intelligence. The plan faltered, and two assassination attempts on the real Stalin occurred at Yalta. Dadaev returned to Moscow, continuing his decoy duties until Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953.

7 Did General Montgomery’s Double Help Win The Battle Of Normandy?

In the weeks leading up to D‑Day, Allied strategists deployed an elaborate deception campaign to convince German intelligence that the invasion would strike at Pas‑de‑Calais rather than Normandy. Alongside fake equipment, bogus radio traffic, and a phantom army under General Patton, the Allies explored another layer of misdirection.

After seeing actor Miles Mander portray Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery in the film Five Graves to Cairo (1943), Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Clarke wondered whether a Montgomery look‑alike could appear far from Europe just before the invasion, further confusing the enemy about the timing and location of the assault.

The first candidate, Mander, was dismissed for being too tall. The second contender suffered a broken leg. The third option was Australian actor M.E. Clifton James, whose gaunt face and drooping mustache made him a plausible Montgomery double.

James, though not a celebrated actor, possessed a keen ability to imitate Montgomery’s speech and mannerisms. He was flown to London, embedded within Montgomery’s staff under the pretense of being a journalist, and given access to the general to fine‑tune his impersonation.

To maintain the ruse, James had to abandon his habit of drinking and smoking—both of which Montgomery despised. Additionally, James, who had lost his right middle finger in World I, was fitted with a prosthetic finger to avoid detection.

On May 25, 1944, James departed for Gibraltar and then Algiers. However, his need for a drink led to public sightings of him stumbling drunk in Algiers, prompting MI5 to relocate him to Cairo, where he remained hidden until the Normandy invasion began.

MI5 declared the operation a success, noting that German intelligence believed “Monty” was still in North Africa on May 28. Whether this deception materially affected German preparations for D‑Day remains uncertain, as the ruse occurred nine days before the June 6, 1944 landings.

After the war, James portrayed himself and Montgomery in the film adaptation of his memoir I Was Monty’s Double (1958).

6 A Mexican Politician’s Public Competition To Find A Double

Body doubles are usually kept under wraps, but Mexican politician Renato Tronco Gómez took a very public approach. In 2015, he announced a nationwide contest to recruit look‑alikes who could serve as his doubles.

Gómez explained that maintaining popularity required him to be in many places at once. The chosen doubles would not only resemble him physically but also be trained to imitate his speech and gestures.

He emphasized limits: the doubles would never be allowed to live in his home, share a bed with his wife, or sit in Congress. By being transparent about the program, Gómez hoped constituents would know when a double was representing him in Veracruz.

5 Wealthy Chinese Citizens Use Doubles To Avoid Prison

Money can’t buy everything, but in China it can purchase a look‑alike to stand in for you in court. In 2012, Slate’s Geoffrey Sant exposed the practice of “replacement convicts.”

One high‑profile case involved Hu Bin, a 20‑year‑old millionaire who paid a stand‑in to appear in court and serve his sentence after he was convicted of killing a man in a high‑speed crash.

Police officials described the phenomenon as “not common but not rare,” noting that mafia bosses sometimes employ underlings to take the fall, offering financial support for their families and a bonus upon release. Even some businessmen have used employees—or occasionally family members—to bear the legal burden.

Historically, the practice dates back to the 19th century, when Western travelers in China reported “replacement convicts.” In some extreme instances, individuals were even hired to be executed in exchange for money to feed their starving relatives, as documented by British diplomat T.T. Meadows in 1847.

4 The Computer Program That Could Determine Differences Between The Fake And Real Saddam Husseins

During the Iraq War, the Bush administration speculated that Saddam Hussein employed body doubles. Defectors claimed that plastic surgery was used to create look‑alikes trained in the dictator’s gait and facial expressions.

In September 2002, a BBC documentary featured German forensic pathologist Dr. Dieter Buhmann, who, to unwind after his day job, applied his expertise to Saddam’s visage. Buhmann meticulously measured facial features—focusing on the mustache, eyebrow length, nose, and cheekbones—and fed the data into a computer‑based comparison program.

The analysis suggested that Saddam likely used at least four different doubles. The differences were subtle: softer facial lines, a slightly smaller mouth, or a face that was a hair’s width too wide compared to the “real” Hussein.

3 Did Latif Yahia Lie About Being Uday Hussein’s Body Double?

Latif Yahia claims he served as the “fiday” (Arabic for “body double”) for Uday Hussein, Saddam’s notorious son, from 1988 to 1991. He first went public in 2003, sharing his story with media outlets across the UK and the US.

Initially, Yahia refused the role and spent a week in detention. When Uday threatened to rape Yahia’s sisters, he relented. Over the next six months, he underwent intensive training to copy Uday’s mannerisms and vocal rolls, including the distinctive “Rs.”

Plastic surgery and dental work were performed to align Yahia’s appearance with Uday’s. During his tenure, Yahia survived numerous assassination attempts and bears 26 bullet wound scars as proof.

Uday’s brutality was extreme: drilling holes into victims’ heads, scooping out eyes with a spoon, and raping schoolgirls and pregnant women. Yahia eventually refused to kill a schoolgirl’s father under Uday’s orders.

In 1991, after a lover showed more interest in Yahia than Uday, the latter shot Yahia in the shoulder. Yahia escaped to Mosul, was smuggled to Turkey, and, with CIA assistance, obtained a UN passport that allowed him to seek asylum in the European Union.

Yahia chronicled these events in his 1995 memoir The Devil’s Double, later adapted into a 2011 film. However, some journalists remain skeptical. Iraqi defector Haytham Ajmaya dismissed Yahia’s account as “rubbish,” questioning its veracity.

2 Was A Second Oswald Raised To Kill JFK?

The JFK assassination has spawned countless theories, one of the strangest being that a second Lee Harvey Oswald was created and trained to carry out the murder. Author Richard Popkin first introduced the “Two Oswalds” theory, citing eyewitness reports of Oswald appearing in two places simultaneously.

John Armstrong expanded the idea in Harvey and Lee: How the CIA Framed Oswald (2003). According to him, the plot—dubbed the “Oswald project”—involved two look‑alikes: an American‑born Lee Oswald and a Russian‑speaking “Harvey” Oswald.

Although not identical, the two were similar enough to fool acquaintances. Their school and employment histories were merged, giving the foreign‑born Harvey an American biography. Harvey defected to Russia in 1959, returned to the U.S. in 1962 with a wife, and by 1963 was distributing pro‑Castro propaganda in Cuba.

Armstrong alleges that Lee Oswald deliberately tried to link Harvey to the assassination by attempting to purchase rifles with scopes from Robert McKeown, a Cuban gun supplier, offering astronomically high prices—an effort to implicate Castro.

Eyewitnesses also reported seeing Lee Oswald with Jack Ruby, the man who killed Oswald two days after the assassination. Armstrong suggests Ruby collaborated with Lee to set up Harvey as a patsy, then eliminated Harvey to cover the tracks.

The theory even reached FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who in 1960 wrote a memo stating, “There is a possibility that an impostor is using Oswald’s birth certificate.”

1 What Happened To The ‘Real’ Howard Hughes?

One of the most elaborate conspiracy webs centers on billionaire aviator Howard Hughes. According to the “Gemstone File,” shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis allegedly kidnapped Hughes, then substituted him with a body double to seize control of his empire.

The narrative claims that Onassis, leading a Mafia‑linked cabal, saw Hughes as a rival and arranged his kidnapping in 1957. Supposedly, kidnappers tried to subdue Hughes at his Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow, inflicting brain damage. The real Hughes was then hidden on Onassis’s private Greek island, Skorpios, where he lived as a wheelchair‑bound recluse.

Onassis is said to have installed L. Wayne Rector—who had worked for Hughes since 1955—as the double. Because Hughes was already reclusive, the substitution allegedly went unnoticed.

Actress Jean Peters reportedly entered a sham marriage with Hughes on March 16, 1957. The limited contact between them, Hughes’s darkness‑bound existence, and her refusal to discuss the marriage fueled the conspiracy.

In 1967, Onassis allegedly used the Hughes empire as a front to gain control of Las Vegas gambling interests. Meanwhile, the “real” Hughes supposedly endured 14 years of heroin injections before dying of an overdose in 1971. The story claims he was buried at sea, a detail printed in Playgirl by Mae Brussell.

The official record, however, states that Howard Hughes died on April 5, 1976. The tale bears a curious resemblance to James Bond producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli’s plot for Diamonds Are Forever (1971), where reclusive billionaire Willard Whyte’s empire is controlled by villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who uses a voice box to mimic Whyte’s speech. Broccoli claimed the story stemmed from a dream, yet the parallels to the Gemstone File are striking.

As humanity inches closer to becoming a multiplanet species, it’s worth knowing the fascinating things that happen to our bodies when we leave Earth’s comforting gravity.

Fascinating Things About the Human Body in Space

10 Space Adaptation Syndrome

When the pull of Earth’s gravity disappears, many astronauts experience space sickness—officially called Space Adaptation Syndrome. It feels like motion sickness on steroids, with headaches, disorientation, severe discomfort, and sometimes vomiting or vertigo. Roughly half of all space‑faring humans get the bug, so you’ll be in good company. The culprit isn’t the absence of gravity itself but the sudden shift in gravitational forces that throws your inner balance off.

The good news? It usually clears up after a few days as your body learns to cope with weightlessness. Until then, you’ll need a transdermal dimenhydrinate anti‑nausea patch to keep the puke in check. Vomiting inside a space suit isn’t just messy—it can obstruct vision, compromise breathing, and become life‑threatening in the zero‑gravity environment.

9 What’s That Smell?

Space may look like a silent void, but it carries a surprisingly robust aroma. Astronauts report that the air inside the International Space Station smells like seared steak, burning metal, and gunpowder—a decidedly masculine blend. Don Petite summed it up as “metallic.” NASA even hired chemist Steven Pierce to recreate the scent for training simulations, though nobody seems to have marketed it for everyday use yet.

8 You’re Gonna Lose Your Fingernails

In the microgravity environment, bulky space‑glove cuffs can restrict blood flow to the fingertips. The resulting pressure often leads to fingernail delamination—basically, the nail separates from the nail bed and may fall off. A recent study found 22 astronauts reporting nail loss, and some have even pre‑emptively ripped off their own nails before a spacewalk to avoid the surprise.

7 No Snoring

Weightlessness also means a quieter night for your crewmates. With gravity out of the picture, the tongue and soft palate stay relaxed, eliminating the airway blockage that causes snoring on Earth. In other words, you’ll be at least 20 % less annoying to your fellow astronauts while you soak in the metallic scent of space.

6 Vision Problems

Extended stays in orbit can blur your sight. The fluid shift toward the head flattens the back of the eyeball and nudges the retina, leading to temporary vision distortion. About 23 % of astronauts on short missions and nearly half on long missions report these issues. The pressure also produces “cosmic ray flashes”—spontaneous light bursts that feel like a rave in your retina.

5 Effects On Your Muscles

Floating around may look effortless, but it’s a workout for the wrong muscles. In microgravity, the lower body experiences bone loss and muscle atrophy, while the heart can shrink slightly because it doesn’t need to pump blood against gravity. So all those Earth‑bound complaints about not exercising actually reflect the hard work your muscles do just to fight Earth’s pull.

4 Prepare To Be Taller

One of the more fun side effects is a temporary boost in height. The vertebrae separate slightly in zero‑gravity, adding up to about three percent to your stature—think a few extra inches, enough to channel your inner Joey Ramone. Once you return to Earth’s pull, your spine compresses back to normal.

3 Your Unprotected Body In The Vacuum Of Space

If you ever find yourself floating suit‑less in the vacuum, you have about 15 seconds before the oxygen in your bloodstream is exhausted. Holding your breath is a fatal mistake—your lungs will over‑expand and rupture, spilling air into your circulatory system. After ten seconds, bodily fluids begin to vaporize, your tongue’s saliva can boil, and you’ll experience rapid decompression symptoms like sunburn and “the bends.” You won’t freeze instantly, but you’ll either mummify or become an icy statue over time.

2 Space Radiation

Orbiting the Earth exposes you to roughly ten times the radiation you’d encounter on the ground. Without the protective blanket of our atmosphere, cosmic rays can damage the nervous system, leading to altered cognition, reduced motor function, and behavioral changes. Radiation sickness may bring nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, and fatigue, and long‑term exposure raises the risk of cancer and other diseases.

1 Space Euphoria

Beyond the physical quirks, many astronauts describe a profound sense of euphoria and spiritual awe. Charlie Duke recalled being overwhelmed by the certainty that his view was part of a universal order, while Edgar Mitchell felt a tranquil, almost transcendent clarity. Gene Cernan sensed a presence larger than himself, and Rusty Schweickart described feeling “part of everyone and everything” as Earth spun below. The experience can reshape perspectives and leave travelers forever changed.

Modern humans have roamed the planet for roughly 200,000 years, and in that time we’ve shown we can do some truly astonishing things with our bodies. From sprinting and soaring to cooling ourselves and wielding incredible strength, we’ve mastered a wide range of functions. Yet our imagination has also led us down some truly odd paths. Below are 10 bizarre ways the human body is used.

Discover 10 Bizarre Ways Humans Repurpose Their Own Biology

10 Cooking With Semen

Semen is the male sexual fluid that carries sperm, the cell responsible for fertilizing a female’s egg. For most people, that is its only job—to make a baby. However, this just isn’t enough for some people. They prefer to cook with semen and consume it.

Like it or not, semen has made its way from the bedroom to the kitchen. There are even cookbooks that provide readers with numerous recipes on how to use semen. Their reasoning is that semen is supposedly nutritious, cheap, easy to come by, and has an excellent texture for cooking.

As the description for Natural Harvest: A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes says, “Like fine wine and cheeses, the taste . . . is complex and dynamic.” There are cooking classes as well. In fact, just last year, there was a “Cooking with Semen” class held in London.

Some semen-based foods include alcoholic beverages, caramel sauce, and kiwi smoothies.

9 Earwax Candles

Wax is made by bees to create honeycombs, and it was the first substance used in wick candles in ancient Egypt. Wax is also made by other animals and plants and is similar in composition to beeswax. Although this kind of wax is like fat, it is more solid, breakable, and less greasy.

Human earwax is made of fatty acids and a mixture of other substances. Its purpose is to protect your inner ear by trapping bacteria and dirt. Somewhere along the way, humans (that is, the stars of the Discovery Channel hit television show MythBusters) decided to try to make candles out of their own earwax.

Their inspiration was the animated movie Shrek, where the main character—the lovable green ogre, Shrek—pulled out a wad of his own earwax and lit it like a candle. If an ogre can do it, why can’t humans, too?

The crew of the show put it to the test, and the results were a disappointment or a relief, depending on your perspective. While it is technically possible to create a candle of human earwax, it won’t burn like normal candles made of paraffin or beeswax.

As earwax is composed of so many different substances, it will burn at varying rates and therefore unevenly. Still, despite the failure, it can be said that the human species did create a candle out of its own wax.

8 Eating Your Placenta

The placenta is a female organ that attaches to the inside of the uterus during pregnancy. It takes care of the developing infant in the womb by providing nutrients and oxygen via the umbilical cord. Once the baby is born, the placenta is delivered as part of the afterbirth.

So once it’s out, what do you with it? Some people, like socialite Kim Kardashian‑West, would suggest that you take it home and eat it. To be fair, she had her placenta transformed into a pill, but it isn’t unheard of to literally cook up your afterbirth and chow down.

There are recipes all over the Internet, and there’s even a cookbook that you can purchase when you get that semen cookbook. Some recipes out there include smoothies, desserts, and lasagna.

Many believe that eating the placenta benefits the mother during recovery by increasing energy and fighting off postpartum depression. The Food and Drug Administration has yet to give the activity its full support. Nevertheless, there are believers out there and probably always will be.

7 Urine To Make Beer

This is the most recent human biological innovation. In 2017, a Danish brewery revealed that their new beer, Pisner, uses human urine in the beer‑making process. As we all know, human urine is a liquid produced by the body to remove waste.

Just to be clear, urine isn’t actually in the beer. Instead, the company uses urine to fertilize the barley that will be used later in the brewery.

In the brewing process, the first step is malting barley. This is done by taking barley and soaking it in water (or urine) to soften it, which helps break down the starch in the barley into sugar. This malt is heated and mixed with water to break it down even more, creating a liquid called wort.

Next, it is heated and hops are added to it. After this process, the mixture is cooled. Yeast is added, and it is left to ferment for a couple of weeks. After that, all that’s left to do is a little bit of cleaning and bottling, and in the end, you get beer.

There is nothing to worry about when it comes to drinking Pisner, but that might not make it any less bizarre!

6 Menstrual Blood As A Plant Fertilizer

Every month, women between certain ages repeat their menstrual cycles. The body prepares itself for pregnancy, and when that doesn’t happen, it sheds all that preparation by expelling blood from the body.

Menstrual blood is a combination of blood and the uterine lining, called the endometrium. Most of the time, women just catch the contents with a sanitary pad, a tampon, or another feminine product. But there are some women who take it even further.

They pay it forward by fertilizing their gardens with their menstrual blood.

As outrageous as that might seem, it makes sense, at least scientifically. Blood contains nitrogen, which is vital to plants as it plays a critical role in photosynthesis and growth.

This connection has already been made by the gardening community, hence the product blood meal. Using actual blood, specifically menstrual blood, is a bit newer and is a more natural and presumably more cost‑effective fertilization method.

5 Dead Hair To Style Hair

This is probably one of the biggest contradictions in cosmetic history. For many of us, dead hair is useless and gross. But those big wads of hair you vacuum off your rug and frown at in disgust would have been happily salvaged by Victorian women.

Back then, and sometimes still today, women used dead hair wadded up from their brush bristles to add volume to their hairstyles.

These days, we have teasing combs, hair spray, hairpieces, wigs, and other styling tools to help with our hairdos. So to us, using dead hair sounds rather appalling.

In those times, though, women didn’t have the kinds of tools and products we do, so they improvised and made hair rats themselves. Women continued to employ this hair tactic well into the 20th century. As a matter of fact, this trick is still used today by DIY enthusiasts.

4 Bones For Instruments

Bones are the most durable part of the human body, so why not put them to use? Interestingly, bones were used as musical instruments throughout history. One of the better‑known bone instruments was the kangling (“leg flute”), which was made of a human femur. The kangling was used in Buddhist rituals in Tibet.

Another example is a Central African lyre fashioned from a human skull, which was discovered just over a century ago. As morbid as that sounds, it likely did not have a ritualistic meaning. Instead, it was probably an instrument made by a European contemporary who hoped to trade it for a little cash.

There was also an Aztec instrument called omichicahuatztli that was made from human bone.

3 Teeth As Jewelry

Forget diamonds and gems. Why spend that money when your pearly whites will do just as well on a gold band or silver chain? Yes, using human teeth as jewelry is a popular trend. Some people even make a living selling it.

Human teeth of all kinds are found in jewelry. Some pieces have baby teeth, a sentiment possibly targeted toward mothers whose children have grown up or maybe just for people who like to sport little teeth. Other options are molar earrings, necklaces with random teeth, or just buying bunches of loose teeth to do with as you’d like.

A rather romantic idea is using a recently removed wisdom tooth as the “gem” of an engagement ring.

That’s exactly what Canadian Lucas Unger did. In fall 2015, he used a recently removed wisdom tooth for his fiancée Carlee Leifkes’s engagement ring. The couple received a great deal of press and attention, both positive and negative.

Regardless of your opinion, there is no denying how unique that rock is and that’s exactly what the couple was going for. Unger says that they are a quirky couple, so it was only appropriate that they have a quirky engagement.

2 Nail Clippings Turned Into Art

Artist Henri Matisse once said that “creativity takes courage,” and that statement never reigned truer than when artists started using their old nail clippings as their medium.

For most people, nail clippings are just thrown away after they’re cut off. Composting old nail clippings is common, too. Turning them into paperweights or figurines that sell for hundreds of dollars is far from mainstream, though, and could be considered rather bizarre.

One such artist is a man named Mike Drake. He uses his fingernail clippings in decorative acrylic paperweights.

Another noteworthy artist is a woman named Rachel Betty Case. She uses fingernail clippings to make little figures, like animals or bugs.

1 Edible Feces

Feces, poop, crap, excrement. Whatever you call it, it’s a part of life, albeit a gross one. So what in the world would people possibly want to make with this gross human waste product?

Burgers.

That’s right. In 2011, it was reported that Japanese scientists had discovered a way to synthesize human feces into meat for people to consume. This crappy idea came about because the dense population in Tokyo had overwhelmed the sewage system with mud made of human feces. That was one problem.

Then there’s the separate issue of feeding all these people. The answer to both problems came with this protein product made from steak sauce, soya (a binding agent), and poop.

There is some doubt about the veracity of this story, though. Some news outlets, like Forbes, question the authenticity of the reports as well as the possibility of even making such a “meat.”

Although the truth of this matter will continue to be debated, we can all agree on this: We’ll definitely think twice the next time we take a bite out of that double‑meat bacon burger.

If you’ve ever gazed at the marble perfection of ancient Greek deities and thought, “I want that kind of body,” you’re in good company. The top 8 exercises below are a blend of gym‑friendly machines and at‑home moves, all curated by fitness researcher Wayne Westcott, PhD. Whether you’re working out in a commercial facility or in your living room, these routines will set you on the path to a sculpted, mythic silhouette.

Top 8 Exercises Overview

8 Neck (19 inches; 48.26)

At the gym: Hop onto a Nautilus four‑way neck machine, a piece of equipment designed to let you safely wrestle with your own head‑movement. It lets you raise and lower your cranium as well as swing it side‑to‑side. Begin with 70 lb for the head‑raising actions and 50 lb for the lateral moves. Perform a single set of eight to twelve reps in each direction, keeping the motion controlled.

At home: Grab a 100‑125 lb barbell using an overhand grip, let it hang just above your thighs, and stand tall. Without bending your elbows, shrug those shoulders up toward your ears in a smooth, rhythmic fashion. Complete two sets of eight to twelve repetitions, feeling the contraction in the upper neck and traps.

7 Biceps (16.5 inches; 41.9)

Gym or home: Set up an incline bench and sit back so your arms can hang fully stretched, palms facing forward. With a dumbbell in each hand, curl alternately, rotating each palm inward as the weight rises. Adopt a tempo of two seconds up, a brief pause, then four seconds down. Aim for three sets of eight to twelve reps, resting about 45 seconds between sets.

6 Chest (52 inches; 132cm)

Gym or home: Load either a pair of dumbbells or a barbell for the classic bench press. Begin with a warm‑up set using roughly two‑thirds of your working weight, then add the remaining load. Perform three solid sets of eight to twelve repetitions, focusing on a controlled press and full range of motion.

5 Forearms (14.5 inches; 36.8cm)

Gym or home: Create a wrist‑roll device by fastening one end of a 30‑inch rope to an 18‑inch shortened broomstick, and anchoring the other end to a 5‑10 lb weight. Grip the stick horizontally with an overhand hold and roll it, raising and lowering the weight. Continue the motion until you can no longer maintain a steady rhythm.

4 Buttocks (47.5 inches; 120.6cm)

At the gym: The Nautilus hip‑extension machine targets the gluteal muscles and hamstrings. Load a moderate weight and execute a single set of ten to fifteen repetitions, concentrating on squeezing the glutes at the top of each extension.

At home: Perform a full squat while holding dumbbells or a barbell across your shoulders. Keep your feet flat, descend until your thighs are nearly parallel to the floor, and ensure your weight stays on the heels with knees tracking the toes. After a warm‑up set at two‑thirds of your usual squat load, add the remaining weight and complete three sets of ten to fifteen reps. If you have knee, hip, or lower‑back concerns, opt for a half‑squat, lowering only until your thighs form roughly a 30‑degree angle with the floor.

3 Calves (19 inches; 48.26cm)

Gym or home: Stand on the balls of your feet at the edge of a sturdy step, holding dumbbells at your sides or a barbell across your shoulders. Rise onto your toes, then lower so the heels dip slightly below the step’s edge. Perform two sets of fifteen to twenty repetitions, feeling a stretch at the bottom and a strong contraction at the top.

2 Waist (40.5 inches; 102.8cm)

This region is dominated by robust obliques, the muscles flanking the torso. In classical Greece, athletes sported thick waists to generate the rotational power needed for the discus, long jump, and wrestling. Doryphoros’s waist appears modest only because his chest proportionally dominates the silhouette.

Gym or home: Try the twisting trunk curl. Lie on your back with your lower legs resting on a chair seat. Curl your upper torso upward; at the peak, rotate to the right, guiding your left elbow toward your right knee. Return to center, lower, then repeat the motion to the left. One full twist counts as a single rep. Perform two to four sets of twenty to twenty‑five repetitions.

1 Thighs (26.5 inches; 67.3cm)

At the gym: Load a leg‑press machine with a weight you can move about a dozen times. After completing twelve reps, quickly reduce the load by twenty percent and push through six to eight additional repetitions. For an extra challenge, drop the weight another twenty percent and repeat the six to eight reps.

At home: Execute a lunge while holding dumbbells or a barbell on your shoulders. Step forward with the right leg, bending the knee to ninety degrees while the left knee descends toward the floor. Push back to the starting stance, then mirror the movement with the left leg. One complete alternating sequence counts as one rep; aim for a single set of six to eight reps. If you experience knee, hip, or back discomfort, substitute the half‑squat described under “Buttocks.”

Note:

Doryphoros stands at six feet five and a half inches tall. To translate his proportions to your own stature, follow these simple rules:

1. Your waist should be roughly twelve inches smaller than your chest.
2. Neck, biceps, and calf measurements should each be about half your waist size.
3. Your thighs should measure approximately one‑and‑a‑half times the size of your calves.

This compilation originally appeared in the pages of Men’s Health magazine.

Welcome to our top 10 revolting expedition into the macabre world of body piercing. From holy symbols of ownership to grotesque rituals that would make even the most hardened sailor wince, we’re counting down the most unsettling practices ever recorded. Grab a cup of tea (or a steel hook) and prepare to be both horrified and fascinated.

Why These Top 10 Revolting Piercings Matter

10. Ownership And Servitude

According to both the Old and New Testaments, piercings served as a divine badge of devotion, identification, and personal ownership. They were thought to invoke the protection of specific masters or deities, meaning any harm to a pierced individual would invite heavenly retribution.

Israelite customs echoed this sentiment: biblical passages describe men, women, and children adorning facial piercings to signal status and ownership. It was even common for a master to pierce a slave’s ear “to symbolize ownership and permanent servitude,” turning flesh into a literal property tag.

Modern Mormon doctrine, however, discourages all non‑medical piercings. Today, girls may wear a modest pair of earrings, but boys are barred entirely. BYU officials have even warned that breaking this rule makes the campus “not the place for you,” underscoring how the notion of ownership through piercings persists in new forms.

9. The New Craze

The Victorian era isn’t just prim tea parties and corsets; it also harbored a surprisingly liberal attitude toward body art. Women secretly adored tattoos, and beneath their stiff bodices they flaunted daring nipple rings. Believing that pierced nipples would widen the derrière, Parisian jewelers saw a rush of clientele eager for gold “bosom rings.”

The trend leapt across the Channel, and British women began sporting twin gold rings, sometimes linked by a delicate chain. Though the craze burned bright, it fizzled out by the early 1900s, leaving only scandalous sketches of Victorian daring.

8. Legislation

In the 21st century, bizarre piercings have spurred new laws. Pennsylvania became the first state in 2011 to ban tattoos and piercings on animals after a woman was caught piercing kittens’ ears and marketing them as “gothic” pets online.

Chicago later reported wild rabbits hopping downtown with dangling earrings, prompting officials to label the act animal mutilation. The perpetrator remains at large, highlighting how animal piercings can still slip through legal cracks.

New Jersey took it a step further in 2014, imposing harsher penalties for piercing a pet’s ear than for piercing a child’s. The state classified needless animal tattooing or piercing as a fourth‑degree felony, punishable by up to 18 months behind bars.

7. Superstitions

In Madhya Pradesh, India, the full‑moon celebration of Chaitra Poornima—known locally as Hanuman Jayanti—features a communal body‑piercing ritual aimed at curing chicken‑pox. Villagers believe that threading a needle through a person’s flesh, while hymns echo, channels divine power to expel the virus.

Chicken‑pox, caused by the Varicella Zoster Virus, can be deadly without vaccination, claiming roughly 7,000 lives worldwide. The ritual’s odd premise rests on faith that the piercings will drive the infection out, despite the obvious medical risks.

One hopes the needles used are sterilized; otherwise, participants face far more danger than the disease they aim to defeat.

6. Bloodletting

The ancient Maya practiced elaborate bloodletting ceremonies, believing that piercing specific body parts would appease the gods and induce altered states of consciousness. Tongues, lower lips, cheeks, and even the foreskin were sliced with tools ranging from stingray spines to flint blades.

After the incision, strips of straw were threaded through the wounds, allowing blood to flow freely. Unlike the Aztecs, the Maya performed fewer human sacrifices, though infant decapitations have been documented as part of certain rites.

Archaeological evidence confirms these rituals were central to Maya spirituality, intertwining pain, art, and devotion in a vivid tableau of ancient religiosity.

5. Body Suspension

Among the most extreme modern modifications is body suspension—hanging oneself from hooks pierced through the skin. While some medical professionals label it a sign of mental distress, many participants claim it offers a pathway to spiritual awakening.

The practice traces back over 5,000 years to Hindu festivals like Thaipusam and Chidi Mari, and it also appears in Native American traditions such as the Mandan and Sioux Sundance ceremonies.

Today, the subculture of meat‑hook suspension faces criticism over infection risks and tissue tearing, yet enthusiasts across the United States continue to chase the high of transcendent consciousness.

4. Costly Adornments

In ancient Egypt, body ornamentation signaled wealth, faith, and rank. While the elite flaunted lavish jewelry, tattoos, and cosmetics, piercings were a modest luxury, typically limited to ear lobes during the early New Kingdom.

Yet certain piercings were strictly regulated: only the Pharaoh could have his navel pierced. Any other individual attempting the same faced execution—often by impalement—a gruesome reminder of the power hierarchy.

These draconian punishments underscore how a simple piercing could become a matter of life and death, intertwining personal adornment with lethal political control.

3. “Mahu”

Hafada, also known as scrotum piercing, emerged in Arabia before spreading across North Africa and the Middle East. French Legionnaires stationed in Lebanon and Syria later re‑exported the practice to Europe, where men adorned their scrotums with multiple rings.

Even more startling is the “guiche”—a perineum piercing performed on boys aged 12‑14 by a “Mahu,” a revered transvestite figure in South Pacific cultures. These Mahu were believed to possess magical powers, and the ritual involved a knife slit followed by raw pig‑skin string, later fitted with bangles that would jangle during movement.

The tradition, viewed as a puberty rite, illustrates how body modification can intersect with gender, spirituality, and societal status in ways that shock the modern eye.

2. A Pirate’s Burial

Pirates are iconic for their gold hoop earrings, a symbol steeped in superstition and practicality. Sailors believed that precious metals could ward off seasickness, improve vision, and protect against drowning. In battle, cannons’ deafening roar forced pirates to use wax‑filled hoops as makeshift earplugs.

Perhaps the most intriguing reason for the earring: if a pirate died on foreign soil, the gold could cover burial costs. On a ship, however, bodies were tossed overboard to avoid bad luck, rendering the treasure‑laden loop useless in the afterlife.

1. Infibulation

Our final and most unsettling entry, infibulation, involved piercing the foreskin with a metal clasp, ring, or safety pin to seal the glans. Roman physician Aulus Cornelius Celsus first recorded the practice in the 1st century BC, noting its use to preserve the voices of choir boys.

During the Victorian era, the method resurfaced as a grotesque weapon in the so‑called “war on masturbation.” Physicians, convinced that self‑stimulation caused disease, mandated infibulation in mental institutions and orphanages, forcibly sealing boys’ genitals to curb perceived immorality.

These harrowing accounts remind us that what once seemed a medical cure could become a tool of oppression, leaving a painful legacy that still haunts history.

Across the globe, people indulge in all sorts of body modification—tattoos, piercings, scarification—and they usually have a say while they’re alive. Yet, after death, many ancient societies took a very different route, altering the dead for ritual, symbolic, or practical ends. These ten ancient practices reveal how the deceased were transformed long after their last breath.

10 Ancient Practices Explored

10. Skull Cups

Skull cups have been fashioned by countless cultures across many eras. The process involves extracting a cranium and carving it into a functional drinking vessel, typically focusing on the calvaria—the top portion of the skull. Decorative engravings are sometimes added for flair. The oldest known examples are a trio from Gough’s Cave in Somerset, England, dated to about 14,700 years ago, discovered alongside other human remains that appear to have been cracked open to harvest marrow.

Additional modified skulls that may have served as cups have surfaced in Nawinpukio, Peru (AD 400–700), and from the Bronze Age in El Mirador Cave, Spain. Systematic production of skull cups emerged during the Neolithic at Herxheim, Germany, while earlier examples appear from the Upper Paleolithic in Le Placard Cave, France. Vikings and Scythians are reported to have used defeated foes’ crania as cups, either to harness the dead’s power or to flaunt dominance. Historical accounts also note the Aghori of India and various Aboriginal groups in Australia, Fiji, and Oceania employing skulls as drinking tools.

Tibetan skull cups, called kapalas, were employed by Buddhists and Zoroastrians practicing sky burials—exposing bodies to birds, then pouring wine into the skull before offering it to the gods. Kapalas still appear on the market today, though their trade is heavily contested and banned in many jurisdictions.

9. Bones As Tools

In the ancient city of Teotihuacan, Mexico, a pre‑Aztec community fashioned a plethora of everyday objects—buttons, combs, needles, spatulas—from freshly deceased human bones between AD 200 and 400. They worked with femurs, tibiae, and skulls, using stone implements to strip flesh and shape the tools, a process that had to begin shortly after death before the bones grew too brittle. All discovered tools derive from local young adults; none were fashioned from foreigners, children, or the elderly.

A Neanderthal femur, at least 50,000 years old, was also repurposed as a tool, found alongside other Neanderthal remains near the Voultron River in France and used to sharpen stone implements.

8. Bones As Jewelry

Human bones have long been transformed into ornaments. Around 3500 BC in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, cranial bones were fashioned into oval amulets with a drilled hole. Similar pendants have been uncovered in Port‑Conty, La Lance, and Concise, all within Switzerland. In Mexico and across the Plains and Great Basin of the United States, necklaces crafted from hand and foot bones have been found; these were either strung as long chains or used as pendants, likely created from slain enemies to symbolize victory.

7. Bones As Musical Instruments

The Aztecs produced an instrument known as an omichicahuaztli from human leg or arm bones, creating a percussion device marked with notches. These bone instruments appear at archaeological sites throughout the empire, though occasionally animal bones—like turtle scapulae or whale ribs—served the same purpose.

Tibetan Buddhists employed a trumpet‑like instrument called a kangling, crafted from a human femur. Used in Tantric and funerary rites, it reminded participants of the body’s transience. The bone was preferably taken from a criminal or someone who suffered a violent death; if unavailable, a teacher’s femur could be used. Originating in India 1,500 years ago, the kangling spread to Tibet around AD 800.

6. Ritual Corpse Mutilation

In Brazil’s Lapa do Santo cave, some of the New World’s oldest skeletons have been uncovered. Humans inhabited the site for roughly 12,000 years, initially burying the dead intact. Between 9,600 and 9,400 years ago, funerary customs shifted dramatically: corpses were systematically mutilated. Teeth were extracted post‑mortem, bodies were dismembered and de‑fleshed, and evidence points to burning or cannibalism, with some bones later placed inside another individual’s cranium. No other burial goods appear from this period, suggesting the mutilation itself was the primary ritual practice.

5. Ritual Decapitation

Removing a head after death has been a global method of showcasing power and triumph over foes. One Lapa do Santo skeleton shows a post‑mortem decapitation achieved by twisting and pulling the head off the neck; the head was interred separately, with the hands placed over the face—one palm up, the other down.

In Dorset, England, a mass grave containing 54 Scandinavian Vikings dated between AD 910 and 1030 revealed a similar practice. All were young males with no battle wounds. Their bodies were buried together, while 51 skulls lay in a separate pile, having been crudely chopped off shortly after death. Three heads remain missing, possibly belonging to high‑status individuals whose heads were displayed elsewhere to prove defeat.

4. Head Shrinking

The Jivaro peoples of the Amazon jungle in southern Ecuador and northern Peru practiced head shrinking—creating tsantsas from enemies’ heads. This ritual served three purposes: preventing the victim’s vengeful spirit from escaping, displaying tribal strength, and proving to ancestors that revenge had been exacted.

To shrink a head, the victim was decapitated immediately after death. The skin was peeled away, then the scalp underwent a week‑long boiling process at a precise temperature, after which the eyelids were sewn shut, wooden pegs kept the mouth closed, hot stones and sand filled the interior, and charcoal was rubbed over it. Once completed, the shrunken head was worn as a necklace, often discarded after being shown off. Western collectors later commodified the practice until the 1930s, when the sale of shrunken heads was banned.

3. Vampire Treatments

Fears of vampires prompted various post‑mortem treatments to ensure the dead stayed dead. In 16th‑century Venice, a brick was forced into a plague victim’s mouth, often breaking teeth, before burial. Other European sites reveal bodies pierced with iron stakes—two 800‑year‑old corpses from Sozopol, Bulgaria, had large iron rods driven through their chests. A 700‑year‑old Bulgarian male also bore a chest stake and had his teeth extracted post‑mortem.

Polish burials show similar anti‑vampire measures: a rock and a sickle placed across the necks of two middle‑aged women, and a male and female decapitated and interred on their sides. These practices aimed to prevent the deceased from rising as blood‑thirsty specters.

2. Mellified Men

Unlike the other entries, mellification began before death. In 12th‑century Arabia, some men who sensed their end approached began subsisting solely on pure honey, even bathing in it. This self‑induced honey diet eventually killed them; their bodies were then placed in stone coffins filled with additional honey. Centuries later, these honey‑preserved corpses were retrieved, broken into pieces, and sold as medicinal candy at bazaars.

Chinese traveler Li Shizhen described the practice in his 16th‑century compendium Bencao Gangmu. While scholars debate its historicity, honey‑preserved remains have been found: a 4,300‑year‑old Georgian mummy, accounts of Alexander the Great’s honey‑coffin, and Herodotus’s note on Assyrian honey embalming.

1. Possible Cannibalism

Although not a deliberate body‑modification, cannibalism leaves unmistakable marks on skeletal remains. At El Sidrón, Spain, 12 Neanderthal skeletons—about 49,000 years old—show evidence of cannibalism: long bones were cracked open to extract marrow, and cut marks suggest de‑fleshing and disarticulation.

Researchers have also identified gnaw marks on human bones: 12,000‑year‑old remains from Gough’s Cave, England, and even 800,000‑year‑old Homo antecessor bones from Gran Dolina, Spain. These findings indicate that cannibalistic behavior spanned multiple hominin species.

When we think about the end of life, most of us picture a neat burial or a dignified cremation. Yet a surprisingly wide array of cultures and sub‑cultures have found ways to keep fragments of the departed hanging around, and the reasons are as varied as they are startling. In this roundup we’ll count down the 10 reasons keeping human body parts after death, from holy relics to gruesome war trophies, and everything in between.

10. Reasons Keeping: An Overview

10. Relics Of Saints

If living a good and holy life isn’t enough to guarantee a whole‑body afterlife, many believers have turned to the preservation of specific body fragments as a tangible link to the divine. Across centuries the Roman Catholic Church has amassed a staggering collection of saintly relics, ranging from the mundane to the miraculous.

These sacred scraps include everything you can imagine: the head of St. Catherine of Siena, still displayed in the Basilica Cateriniana San Domenico in Tuscany; the tongue of St. Anthony of Padua; even the blood of St. Januarius, the foreskin of the infant Jesus, and the finger of Doubting Thomas. Entire bodies have also been venerated, such as that of St. Mark.

Other faith traditions are no less enthusiastic. In Sri Lanka a revered temple houses the Buddha’s tooth, while the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul safeguards what is believed to be the beard of the Prophet Muhammad. These objects are treated with reverence, displayed for pilgrims, and thought to convey spiritual benefits to those who touch or simply behold them.

Thus, relics serve as physical conduits between the mortal and the sacred, offering believers a concrete reminder that sanctity can be preserved, even after the flesh has faded.

9. War Trophies

In the brutal theater of war, the victorious have often turned the bodies of the vanquished into macabre trophies. While popular culture frequently points to Native American scalping as the archetype, the practice predates the New World. The Greek historian Herodotus records that Scythian warriors were required to present an enemy scalp to their king as early as the fifth century BC.

Scalps were not the only body parts seized as proof of death. During the colonial era, frontiersmen in North America collected scalps to claim bounty payments, and the Japanese invasions of Korea in the 16th century saw samurai cut off the noses of their foes, later storing them in “nose tombs.”

Napoleon Bonaparte’s own post‑mortem fate turned his remains into a bizarre souvenir market. After his death on Saint Helena, a physician autopsied him, bagging internal organs and even an external piece. The doctor’s priest reportedly kept a few ribs, and the emperor’s penis was eventually auctioned for $3,000, now locked away in New Jersey. The story of its diminutive size has become a footnote in the annals of odd war memorabilia.

These gruesome collectibles underscore how, in the heat of conflict, human fragments can become trophies, symbols of victory, and, oddly enough, commodities.

8. Decoration

When most people think of art, they picture paint on canvas, not rotting flesh. Yet some artists and religious practitioners have turned human bone and tissue into striking decorative objects, creating a macabre aesthetic that is both beautiful and unsettling.

In Tibetan ritual, bones are sometimes carved into elaborate patterns to fashion an “apron” worn during special ceremonies. Similarly, kapalas—cups fashioned from human skulls—play a central role in Tantric rites, often inlaid with gold, silver, and precious stones, and displayed reverently on altars.

European fascination with anatomical art reached a fever pitch in 18th‑century France, where the anatomist‑artist Honoré Fragonard produced a series of “flayed men.” By skinning hundreds of cadavers, he crafted sculptures that revealed the inner musculature and organs, merging scientific curiosity with artistic flamboyance.

Fragonard’s most infamous work, “The Horseman of the Apocalypse,” depicts a fully flayed rider and steed surrounded by a crowd of tiny, skeletal fetuses riding sheep and horse fetuses. These eerie creations still hang in the Musée Fragonard d’Alfort in Paris, reminding visitors that the line between anatomy and art can be razor‑thin.

7. Medical Science

Perhaps the most conventional reason to retain body parts after death is to advance medical knowledge. The systematic study of anatomy exploded in the 18th century, fueled in part by “resurrectionists” who exhumed fresh graves to supply cadavers for dissection.

These “donated” bodies were often displayed before eager audiences of medical students, curious amateurs, and even bored gentlemen who craved a touch of the morbid. Notorious figures like the surgeon Robert Knox built careers on public demonstrations, while infamous grave‑robbers Burke and Hare supplied corpses for a fee, blurring the line between science and crime.

Modern attempts to revive public anatomy lectures in Edinburgh have met with resistance, yet the tradition of body donation persists. Today, volunteers still bequeath their bodies to science, allowing students to spend months, sometimes a full year, dissecting a single cadaver to master the intricacies of human anatomy.

Although many medical schools now favor preserved specimens and digital imaging, there remains a consensus that hands‑on dissection provides irreplaceable insight for aspiring surgeons. Once the educational journey concludes, the remains are either cremated privately or returned to families for burial, and many of the attending staff attend the funerals—a sobering reminder of the human stories behind the science.

6. Just Plain Weird

Jeremy Bentham, the 18th‑century philosopher famed for his utilitarian doctrine, left behind a legacy that is as eccentric as his ideas. A staunch atheist who championed universal suffrage and the decriminalization of homosexuality, Bentham rejected traditional Christian burial rites.

In accordance with his wishes, Bentham’s body was dissected after his death, and his skeleton was reassembled into an auto‑icon—a life‑size wooden cabinet that houses his remains, topped with a wax head. This display sits in a corridor at University College London, where it is occasionally wheeled into Council meetings, though the myth that it is “present but not voting” has been debunked.

The original wax head deteriorated over time and was removed, now kept in UCL’s collections and displayed on rare occasions. In 2006, Bentham’s remains were again tapped by scientists who extracted DNA from his head in an effort to determine whether the famed prodigy might have been autistic, adding yet another layer of curiosity to his post‑mortem fame.

5. To Prevent Death

In some remote corners of Uganda, body parts are harvested not for art or reverence, but as a twisted form of prophylaxis. Local witch doctors claim that the blood and organs of deceased children can ward off disease, ensure prosperity, and even stave off death itself.

Since the first documented child sacrifice in 1998, investigators have uncovered more than 700 mutilated bodies. These murders are typically orchestrated by witch doctors who harvest blood for its alleged curative powers, then sell the harvested parts as talismans to desperate families seeking wealth or health.

Although the practice is illegal and condemned by both national and international bodies, it persists in isolated rural communities where secrecy shrouds the ceremonies. The grim reality underscores how, in some contexts, the preservation of body fragments is driven by belief in literal, life‑saving magic.

4. Made Into Objects

Human remains have occasionally been transformed into everyday objects, turning the macabre into the mundane. The Romantic poet Lord Byron, for instance, possessed a drinking cup crafted from a human skull, its rim edged with silver. Legend holds that the skull was unearthed by Byron’s gardener at Newstead Abbey, and the poet delighted in its morbid novelty.

Even more unsettling was the fate of William Lanne, one of the last surviving Aboriginal Tasmanians from the Furneaux Islands. Colonial settlers, viewing him as a “missing link,” subjected his body to scientific curiosity. After his death, his head was removed, and his scrotum was fashioned into a novelty tobacco pouch, a grotesque souvenir displayed by the Royal Society of Tasmania.

These objects illustrate how, in certain historical moments, the dead have been reduced to curiosities, their parts repurposed for drinking, smoking, or exhibition, blurring the line between reverence and exploitation.

3. (A Kind Of) Magic

Across sub‑Saharan Africa, the practice of juju—an intricate system of magic and spiritual power—often incorporates human body fragments as potent ingredients. Practitioners believe that personal items such as hair, nails, menstrual blood, and even organ tissue can capture an individual’s essence.

These substances are ground, mixed, and infused into amulets or talismans, which are then used to protect the wearer or, conversely, to inflict harm. The belief holds that a piece of a person’s body can bind their spirit, giving the magician leverage over them.

Disturbingly, juju has been weaponized to control women, with priests demanding body parts as part of coercive rituals, and even trafficking them as objects of sexual exploitation. The fear of magical retribution often silences victims, allowing the practice to persist in secretive communities.

2. As Room Fittings

The Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic showcases perhaps the most flamboyant use of skeletons as interior décor. A massive chandelier, composed of thousands of human bones, hangs from the ceiling, while the walls are lined with skulls arranged into decorative patterns. In total, roughly 40,000 corpses contributed to this macabre masterpiece, complete with a bone‑cross.

Similar bone‑laden sanctuaries exist elsewhere. In Rome, the Church of Our Lady of the Conception of the Capuchins houses the remains of about 4,000 friars, displayed not in crypts but as wall‑mounted skulls, with three complete Capuchin skeletons greeting visitors at the entrance.

Poland’s Czermna chapel pushes the concept even further: every surface—from walls to ceilings—is plastered with bones of plague and war victims, totaling around 20,000 remains, with an additional 20,000 stored in the basement. The chapel’s founder, priest Vaclav Tomasek, even placed his own skull on the altar after his death, cementing the space’s dedication to the dead.

1. Proof Of Kill

In the brutal theater of war, body parts have also served as grim evidence of a successful kill. During Japan’s 16th‑century incursions into Korea, samurai warriors were paid per enemy killed, and they documented their victories by severing and preserving noses—sometimes ears—as trophies.

These macabre souvenirs were stored in “nose tombs,” and in the 1980s archaeologists uncovered one such tomb containing over 20,000 pickled noses. The debate over repatriation continues: some Korean groups demand the return of these remains, while others argue they should be respectfully destroyed.

Today, the noses and many ears rest in a nine‑meter‑high mound known as the “Ear Mound” in Kyoto, maintained at public expense by the Japanese government—a lingering reminder of a conflict that still haunts collective memory.

When it comes to the 10 strangest objects ever pulled from a human body, reality often outdoes fiction. From aquatic predators to self‑inflicted mishaps, these bizarre intruders have found their way inside unsuspecting victims, prompting doctors to perform some truly astonishing surgeries.

10 A Swordfish Bill

A young woman paddling off Santorini’s coast suddenly felt a sharp stab in her upper abdomen. She realized she’d been speared by an angry fish and managed to pull the creature from her body before hurrying to safety.

Imaging—X‑ray, CT, and MRI—showed liver damage, dilated blood vessels, and, most alarmingly, the bony tip of the swordfish’s bill lodged in her spinal canal. Surgeons first controlled bleeding and repaired tissue, then performed a second operation to extract the bill. After a month of antibiotics, she was discharged, fully recovered.

The bill’s remaining portion was recovered nearby. Ichthyologists identified it as belonging to a swordfish (Xiphias gladius). According to a 2010 BMC Surgery review, only four swordfish attacks have been documented in the literature: one thoracic trauma, one knee injury, and two head traumas. One tragic case involved a 39‑year‑old fisherman whose right eye was impaled; the bill penetrated his brain’s third ventricle, causing hemorrhage and death. Researchers believe the fish mistook the fisherman’s flashlight for prey.

9 Pea Plant

In 2010, 75‑year‑old Ron Sveden from Massachusetts arrived at the emergency department with a suspected collapsed lung. Initially thought to be emphysema, his shortness of breath and cough prompted a thorough work‑up.

Radiographs ruled out cancer but revealed a tiny, one‑centimeter pea plant inside his lung. Months earlier, Sveden had inadvertently inhaled a pea, which lodged in his trachea instead of his esophagus. The warm, moist environment of the lung proved ideal for the seed to sprout.

When asked about the ordeal, Sveden quipped, “One of the first meals I had in the hospital after the surgery had peas for the vegetable. I laughed to myself and ate them.”

8 Who Is The Hairiest Of Them All?

An 18‑year‑old American woman presented with abdominal pain, distension, and a dramatic 40‑pound weight loss. Endoscopy revealed a massive 5‑kilogram clump of human hair—a trichobezoar.

Doctors diagnosed her with trichophagia, also known as Rapunzel syndrome, a rare condition where sufferers ingest their own hair. The hair accumulates into an indigestible mass that can fill the stomach and even extend into the intestines.

Another case involved a young woman from Kyrgyzstan who suffered similar symptoms. Surgeons extracted a 4‑kilogram hairball, confirming that both patients had abandoned their hair‑eating habit.

7 A Nail To The Brain

Chicago resident Dante Autullo was building a shed when his nail gun misfired, striking his head. Assuming it was a minor graze, he and his fiancée tended the wound and continued with the project.

The next day, feeling unwell, he agreed to a hospital visit. X‑ray revealed a 9‑centimeter nail embedded in his brain. Neurosurgeons drilled two burr holes, removed the nail and a bone segment, and replaced the defect with a titanium mesh.

The nail passed within millimeters of a motor‑control region, yet Autullo escaped lasting deficits. He famously requested the surgeon give him the nail and skull piece to create a framed display.

6 The Human Bomb

In 2006, Private Channing Moss of the 10th Mountain Division was caught in an Afghan firefight when an RPG detonated nearby, propelling its tail fins into his abdomen.

Company medic Jared Angell stabilized Moss while medevac teams, against protocol, evacuated him with the live ordnance still inside. At a field hospital, an explosives expert first removed the fins, then carefully extracted the rocket, detonating it safely after surgeons completed the procedure.

After four surgeries and extensive rehab, Moss earned his Purple Heart, walking out of the hospital on his own two feet.

5 40 Knives

An Indian man, aged 42, secretly swallowed 40 knives over several months. Embarrassed, he only reported abdominal pain, delaying diagnosis.

Diagnostic imaging exposed the metallic arsenal. Surgeons prepared for a lengthy operation, ultimately spending five hours extracting folded and exposed blades up to 18 centimeters long.

Doctors suspect pica—a disorder driving consumption of non‑food items—was at play. Pica can stem from iron‑deficiency anemia, pregnancy, stress, trauma, or mental health issues. Historical cases include a French patient who swallowed over 4,000 francs and a British woman who ate sponges.

4 Glass Bottle

A 73‑year‑old Mississippi farmer, lacking proper latrine facilities, fashioned a makeshift toilet on a wooden board. While attempting to defecate, the board gave way, and a glass bottle embedded in the ground forced its way into his rectum.

The bottle’s neck shattered during the fall, complicating removal. Anesthetized, surgeons used obstetric forceps to extract the bottle and applied sutures to control bleeding.

The journal Annals of Surgery notes other bizarre rectal foreign bodies—cucumbers, carrots, broom handles, test tubes, spectacles, suitcase keys, tobacco pouches, tool boxes, stones, and even a frozen pig tail.

3 Under Pressure

New Zealand truck driver Steven McCormack slipped while standing between his cab and trailer, breaking a high‑pressure air hose that pierced his left buttock. The hose’s brass nozzle remained lodged, inflating his abdomen like a balloon.

Co‑workers turned off the air supply and applied ice. Doctors discovered his lungs filled with fluid, and the air had expanded his thorax, stressing his heart.

After draining fluid, removing the nozzle, and managing the wounds, McCormack’s body eventually returned to its normal size, despite days of excessive flatulence.

2 Ectopic Teeth

While extra teeth (supernumerary) are uncommon, ectopic teeth—teeth growing in abnormal locations—are even rarer. A 59‑year‑old woman presented with a blocked left nostril and a foul odor lasting two years.

CT scans revealed a tooth lodged in her nasal cavity, coated in greasy material later identified as the fungus Aspergillus, explaining the odor.

In another striking case, 12‑year‑old Ashik Gavai from Mumbai suffered from odontoma, a benign tumor producing over 230 extra teeth in his lower jaw. Surgeons spent seven hours using a chisel and hammer to extract them, leaving him with a normal set of 28 teeth.

1 Surgical Forceps

In 2009, roughly 48 million surgical inpatient procedures were performed in the U.S., making retained foreign objects (RFOs) a notable risk. The Joint Commission defines RFOs as “never events” caused by communication failures and improper counting.

A 36‑year‑old woman underwent liver surgery to remove a hydatid cyst. Years later, she experienced abdominal pain; a toilet visit revealed a handle of surgical forceps expelled from her colon.

Imaging confirmed the remaining corroded forceps, which surgeons extracted. She sued the hospital and surgeon. A similar case in Vietnam saw a patient live with a 15‑centimeter forceps for 18 years before removal.

Other reported RFOs include sponges, gloves, scissors, retractors, guide wires, and clamps.

These ten astonishing cases illustrate how the human body can become a repository for the most unexpected objects. Modern medicine’s ingenuity turns the impossible into reality, one bizarre extraction at a time.

The human body is a marvel of evolutionary engineering, and these 10 evolutionary advantages reveal why seemingly odd functions have stuck around.

10 Evolutionary Advantages: An Overview

10 Depression

While many people tend to equate just having a bad day with depression, it’s really not the same. The statistics speak for themselves; about 300 million people worldwide suffer from depression, about 800,000 die of suicides, and a vast number of the rest have difficulty functioning as a consistent part of their lives, proving that it’s a serious problem. For all the ways depression hampers life on Earth, it’s hard to imagine how it survived evolution.

According to many scientists, though, it makes perfect sense. Researchers found a correlation between the genes that carry over with depression and those that help protect the body from pathogens that could harm us, which could explain why it carried over to the modern age. Not just that, but the symptoms associated with depression—like social withdrawal and exhaustion—also helped the body reduce the chances of catching a particularly nasty disease by partially shutting down, which would make perfect sense in the pathogen‑ridden, prone‑to‑disease environment that was our early history.

9 Weak Feet

Looking at our feet, we can’t help but think that something may have gone very wrong for them to be the way they are. Think about it; the human foot has 26 bones and is able to twist and turn like most other body parts can’t, though the thing is that it really doesn’t need to. All it needs to do is be sturdy and provide support to the frame while walking, but because of its intricate build, we regularly twist and and mess it up, something it shouldn’t even have the mechanism to do. So what gives?

Bipedalism. Yup, our ability to walk on two feet didn’t just free our hands to make tools and conquer the world, it also took away our feet’s ability to act as secondary limbs, almost as capable as hands in providing us with the agility and maneuverability to navigate our four‑legged lifestyles. While we don’t need all those bones and muscles anymore, evolution just decided to let them stay as they weren’t exactly doing much harm, except for setting ourselves up for regular instances of ankle‑twisting and sprains.

8 Pubic Hair

One of the most enduring mysteries of human evolution, pubic hair really doesn’t make sense. While we know it has something to do with testosterone and estrogen—i.e. hormones related to sexuality—as it only shows up during puberty, we really have no idea why it exists. Not just that, but most of us actively take steps to get rid of it as a part of our grooming routines, meaning that it doesn’t just not make sense but is also unwanted. How did evolution let something like that slip by?

According to some scientists, there are perfectly good reasons for it. For one, because pubic hair shows up during puberty, it signals sexual maturity and also helps trap crucial pheromones that could potentially attract a mate. It makes sense, as in the pre‑clothes era, pubic hair would stand out on an otherwise hairless body, telling whoever’s looking that you’re ready for business.

Another theory suggests that it’s there to reduce friction while having sex, as skin rubbing against other people’s skin may have led us to develop unwanted rashes and other irritating skin allergies that would hamper our chances at getting more sexual partners.

7 Nails On Chalkboard

Ever heard the sound of nails scratching on the chalkboard and felt like someone was out to rip your head apart? Humans are almost unanimously averse to sounds similar to it, like that of a sharp stone on glass, chalk on slate, or a marker on a whiteboard. Evolutionarily speaking, how our bodies react to them doesn’t make a lot of sense—unless our hunter‑gatherer history had a lot of whiteboards or slates, these sounds shouldn’t make us feel anything at all.

According to scientists, though, there are some perfectly good explanations for it. For one, the frequency range these sounds fall in, 2,000–5,000 hertz, also contains frequencies similar to that of a crying baby or a screaming person, which indicates that we developed these reactions as a defense mechanism against something dangerous approaching in our wild hunter‑gatherer days. Another study found that the part of the brain that deals with sound engages with the part that processes negative emotions as soon as any of these sounds are heard. The activity between the two regions also notched up as the sounds got more severe, proving that even though we have no need for this reflex reaction anymore, it made perfect sense back then.

6 Wisdom Teeth

Most people who have teeth—which is just about everyone—have had to come to terms with the painful experience of their wisdom tooth or teeth (as it’s different for everyone) growing out at least once in their life. For those who haven’t, we congratulate you for your luck, but for the other unlucky ones, it’s not the best of experiences. It’s especially bad because they serve seemingly no purpose whatsoever and only end up adding more things in our mouth that could get infected with cavities or such later in life. Most people get them taken out before that happens, but have you ever wondered why they even exist?

The answer is diet. In the old days, our diet comprised all kinds of stuff, like leaves, raw meat, and branches, so our jaw used to be much bigger than what we have today. The wisdom teeth helped us manage our wildly diverse diet, and the bigger jaw made room for the extra set of teeth. Through the years, though, the jaw shrank to accommodate more . . . civilized eating habits, though the wisdom teeth never got the memo. That’s the reason most of us will make at least one visit in our life to a dentist to deal with a wisdom tooth, and you’ve got our ancestors’ way of eating to thank for it.

5 Dangling Testicles

The male reproductive system isn’t as complicated as that of the female, though one part of it has had scientists scratching their heads ever since they started thinking about it. Why do the testicles hang outside like that, given that they’re the most important organs on the list of “things evolution should have protected?” Most animals don’t have it the same, and the ones who do are also our immediate cousins or ancestors (aka mammals). At what point in our evolutionary tree did we decide that putting the sperm in an unprotected sack outside the body was a good idea?

Many theories exist, some of them more convincing than the others. For one, some believe that it’s due to the “handicapping principle,” which suggests that potential mates find the fact that someone who can survive with such a huge evolutionary disadvantage must be someone to definitely mate with, though we feel that may not be it. Another one, which makes much more sense, argues that the reason is protection. Testicles are only found to be outside in the mammals that do a lot of running and exertion—stuff that could cause abdominal pressure and a threat to sperm—so it seems more like an evolutionary mechanism to protect them by keeping them outside, which made more room for all the fun running from the predators we used to do in our early days.

4 Tickling

When it comes to weird body functions, tickling has got to be pretty high on the list. While scientists don’t yet understand the kind of laughter due to tickling, they understand that it shouldn’t be a function. There have been times in history it has been a downright disadvantage, too, like those times when medieval warriors were reported to have tickle‑tortured victims to death. It doesn’t seem to serve any purpose, and yet evolution wasn’t able to “take care of it” through the years.

According to some researchers, it isn’t that weird of a function. You see, the body parts most sensitive to tickling are also the ones most exposed in combat. They theorize that tickling our children was our involuntary way of teaching them how to protect their most vital organs, as the response to tickling among most of us is still defending the body.

3 Fainting At The Sight Of Blood

This one may not be as commonly occurring, but it still happens enough that it raises some pretty big how‑did‑this‑survive‑evolution alarms. Many people are known to faint at the sight of blood, and thinking of it in evolutionary terms, that should have strictly been a no‑no back in our violent early days. Think about it; what benefit could lying down unconscious have in a pitched battle where blood is flowing everywhere? If anything, our brains should get more alert to actively react to danger in those situations. So why don’t they?

It actually makes perfect sense, if you consider the things that go on in the body at the time of that fainting. It even has a medical name—vasovagal syncope—which refers to fainting at extreme triggers, like the sight of blood or trauma. When the body does that, it lowers the blood pressure and generally deactivates itself so that all the resources can go to keeping the brain alive. Moreover, if you’re also bleeding from the threat that made you see the blood in the first place, the body’s slowed functions can decelerate that blood loss, acting as a safety mechanism for you to stay alive longer.

2 Acne

Most people who go through adolescence experience acne. Its effects can be debilitating for some, though they’ve got to realize that they’re not alone. Not only kids but a significant number of adults also exhibit acne, and we just cannot imagine how blobs of red matter on the face could have any evolutionary benefit. In fact, it should have been actively stubbed out by natural selection, suggesting that we got lazy on this one.

According to scientists, though, it isn’t as weird. A lot of blame for acne can be attributed to the evolutionary decision to go hairless. While we lost our fur pretty hastily, we couldn’t get rid of the glands just underneath the surface of the skin—the sebaceous glands—as fast. They served a function back then, which is to oil the fur and keep it . . . furry. Now that there’s no fur, those oils just clog up our face and cause acne. Another theory suggests that it’s an indicator of whether someone is adult enough to have a family, which we could get behind, too.

1 Colorblindness

When it comes to common and weird disorders that are surprisingly prevalent in all populations, colorblindness takes the cake. It’s also pretty weird from an evolutionary perspective; why would an inability to recognize a venomous snake from a tree branch have survived natural selection? Its distribution is also unevenly spread among men and women, deepening the mystery. Compared to the one in 12 men who have it, one in 200 women suffer from colorblindness. It’s also one of the few anomalies on this list we can certainly say survived evolution, as the leading cause of colorblindness is hereditary.

While we don’t intuitively think it’s a good thing, colorblindness may actually have been a definite advantage in some situations. The condition frees the individual from seeing the colors in favor of patterns, and that would have given them an edge over their less colorblind peers in spotting camouflaged predators. In fact, colorblind forces were used in World War II to spot camouflaged positions to great success.

When you stroll through a museum, you expect to see art, artifacts, and historical treasures—but occasionally, the exhibits take a more… anatomical turn. In this top 10 human list we dive into the most curious, controversial, and downright eerie human body parts that have found a home behind glass cases around the globe. Ready for a macabre museum tour? Let’s begin.

10 Grigori Rasputin’s Penis

Grigori Rasputin, the mystic advisor to Russia’s Romanov dynasty, met a violent end in 1916. Yet his most infamous legacy may be the 33‑centimetre (13‑inch) penis that now rests in St. Petersburg’s Museum of Erotica. According to his daughter, Marie, the length measured 33 cm when flaccid—well over three times the average flaccid size of 9.2 cm (3.6 in) and comparable to the average erect length of 13.1 cm (5.2 in).

The fate of the organ is shrouded in mystery. One tale claims Rasputin’s assassins sliced it off, after which a cleaning maid, impressed by the find, absconded with it. Another version suggests a mistress seized it during the autopsy. Marie eventually recovered the organ, only for it to vanish after her 1977 death, reappear briefly when a Michael Augustine tried to auction it—only to discover it was a sea cucumber. The genuine specimen resurfaced in the hands of a French collector, who sold it to a Russian doctor in 2004; the doctor donated it to the museum, where it joins other erotic curiosities.

Controversy persists: some argue the displayed phallus isn’t Rasputin’s or even human. Nonetheless, a 33‑centimetre penis undeniably occupies a glass case in Russia.

9 Albert Einstein’s Brain

Part of Albert Einstein’s cerebrum resides at Philadelphia’s Mutter Museum. Ironically, the genius himself had requested cremation to avoid posthumous idolization. Yet after his April 18, 1955 death, pathologist Thomas Harvey covertly excised the brain—and the eyes. Einstein’s family later consented to Harvey retaining the organ for scientific study.

Harvey, aided by lab physician Marta Keller, sliced the brain into roughly 1,000 thin sections, distributing them among various pathologists. Dr. William Ehrich of Philadelphia General Hospital received 46 slides, which, after his passing, were handed to Dr. Allen Steinberg, then to Dr. Lucy Rorke‑Adams, who ultimately donated them to the Mutter Museum. Approximately 350 slides also live at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Maryland.

The Mutter Museum’s collection extends beyond Einstein’s brain, featuring the conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker’s fused livers, the “Soap Lady” of Philadelphia, and a 2.7‑metre (9‑ft) colon packed with 18 kg (40 lb) of feces. Visitors are often warned to fast before entering—just in case.

8 Jeremy Bentham’s Head

Philosopher Jeremy Bentham, famed for his utilitarian ideas and whimsical cat named The Reverend Sir John Langbourne, stipulated that his body be preserved for perpetual attendance at his friends’ gatherings. Consequently, his mummified form is displayed at University College London. However, his actual head was removed and replaced with a wax replica.

Bentham’s request called for his head to be embalmed using Maori techniques—a method unfamiliar to his friend, Dr. Southwood Smith, who performed the embalming. The botched process left the head in poor condition, necessitating its removal. The genuine head was displayed for a time before being stowed away in the 1990s after a student theft incident.

Thus, while Bentham’s body remains on view, the head you see is a wax facsimile, and the original resides, at times, in storage.

7 Galileo Galilei’s Tooth And Fingers

Renowned astronomer Galileo Galilei died in 1642, and in 1737, as his remains were being transferred to a new tomb opposite Michelangelo’s in Florence, opportunistic admirers pilfered three of his fingers, a tooth, and a vertebra. One finger found a home at the Museum of the History of Science in Florence; the remaining thumb, middle finger, and tooth were kept privately by a family.

Those private holdings vanished during the 20th century but resurfaced in 2009. To prevent further loss, the museum reacquired the missing fingers and tooth, now exhibiting them alongside the third finger. The museum even renamed itself the Galileo Museum, boasting the most extensive collection of his bodily remnants. Meanwhile, Galileo’s vertebra remains at the University of Padua.

Visitors can thus glimpse the very digits that once pointed toward the heavens.

6 Antonio Scarpa’s Head

Italian anatomist and neurologist Antonio Scarpa, who died on October 31, 1832, cultivated more enemies than allies during his tenure at the University of Pavia. Known for his arrogance, rumor‑spreading, and nepotism, Scarpa’s post‑mortem was performed by former assistant Carlo Beolchin, who removed Scarpa’s head, thumb, index finger, and urinary tract—though motives remain unclear.

Speculation ranges from Beolchin preserving the parts for scientific posterity to a retaliatory act against his former mentor. Rivals even defaced a marble statue honoring Scarpa. While the head was initially hidden, it later resurfaced at the Museo per la storia dell’Università di Pavia, where it is displayed. The remaining parts reside in an Italian museum but are kept in storage.

Thus, Scarpa’s head enjoys a modest exhibition, while the rest of his anatomy lies concealed.

5 Charles Babbage’s Brain

Charles Babbage, celebrated as the “father of the computer,” has his brain split between London’s Science Museum and the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. Unlike Einstein, Babbage explicitly wished for his brain’s preservation to advance scientific knowledge.

Before his 1871 death, Babbage penned a letter to his son Henry, stating he had no objection to post‑mortem removal so long as the organ served humanity’s intellectual progress. He instructed that his brain be disposed of in a manner most conducive to the advancement of human knowledge.

Consequently, his cerebral matter was divided, with each half displayed in a distinct institution, honoring his own wishes for scholarly benefit.

4 Napoleon Bonaparte’s Penis

Following his defeat at Waterloo, exile to St. Helena, and mysterious death in 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte’s autopsy revealed a diminutive penis—measured at a modest 3.8 cm (1.5 in). Dr. Francesco Autommarchi, the physician conducting the autopsy, removed the organ in the presence of seventeen witnesses, subsequently handing it to Abbe Anges Paul Vignali, the priest who administered Napoleon’s last rites.

The penis entered the antiquarian market in 1924, purchased by a collector and later sold to a Philadelphia buyer. By 1927, it was on display at the Museum of French Art in New York. A Time magazine correspondent described it disparagingly as “a maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace.” In 1977, auctioneer John J. Lattimer acquired it, and the artifact has remained with the Lattimer family ever since.

Thus, Napoleon’s modest member continues its post‑mortem journey across continents.

3 Chief Mkwawa’s Skull

Chief Mkwavinyika Munyigumba Mwamuyinga, known as Chief Mkwawa, fiercely resisted German colonization of Tanzania’s Hehe lands in the late 19th century. After a series of rebellions, he ultimately took his own life in 1898 when surrounded by German troops. The Germans, however, seized his skull and shipped it to Berlin.

Following World War I, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles included a clause obligating Germany to return Mkwawa’s skull to the Hehe as a gesture of gratitude for their wartime alliance with Britain. Germany failed to locate the skull, leaving the Hehe empty‑handed. Post‑World II, Governor Sir Edward Twining traced the skull to Bremen’s museum, where among 2,000 specimens, only one bore a bullet wound—presumed to be Mkwawa’s. The skull now resides in the Mkwawa Memorial Museum in Kalenga, Tanzania.

This macabre trophy stands as a testament to colonial conflict and restitution.

2 Sarah Baartman’s Brain And Genitals

Sarah Baartman, born in South Africa’s Eastern Cape in 1789, suffered from steatopygia—a condition causing pronounced fatty deposits on the buttocks—earning her the moniker “Hottentot Venus.” In October 1810, she signed (though illiterate) paperwork that allowed surgeon William Dunlop and employer Hendrik Cesars to ship her to England for exhibition.

Baartman performed across Europe, notably in Paris in 1814, before dying a year later. After her death, naturalist Georges Cuvier dissected her, and her brain, skeleton, and genitals were displayed at the Paris Museum of Man until 1974. Following a request by South African President Nelson Mandela in the mid‑1990s, her remains were repatriated in March 2002 and interred in Hankey, South Africa.

Her story highlights the exploitation and eventual restitution of human remains.

1 Mata Hari’s Skull

Mata Hari, a celebrated early‑20th century spy whose loyalties remain debated, was executed by France on October 15, 1917, accused of espionage for Germany during World I. After her death, her unclaimed remains were sent to a Parisian medical school for anatomical study. There, her head was removed and stored at the Museum of Anatomy, only to mysteriously disappear later.

The disappearance adds another layer of intrigue to an already enigmatic life, leaving her skull’s fate uncertain.

From phallic curiosities to the brains of pioneering thinkers, these ten human specimens prove that history’s most famous figures sometimes end up as museum artifacts—reminding us that the line between legend and anatomy can be surprisingly thin.