Napoleon Nob Nipped!
Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2002 11:32 am
Oh this one is just too funny. I took it off the Urban Legends web page. Just one more thing to get your French friends all worked up about! (like they don't deserve it). The story is about the rumor that someone stole Napoleon Bonaparte's nob during the autopsy
According a _Washington Post_ article reprinted in the Oct. 7 _San Jose Mercury News_, the general and his johnson may well have parted company 171 years ago. The pickled Imperial Peter is purportedly in the possession of urologist John Lattimer at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center.
Post pundit Peter Mikelbank says:
Officially, the general's privates are where they've always been: with the remainder of the body, in its crypt beneath the gold dome at the Hotel des Invalides. Unofficially though, there is growing concern among the French that their Napoleonic unmentionables may be elsewhere; that a bone of contention may exist between France and the United States; and that, perhaps, their noble heritage may derive in part from a legacy that is not so much gilded, but gelded.
My, he had fun writing that. The article goes on to say that in the Spring of 1821 Napoleon's British doctor was fired and replaced by an Italian pathologist, apparently to make the autopsy easier after Bonaparte shucked the coil. He did so in May, and the autopsy was performed under military guard. This was not sufficient to save the sovereign schvantz:
Lattimer said the sight and particularly the scent of an autopsy performed in a tropical climate would have forced even the most stout-hearted soldier from the room. "And in those circumstances, it would have been easy for the Italian to nip off a little revenge".
The "revenge" is in a jar where Lattimer teaches.
What resembles a pickled pinkie came into Lattimer's possession roughly 20 years ago, at a price Lattimer calls "a substantial sum. I knew as long as it was floating around, it was subject to derision. I recognized all the perils, but my interest in buying it was to stop it from any further crude exposure."
There is of course more than a dollop of doubt about the denoument of the dictator's dingaling. The curators at Invalides hang up on callers with cock questions, and the newspapers have given the issue little space. Lattimer himself isn't sure, but can associate the world-conquering weenie with many better-documented bits of Napoleana. French historian Jean Tulard says:
"It is profane! Incredible but possible.... There is not a single significant document authenticating this claim ... only, perhaps, a note from Vignali", a cleric Napoleon insulted when offered the last rites. The note reportedly said, "Voila'! I have it."
---It's all just too funny, given all the misery and human destruction that guy caused, it would be fitting that he has been de-nobed for all time.-----
Got2
According a _Washington Post_ article reprinted in the Oct. 7 _San Jose Mercury News_, the general and his johnson may well have parted company 171 years ago. The pickled Imperial Peter is purportedly in the possession of urologist John Lattimer at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center.
Post pundit Peter Mikelbank says:
Officially, the general's privates are where they've always been: with the remainder of the body, in its crypt beneath the gold dome at the Hotel des Invalides. Unofficially though, there is growing concern among the French that their Napoleonic unmentionables may be elsewhere; that a bone of contention may exist between France and the United States; and that, perhaps, their noble heritage may derive in part from a legacy that is not so much gilded, but gelded.
My, he had fun writing that. The article goes on to say that in the Spring of 1821 Napoleon's British doctor was fired and replaced by an Italian pathologist, apparently to make the autopsy easier after Bonaparte shucked the coil. He did so in May, and the autopsy was performed under military guard. This was not sufficient to save the sovereign schvantz:
Lattimer said the sight and particularly the scent of an autopsy performed in a tropical climate would have forced even the most stout-hearted soldier from the room. "And in those circumstances, it would have been easy for the Italian to nip off a little revenge".
The "revenge" is in a jar where Lattimer teaches.
What resembles a pickled pinkie came into Lattimer's possession roughly 20 years ago, at a price Lattimer calls "a substantial sum. I knew as long as it was floating around, it was subject to derision. I recognized all the perils, but my interest in buying it was to stop it from any further crude exposure."
There is of course more than a dollop of doubt about the denoument of the dictator's dingaling. The curators at Invalides hang up on callers with cock questions, and the newspapers have given the issue little space. Lattimer himself isn't sure, but can associate the world-conquering weenie with many better-documented bits of Napoleana. French historian Jean Tulard says:
"It is profane! Incredible but possible.... There is not a single significant document authenticating this claim ... only, perhaps, a note from Vignali", a cleric Napoleon insulted when offered the last rites. The note reportedly said, "Voila'! I have it."
---It's all just too funny, given all the misery and human destruction that guy caused, it would be fitting that he has been de-nobed for all time.-----
Got2