When Pope John Paul II rehabilitated Galileo in the 1990's and revoked the Church's original condemnation of his discoveries, he admitted that the "Church had erred." Almost as telling of the astronomer's status in Italy (and the world) is the fact that Italian museum curators are bursting with excitement at the rediscovery of one of his teeth and two of his fingers.

The body parts had been removed from his corpse in 1737 by admirers and eventually placed in a sealed container for years, forgotten about, and assumed by scholars to be lost. But the container was recently rediscovered at an auction and purchased by a private collector, who turned the relics over to museum officials in Florence. The two fingers and tooth will be placed on public display next spring.

The preservation of the body parts of famous individuals is as common as it is gross and weird, and an enormous use of museum resources worldwide. Toptenz compiled a list of the most famous preserved body parts, which includes the remains of Einstein's mutilated brain, St. Bonaventure's arm, and Italian biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani's bladder on public display in a museum in Pavia, Italy.