Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Forebear's Forearm

One of the things I love about Chris Dunham of The Genealogue is that he finds the most incredible stuff out there. In I'd Give My Right Arm to See That, he writes about Dan Donnelly of California whose ancestor was a bare-knuckle fighter. Lucky for him(?!), some crazy 19th century doctor removed his forebear's arm after his death as something of a souvenir. And now the arm's on display in New York at an exhibit call "Fighting Irishmen: A Celebration of the Celtic Warrior." Check out Chris's blog for a link to an actual photo.

What does it say about me that my first thought on reading this was pondering whether it might be possible to extract DNA from the arm to verify the living Dan Donnelly's claim??

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home