Just For Fun Friday 02/06/2015

You think life today is weird? I recently ran across a tale of Einstein’s brain so bizarre, you’d swear that Mary Shelley was at it again.

The story is rife with controversy. One version says when Einstein died in 1955, his brain was stolen. Einstein himself had left specific instructions to be cremated and for his ashes to be scattered in some remote place after his death. He didn’t want to become a sideshow.

But one doctor decided to perform an ‘authorized’(?) autopsy, and in the course of the autopsy the brain and eyeballs were removed. The body was returned to the family as being intact, and cremated per the instructions in the will.

Many researchers had expressed interest in studying the brain to see if they could identify what it was that made the man so intelligent. The doctor divided it into 240 pieces (this number seems to be consistent in all the versions) and hundreds (or thousands) of slides were made so other researchers could join in the study.

Reports differ, but some say that even though some studies did show abnormalities, because of the condition and size of the pieces, a definite conclusion has been impossible.

Oh, did I tell you there’s a book?

The odd twists and turns, and travels of the brain in the next few decades make one of the strangest stories ever. Some reports talk of the pieces traveling around (immersed in preservative) in mason jars, in the back of a Buick. Others say at one time it was stored in a cider jar in a beer cooler.

Of course, other versions say the brain was NOT stolen, but that Einstein agreed in his last few years to let it be used for research. But the will never was changed, and apparently the family knew nothing of this change.

There are several sites, with several versions of this story, that can be found through your search engines. I’ve listed a few, and each version is a little different. We’ll never really know the truth, but whichever one you decide to believe, it’s still proof that truth can be stranger than fiction.