Some of his bones are on display

One of the interesting facts about Galileo Galilei is that he lost three of his fingers almost a century after his death. Galileo was laid to rest in a modest space close to the chapel for novices in Florence's Basilica of Santa Croce. Along with his father, and other ancestors, Machiavelli, and Michelangelo, his remains were moved to the main body of the Basilica in 1737.

This truth about Galileo Galilei might strike some people as a little strange because they might wonder how a cadaver that is almost 100 years old could have lost three fingers. The explanation is that Galileo's body was moved from a minor chapel at the Santa Croce church in Florence to the main basilica in 1737, nearly 100 years after his passing. One of Galileo's fans did so while removing three of his fingers and a tooth from his body. The two fingers and tooth belonged to a family of a Galileo enthusiast for many years, until they vanished entirely in the early 1900s.

They emerged at an auction inexplicably again in 2009, and private Florentine art collector Alberto Bruschi bought them. He still didn't know who the bones belonged to when he found the artifacts in an unnamed wooden box during the 17th and 18th centuries. The Galileo artifacts were later confirmed by the Florence Cultural Center.