HEARTS TO REMEMBER
When the famous Brazilian aeronautical pioneer, Alberto Santos-Dumont,
died in 1932, Dr. Walter Haberfield embalmed his corpse so it could be transported from Sao Paulo for the hero''s funeral in Rio. Alone in the mortuary, he removed Santos-Dumont''s
HEART and took it home in a jar of formaldeyde. Twelve years later he donated the organ to the Brazilian government on condition it be placed on public display. Today the heart is in a small museum belonging to the Air Force Academy in Campo dos Afonsos, near Rio. This much loved flyer''s heart floats in preservative inside a glass vessel encased in a golden
sphere, supported by a small winged statue. The ten inch golden sphere is pierced by pinpoint stars that form the constellations of the Southern Hemisphere. The museum also houses a life-size replica of the elegant, cigar shaped, bamboo and white silk
airship, which Santos-Dumont flew around the Eiffel
tower on 19th October, 1901, to the amazement of thousands of Parisiennes, including Jules Verne and the British science fiction writer, H.G. Wells.
Santos-Dumont''s heart is not the only one enshrined. Chopin told his sister, Ludwika that she should remove his heart when he died and conceal it in an
urn to be returned to his homeland, Poland. She succeeded in hiding the urn in the catacombs of Warsaw''s Holy Cross
Church, where it survived the bombing by the Nazis in 1939, ninety years after the death of the great composer, and today is part of one of the rebuilt church''s columns.
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