I'm the twisted thread-ressurector...!
rynner said:
That's new one on me!
But there was an astronomer, Tycho Brahe, I think, who had a silver nose, having lost the original in a duel.
Bored, and have been trawling through old threads in order to find one I could add my sixpenn'orth to. In this case, here's one of my potted histories of a strange character, which someone else who can be bothered to do research will no doubt correct in due course. Here goes:
Tycho Brahe was court astronomer to the king of Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic). He was an eccentric man who beileved himself to be exceptional at pretty much everything. While this was true for astronomy, at which he kicked ass, and found lots of stuff which supported then-radical but now commonly accepted ideas about space and that, it was not so true for duelling. His nose was indeed severed in a duel, and replaced (purely for vanity's sake) with a silver replica, which is visible in a contemporary portrait of him.
The nose apparently caused him great discomfort, and, due to the conductive properties of metal, would either heat up in direct sunlight, burning his face, or get very cold in mid-winter, causing unpleasant chafing, etc. However, he wore it all the time. He was that kinda guy.
His death is pretty well documented, too. As well as an astronomer and duellist, he fancied himself as a great epicure and gourmande, which resulted in him being (to use the rennaissance Bohemian term) a 'really fat biffer'. One fateful day, after having consumed a huge banquets-worth of food and wine, he attempted to get up from the table, presumably with the intent of relieving himself. However, as his weight shifted, his over-stretched baldder burst (ew...) inside him. He died mere days later of internal bleeding complicated by horrible blood poisoning and assumed renal faliure.
