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Sep 20, 2007 11:05 AM
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Some crazy ghouls have figured out a macabre marketing concept that they hope rich people with more money than brains will snap up, taking 10 strands of Ludwig van Beethoven's hair and somehow turning them into a trio of half-carat fake diamonds. They extracted the carbon from the composer's hair, exposed it to temperatures approximating the depths of hell, and then stomped it down with a million pounds of pressure for a couple of weeks. After cutting and polishing their concoction, they had three blue "diamonds" sized at .56 carats. They hope one of these baubles will sell for $1 million on eBay. The sidebar to the story is the bizarre way they got old Ludwig van's hair.
It turns out there's a guy in Connecticut, John Reznikoff, who collects the hair of famous dead people, and has locks from a variety of celebrities from bygone days, including Albert Einstein, Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln. Reznikoff's collection is listed on the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest. The collection also has modern day hair samples from Princess Diana, Elvis, John F. Kennedy, George Harrison and even a bit of horsehair from Triple Crown winner Secretariat. Now if they could just extract DNA from those hairs, they could re-create all these luminaries, and perhaps put together a rock band or political party. Or a blog. [Telegraph]
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