Dig into history, science, true crime, and beyond with All That's matters — where you'll discover the most interesting things that's matters
'Sleeping Beauty of Palermo' is a little girl who died 100
'Sleeping Beauty of Palermo' is a little girl who died 100
Known as the "Sleeping Beauty of Palermo," the impeccably preserved body of Rosalia Lombardo is among the most remarkable mummies in the world. When Lombardo died in 1920 just a week shy of her second birthday, her heartbroken father took her to an embalmer and asked him to make her appear as if she would "live forever" before laying her in a glass-topped coffin and entombing her in the Capuchin catacombs beneath the Sicilian capital.
The embalmer used a secret zinc mixture to petrify her body and even posed her with her eyes slightly open so that she would appear as if she was either just falling asleep or waking up from a nap. In fact, this illusion is so convincing that some mourners who come to visit her still swear that her eyes open and close throughout the day, revealing beautiful blue irises beneath her delicate eyelids.
See the photos and go inside the haunting story behind Sicily's "blinking mummy" by clicking the link in our bio.
Rosalia Lombardo (13 December 1918 – 6 December 1920) was a Palermitan child who died of pneumonia, resulting from the Spanish flu, one week before her second birthday. Rosalia's father, Mario Lombardo, was grieving her death, asked Alfredo Salafia, an embalmer, to preserve her remains. Sometimes called "Sleeping Beauty", hers was one of the last corpses to be admitted to the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo in Sicily.
Thanks to Salafia's embalming techniques, the body was well-preserved. X-rays of the body show that all the organs are remarkably intact.
Rosalia Lombardo's body is kept in a small chapel at the end of the catacomb's tour and is encased in a glass covered coffin, placed on a wooden pedestal. A 2009 National Geographic photograph of Rosalia Lombardo shows the mummy is beginning to show signs of decomposition, most notably discoloration. Her body is starting to take on a yellow waxy skin texture. To address these issues, the mummy was moved to a drier spot in the catacombs, and her original coffin was placed in a hermetically sealed glass enclosure with nitrogen gas to prevent decay. The mummy remains one of the best preserved bodies in the catacombs.
That same year, Capuchin catacombs curator Dario Piombino-Mascali discovered a handwritten manuscript written by Salafia, wherein he lists the ingredients used to mummify Rosalia.
The embalming formula is described as "one part glycerin, one part formalin saturated with zinc sulfate and zinc chloride, and one part of an alcohol solution saturated with salicylic acid", and was entered into the body through a single-point injection, most likely into the femoral artery via a gravity injector. Rossella Lorenzi of Discovery News reported that the formalin was used to kill bacteria, the glycerin used to prevent desiccation, and the salicylic acid used to eliminate any fungi within the flesh, with the purpose of the zinc salts being petrifaction.
The mummy has achieved further notoriety for a phenomenon in which her eyes appear to open and close several times a day, revealing her intact blue irises.
In response to speculation about her moving eyelids, Piombino-Mascali stated that "It's an optical illusion produced by the light that filters through the side windows, which during the day is subject to change ... [her eyes] are not completely closed, and indeed they have never been".
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Search on Wikipedia
Search results
Search This Blog
Inside The Bloody Story Of Defenestration, One Of History’s Wildest Execution Methods The definition of defenestration comes from the Lat...
-
Inside The Brutal Cheshire Murders That Rocked Suburban Connecticut William Petit and Jennifer Hawke-Petit lived a normal, peaceful life ...
-
How the Ghost Army of WWII Used Art to Deceive the Nazis Unsung for decades, the U.S. Army’s 23rd Headquarters Special Troops drew on vi...
-
Colonization, Globalization, and Language Endangerment It’s not your choice that you speak English, French, Portuguese and German in pl...
-
A member of the Harlem Hellfighters (369th Infantry Regiment) poses for the camera while holding a puppy he saved during World War 1, 1918 ...
-
The real story behind Princess Diana's 'revenge' dress - and why it's still so influential 28 years on Duchess Camila’s A...
-
Startled Bystander At The Annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Startled Bystander At The Annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Par...
-
CCTV shows girl, six, being led away before she is raped and murdered in Thailand horror A CCTV picture has been released in Thailand sh...
-
Wilt Chamberlain at 17. 1954. Wilton Norman Chamberlain (/ˈtʃeɪmbərlɪn/; August 21, 1936 – October 12, 1999) was an American professional...
-
The Short, Inspiring Life Of Quentin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s Youngest Son Quentin Roosevelt responded to the call of duty and f...
-
A woman balancing two cups of tea on her breasts, 1870s Everyone in the comments: "T Cups" "Everything reminds me of h...
No comments:
Post a Comment