Futility Closet

What do René Descartes, Joseph Haydn, and Oliver Cromwell have in common? All three lost their heads after death. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast, we'll run down a list of notable corpses whose parts have gone wandering. We'll also hear readers chime in on John Lennon, knitting, diaries and Hitchcock, and puzzle over why a pilot would choose to land in a field of grazing livestock. Sources for our feature on posthumously itinerant body parts: Bess Lovejoy, Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses, 2013. Edith Sitwell, English Eccentrics, 1993. I'd written previously about Descartes, Haydn, Cromwell, Bentham, Einstein, and Juan Perón. Thanks to listener Alejandro Pareja for the tip about Goya. Listener mail: Barney Snow's documentary about Gerald and Linda Polley is Where Has Eternity Gone? QI, "Knitting in Code." Douglas Martin, "Robert Shields, Wordy Diarist, Dies at 89," New York Times, Oct. 29, 2007. Listener Christine Fisher found Charles Thomas Samuels' interview with Al