An Italian doctor spent 30 years weighing himself, his food and everything that left his body.
Sitting in a weighing chair, Santorio Santorio found that his excretions weighed less than his meals: the rest escaped unseen in breath and sweat.
More amazing facts
- 1613 · 1627 The last aurochs, the wild ancestor of cattle, died in a Polish forest in 1627 — 14 years after Michael Romanov was elected tsar.
- 1613 · 1618 Five years after the Romanovs came to power (1613), the Thirty Years' War broke out in Europe.
- 1613 · 1619 · 1836 Ivan Susanin's deed is known from one royal charter of 1619, which says nothing about swamps or leading enemies astray — only that 'Polish and Lithuanian people' tortured him. The rest came from 19th-century writers and Glinka.
- 1614 In a small town near Seville, hundreds of people bear the surname Japón — "Japan". They are thought to descend from samurai of Hasekura's embassy who reached Spain in 1614 and never went home.
- 1615 · 1620 In 1615 a Japanese samurai was made an honorary citizen of Rome.
- 1615 · 1621 Johannes Kepler spent six years defending his own mother against charges of witchcraft.