The great astronomer Tycho Brahe wore a metal nose.

1566 · 1601 · apart: 35 years

He lost part of his own in a 1566 duel with a kinsman, reportedly after a quarrel over mathematics. Tests on his remains suggest the prosthesis was brass, not the gold or silver of legend.

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The event

• Uraniborg, Tycho Brahe's island1576 · Island of Hven. King Frederick II of Denmark granted Tycho Brahe the island of Hven, where he built a castle-observatory with its own printing press and paper mill. Without a telescope, he gathered the most precise observations of his age, which Kepler used to find his laws of planetary motion.

16th century · 17th century

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