| Title | Boris Johnson "is Descendant" of Mummified Basel Woman | |
| Date | Sunday January 28 2018, @04:40AM | |
| Author | janrinok | |
| Topic | ||
| from the I-wonder-if-she-regrets-anything dept. | ||
Scientists in the Swiss city of Basel have solved a decades-old mystery over the identity of a mummified woman.
Their research revealed a surprise: the woman is the great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother of UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.
The body was uncovered in 1975 while renovations were being done on Basel's Barfüsser Church.
[...] There was no gravestone to indicate her identity, but initial testing of her wooden coffin suggested it dated from the 16th Century.
Another clue: her body was riddled with mercury - a standard treatment for syphilis from the late 15th to the 19th Century. Highly toxic mercury treatment was more often a kill than a cure and it was this that preserved her body.
The story continues to explain how scientists using historical records and DNA testing have managed to ascertain (with 99.8% probability) that the mummy was "none other than Anna Catharina Bischoff. Born in Basel in 1719, she died there in 1787." The Bischoffs are a well-established and prominent family in the Basel region.
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printed from SoylentNews, Boris Johnson "is Descendant" of Mummified Basel Woman on 2024-05-16 19:20:01