For nearly a decade, the idea has floated around the internet about Harvard channeling its inner Silence of the Lambs, even though actual evidence was limited at best.
The university's newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, published an article back in 2006 claiming rare books existed in the school's collection that were bound and covered with human flesh.
An inscription is to blame. One book in question states the following:
“The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my dear friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King Mbesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. Requiescat in pace.”
This inscription alone has caused speculation for years that poor Jonas Wright was really having a bad day. Yet, according to Harvard Law School's blog, research done by Daniel Kirby, a conservation scientist at Harvard University's Art Museums' Straus Center, used something called peptide mass fingerprinting to analyze the cover and bindings of the book to discern once and for all if Jonas has forever been memorialized in literal literary form.
The findings? The cover is sheepskin, the glue is is a mixture of cattle and pig collagen.
And, thus, this is probably the last anyone will care about Jonas Wright. He just can't win in this situation.
Photo: via Harvard Law blog
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