Her Hitler

HISTORIANS were rocked yesterday after a DNA test showed Hitler's skull to be from a WOMAN.

The discovery was made by an expert given access to the Fuhrer's remains by Russia.

Last night it cast doubt on whether the Nazi tyrant really did commit suicide in his Berlin bunker in April 1945.

For 64 years history books have stated the World War II monster took a cyanide pill aged 56 and shot himself as the Red Army closed in.

The Russians later dug up a burnt and buried corpse - its head sporting a bullet hole - which they declared was his.

In 1970 the KGB finally cremated it, saving only the jawbone and a fragment from the skull.

US archaeologist Nick Bellantoni flew to Moscow after being granted permission to examine the artefacts in the state archive - including bits of the bunker's bloodstained sofa - for one hour.

He not only discovered the skull was female but also that it was from someone much YOUNGER.

He said: "The bone seemed very thin - male bone tends to be more robust. It corresponds to a woman between the ages of 20 and 40."

Hitler's lover Eva Braun, who also took cyanide, was 33. But Dr Bellantoni said: "There is no report of her having shot herself or having been shot afterwards. It could be anyone's."

Galileo May Get Eyes Checked Posthumously

ROME - Italian and British scientists want to exhume the body of 16th century astronomer Galileo for DNA tests to determine if his severe vision problems may have affected some of his findings.

The scientists told Reuters on Thursday that DNA tests would help answer some unresolved questions about the health of the man known as the father of astronomy, whom the Vatican condemned for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun.

"If we knew exactly what was wrong with his eyes we could use computer models to recreate what he saw in his telescope," said Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Museum of History and Science in Florence, the city where Galileo is buried.

Watson, who has studied Galileo's handwriting, letters and portraits of the astronomer, suspects he may have had unilateral myopia, uveitis — an inflammation of the eye's middle layer — or a condition called creeping angle closure glaucoma.

Watson believes Galileo did not acquire his eye problems by looking at the sun but by systemic illnesses, including an attack when he was young that left him temporarily deaf and bloody discharges and arthritis so severe he was bedridden for weeks.

He was under particular stress when he was tried for heresy by the Inquisition because the Copernican theory he supported conflicted with the Bible.

Galileo was buried in Florence's Santa Croce Basilica about 100 years after his death. Before, his remains were hidden in a bell tower room because the Roman Catholic Church opposed a proper burial.