Phineas P. Gage became famous because a metal rod blew through his skull on September 13, 1848 in Cavendish, Vermont. And he lived. A medical curiosity of the 19th century, eventually Gage died a dozen years later. He was eventually exhumed, and his skull was sent to Dr. Harlow, who in turn donated it to Harvard, where it is displayed in a glass case along with Gage's life mask at the Warren Anatomical Museum in Boston, MA. The museum has the iron rod, too, along with a collection of oddities akin to Philadelphia's Mutter Museum and DC's National Museum of Health and Medicine.
Harvard University, being the Very Important Place that it is, doesn't allow the public to photograph Gage's skull and iron rod.
