Middle finger of Galileo's right hand

This is a typical example of the cult of Galileo, who came to be a symbol to be venerated rather than an author to be studied and understood. The finger was detached from Galileo's body by Anton Francesco Gori (Florence, 1691-1757, literate and antiquary) on 12 March 1737 when Galileo's remains were transferred from a small closet next to the chapel of Saints Cosmas and Damian to the main body of the church of Santa Croce where a mausoleum had been built by Vincenzo Viviani.

Stardust Equations - Using the mathematics of chaos to send a spacecraft to the comet Wild2 and back.

The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/

One of the best sites.  The archive contains the biographies of more than 1300 mathematicians. You can access them from a selection of Alphabetical or Chronological Biographical indexes.

History of Mathematics at Clark University http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/mathhist/mathhist.html

The best of this site is Euclid's Elements online.

History of Mathematics archive at the School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/HistMath.html

The site has biographies of some seventeenth and eighteenth century mathematicians, taken from A short account of the history of mathematics (4th edition, 1908) by W. W. Rouse Ball.  Mathematical papers and other material relating to certain mathematicians and philosophers, including Hamilton, Riemann, Berkeley, Boole, Cantor and Newton.

Furman University Mathematical Quotation Server http://math.furman.edu/~mwoodard/mquot.html

This page points to a collection of mathematical quotations culled from many sources.   An example-

"Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics and teaching mathematics"--Siméon Poisson

Vatican Exhibit Main Hall at Library of Congress http://metalab.unc.edu/expo/vatican.exhibit/exhibit/Main_Hall.html