Ötzi went "on tour" a few years back (minus the remains) and arrived in the National Museum in Oslo. I found the exhibition very interesting, if not quite worth all the hype that surrounded it.

Bryson might be exaggerating a little about the "most forensically studied" bit too, after all much of the expertise used to study his remains had been acquired from exactly the same procedures applied to other well preserved ancient remains. The National Museum in Dublin, for example, mounted what was meant to be a temporary exhibition of "bog bodies" a few years ago and it's still in full swing there, so popular did it prove. Every few months they run seminars and lectures connected to the bodies explaining, amongst other things, how they have been forensically examined and how this is a never-ending process as the techniques available become more sophisticated over time. Ôtzi gets quite a few mentions - quite a few countries, including Irish and UK universities which have many decades of expertise in this area now, contributed to the research surrounding his corpse.

The really interesting aspect to the Ötzi story, I found, was the hugely acrimonious competition that quickly blew up around his discovery over which country had first dibs on making money out of him - sorry, I mean leading the forensic examination. He had the bad manners to conk out right on a modern international border. This more than anything else seems to have fuelled the hype also, as each of the interested parties claimed superiority regarding how best to examine him. The result has been the whole forensic kitchen sink flung at the poor sod, though I'm not complaining as it has produced some excellent results with profound implications for the understanding of late neolithic settlement in the European interior.

Yes, Bryson mentioned he was found on the border of Austria and Italy and it caused something of a furore before it was decided in Italy's favour after a legal battle. (Found by Austrians, I gather). I do notice when I read Bryson's travel books that his humour which I love does come from exaggeration often. But I am not well-enough familiar with history to know what is exaggerated in these books. I only know that I am enjoying it very much and learning a lot (which I will have forgotten in two days!). 

I did think that John Snow was given credit for finding drinking water and the germs therein was the source of disease in London, but Bryson said not in his lifetime.

Snow did establish that contaminated water was the cause of the Broad Street pump outbreak, but he had died before Robert Koch isolated Vibrio cholerae as the bacterium that causes cholera.