King Richard III's skeleton found under a parking lot
King Richard III’s skeleton was found under a Leicester, England, parking lot. When I read this story the first time, I was amazed. For all the importance placed on royalty in England, how could this happen with an English king? I mean, how do you misplace a king? The skeleton was discovered in August 2012 when the ground was excavated in a city council parking lot. The bones were taken to the University of Leicester where they underwent DNA testing to confirm that they matched that of members of the Royal Family. With the confirmation, the bones will be reinterred in the Leicester Cathedral. The bones were carbon dated to between 1455 and 1540 and were from a man in his late 20s or early 30s. The skeleton also had 10 injuries with two that were potentially fatal. Richard III Read more…
King Louis' blood found in a gourd
While my first love is American history, there are times when world history can certainly woo me. I found this story today had visions of Monarch Park instead of Jurassic Park where the DNA of former kings are used to recreate them. French King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette were beheaded with a guillotine more than two centuries ago. That is something I remembered from history classes in school. However, I had never heard that someone sopped up the king’s blood with a handkerchief and stored it in a gourd. A wealthy Italian family owns the gourd, which has pictures of people from the French Revolution emblazoned on it. Text on the gourd reads: “On January 21, Maximilien Bourdaloue dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his decapitation.” Inside the gourd is dried blood, but Read more…
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