They were TOUGH in the old days!

from an article originally published last summer

A skeleton discovered in Stirling Castle has shed new light on the violent life of a medieval knight.

Archaeologists believe that bones discovered under the stone-paved floor of a chapel in the castle may have belonged to an English knight named Robert Morley, who is recorded as having died during a tournament in 1388.

Analysis of the skeleton shows that its owner was in his mid-twenties when he died and had suffered several serious wounds in earlier fights.

He had survived for some time with a large arrowhead lodged in his chest and bone re-growth around a dent in the front of his skull indicates that he had also recovered from a severe blow from an axe.

Remarkably, neither killed him.

Indeed, it would take rather more than one arrow or one axe to kill ROBERT MORELY! :-)



Only now, they think

(a) it wasn't the English knight Robert Morely

(b) they have a reconstruction of what he looked like.

(no subject)

Today's other "news from Scotland as filtered through the Footstompin web forum" item concerns a sort of helmet, though not the sort worn by Sir Robert Morely (or Sir Rab Mairly or le Sieur Rrrrrobert de la Plus, or whoever he was).

Instead, it's a space age helmet designed to bring people together, not help out in fights.

(no subject)

On this page with its map of the current Gulf oil spill, these comforting words:

The largest accidental spill of all time was also in the Gulf of Mexico. Ixtoc I, a two-mile deep exploratory well, leaked at an estimated rate of 10,000 to 30,000 barrels per day for almost ten months until it was capped in March 1980.

According to independent academic estimates (hotly disputed by BP, of course), the current spill may be producing over 100,000 barrels a day.

Thanks to kmusser for the link.