Another week, another interesting corpse
That’s what I love about Britain — scratch the surface, find an interesting corpse. Or, in this case, dig down eight feet and find fifty thousand plague riddled corpses.
Yes! The Crossrail Project has dug up a plague pit! Well, they think so. They’ve only uncovered thirteen bodies so far, but if it’s the one they’re thinking of (really, they have so many 14th C plague pits to keep track of. What’s a capital city to do?) there are as many as 50,000 bodies to go.
Eight feet down. That really doesn’t seem good enough, does it? It’s in a part of the city that has seen relatively little development (no skyscrapers or anything), which is how it’s remained lost for so long.
It was all over the news tonight. Plague doesn’t survive long in the soil, but they think they may be able to isolate some Yersinia pestis specimens in the tooth dentin. Which doesn’t strike me as very bright, even if they do manage to sequence its genome.
This isn’t the first cemetery this rail project has accidentally dug up. They also unearthed three hundred former guests at Bedlam. Oh, and not long after construction dug up Richard III in a parking lot in Leicester, they’ve dug up a knight in a parking lot in Edinburgh.
It’s like some really twisted game show.
Have a good weekend! Sweet dreams, and don’t dig any holes!
March 15, 2013 — 11:32 pm
Comments: 46
Oh, Amsterdam
Amsterdam’s oldest prostitutes. They’re seventy. They’re twins. And their name is Fokkens. Of course it is.
After fifty years, seven children and and 355,000 men between them, they’re retiring. Of course they are.
Arthritis comes to us all.
— 12:00 am
Comments: 26