#Books: Inferno by Dan Brown

Nursery Rhyme "Ring-a-ring o' roses" is related to the Great Plague of England? Shocking!

Out of the blue, a childhood nursery rhyme jumped into Sienna’s mind: Ring around the rosie. A pocketful of posies. Ashes, ashes. We all fall down.

She used to recite the poem as a schoolgirl in England until she heard that it derived from the Great Plague of London in 1665. Allegedly, a ring around the rosie was a reference to a rose-colored pustule on the skin that developed a ring around it and indicated that one was infected. Sufferers would carry a pocketful of posies in an effort to mask the smell of their own decaying bodies as well as the stench of the city itself, where hundreds of plague victims dropped dead daily, their bodies then cremated. Ashes, ashes. We all fall down.

[#History] Rare Image of Mary Queen of Scots Found

You must know about Queen Elizabeth I of England; she was Queen of England and Ireland from 1558 to 1603. She was the last ruler from Tudor Dynasty of England because she did not marry. And hence she is also called the Virgin Queen.

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots also had a claim on the throne of England. In the eyes of many Catholics, Elizabeth was illegitimate, and Mary Stuart, as the senior descendant of Henry VIII's elder sister, was the rightful queen of England.

Mary was imprisoned by Elizabeth in 1568 where she remained for 19 years. In 1587, she was accused of being part of a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth and executed by beheading. After beheading her, the executioner held her head in his hand and shouted "God save the Queen." Suddenly the head fell on earth while the hair remained in his hand - it turned out to be a wig since Mary had lost her hair due to her travails during imprisonment!

Now, "a rare portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, as she would have looked as she languished in captivity in England some four-and-a-half centuries ago, has been discovered underneath a later painting of a Scottish nobleman.

In a sense, the newly discovered portrait of her mirrors that tragedy – for the project to paint her was abandoned halfway through, almost certainly as a result of her trial and execution."

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/rare-ghostly-image-of-mary-queen-of-scots-found-beneath-artwork/articleshow/61280654.cms

- Rahul