Italian scientists have disappointed generations of love poets - and uncovered what could be a crime mystery dating back hundreds of years.
Tests have shown that the head of one of Italy's most-highly revered writers - the renaissance poet Francesco Petrarch - isn't his.
The finding has put a damper on plans to mark the 700th anniversary of his birth this year.
Petrarch is the man who fine-tuned the poetic form known as the sonnet - for centuries since the poem of choice for love-sick poets everywhere.
Quarrying of sand on beach damages ancient burial site
AN ANCIENT burial site has been damaged after an estimated 1,000 tonnes of sand was removed from a beach in the north of Scotland without permission.
It is being claimed the action exposed human remains from the Pictish cemetery at Ackergill on the Hempriggs Estate in Caithness.
Highland Council said the sand was removed without planning permission and police have been notified along with Historic Scotland. A council spokesman said the material was taken to a contractor's yard near Watten and left a "gaping hole" in the sand, damaged a Second World War look-out post, and disturbed the Picto-Norse cemetery.
He added: "No planning permission had been sought for the removal of the sand, contrary to planning rules."
Not archaeology, but kind of cool Da Vinci Invented Car Forerunner
April 25, 2004 — A spring-propelled car conceived by Leonardo da Vinci five centuries ago could have paved the way for the Mars rovers, an eight-month study of a drawing by the Renaissance genius has revealed.
Drawn on sheet number 812r of the Atlantic Codex in 1478, when Leonardo was 24 years old, the sketch has been translated into a one-third scale model at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence.
Amazingly, the wooden 5-foot by 5-foot, 6-inch model, on display at the museum until June 5, has proved what has been doubted for centuries: the machine actually moves.
Kinda stretching it, in our opinion. A relatively smart horse attached to a buggy seems a more autonomous bit of automotive engineering than a couple of wooden blocks and a rope. But we digress. . . .