The discovery of Ötzi the Iceman is being marked by a court fight among a group of four people, one of them deceased, who all lay claim to the reward for finding the world's oldest and best-preserved mummy.
According to the sensational court case under way in Bolzano, Italy, German hiker Helmut Simon, his wife Erika, a Swiss woman and a Slovenian actress say they found Ötzi on Sept. 19, 1991, in a melting glacier in the Ötztal Alps.
Ötzi is now resting in a refrigerated room at the South Tyrol Archaeological Museum in Bolzano, which attracts around 300,000 visitors a year.
How bizarre is this. First we'd heard about this, too. First there was the court fight over which country ought to have him and now it's about who discovered him. Sometimes maybe we think the idea of burying ourselves in permafrost isn't such a good idea after all.
On the other hand, it's kind of fun to think of all the trouble we'd cause long after our death. . . .