The Heart of a King, and the Head of a Communist

This one is news to me, but apparently the heart of Louis XVII of France has been identified via DNA and was given a royal funeral by French royalists yesterday. Now a rock-hard, barely recognizable nugget in a crystal jar, it was apparently cut out of the dead king's chest (he was a boy of only 10 and died in a revolutionary prison of TB) and passed around as a secret souvenir for years.

Ok. Well, long live the king.

And a 9 foot high, giant bust of former Soviet leader and KGB director Yuri Andropov has been erected in Petrozavodsk, Russia, apparently upon the urging of local war veterans. Still, Russians liberals are a bit creeped out to have a giant KGB head looking at them. My favorite understated line from the BBC story: "But liberal groups have condemned the giant head."