Updates: Fine Crystal and Astronomical Murder

UPDATE: Waterford Crystal Factory Still Shut Down
The venerable Waterford Crystal glass factory in Ireland is still shut down, despite its sale to an American firm. According to the most recent story in the Irish Times, the rights to the "Waterford" name will be used by the purchaser, American firm KPS Capital, but whether the goods that name will be attached to will be ones actually manufactured in Waterford is still up in the air. If, years from now, you splurge on a fine bit of glass from "Waterford," you might do well to Czech the box to see where it was really made.

UPDATE: Kepler Exonerated! Tycho Done In by Contract Hit!
About a year ago, this blog laid out a series of bits of evidence that legendary Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe was murdered, and that a prime suspect in his murder was none other than Johannes Kepler. Recent evidence seems to exonerate Kepler, but swivels the finger of suspicion at a more famous figure of the time, Danish King Christian IV. Christian IV evidently paid off a Brahe family member to off Tycho, based on some sordid family issues. There is now even some speculation that Shakespeare's famous line in Hamlet that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark" may have been an allusion to the affair, since that work and Tycho's murder were pretty much contemporaneous.