Napolean's Legacy: Ashes, Tombs and DNA

In perhaps the same way that Americans prattle on about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the French never tire of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte.In fairness, the circumstances surrounding the Little Corporal’s later years, death and burial are…unusual. At age 46, he was exiled to the godforsaken island of St. Helena. He was still under English custody when he died, five years later, of stomach cancer, and the Brits refused his final wish: to be buried on the banks of the Seine. So the body of Europe’s most famous emperor was buried, sans pomp, underneath three stone slabs and two droopy willow trees.Read more at...The Last Word on Nothing, 2010.