WTF Is It Now?!?

EXHIBITION OF ELIZABETHAN OBJECTS TO OPEN
The secret which Elizabeth I carried to her deathbed is finally to be publicly revealed, after 400 years. The beautiful diamond ruby gold and mother of pearl ring, taken from her body in 1603, and unveiled yesterday at the National Maritime Museum, will go on public display for the first time next year in an exhibition at the museum - built on the south London site of Greenwich Palace, where she was born.

Her diamond initial concealed a secret compartment with a portrait of her mother Anne Boleyn, who lost the king's love and her own head when Elizabeth was just two. The little girl would later be declared a bastard by her brother Edward, then jailed and threatened with execution by her sister Mary, as each in turn ascended the shaky Tudor throne.

According to legend, the ring was taken from her finger when she died at her palace at Richmond upon Thames, south-west London, in 1603, by Robert Carey. He then rode non-stop, reaching the Scottish border in three days, to bring the news to James VI of Scotland that he was now James I of England.

The ring is now part of the collection at Chequers, the country mansion reserved for the use of the prime minister of the day, and has never before been loaned. - More at The Guardian.