Aethelred II, known later as the Unready, was King of the English from 978 to 1013 and again from 1014 until his death. He came to the throne at the age of 12 after his half brother was murdered. At the start of his reign, Danish raids on English territory began in earnest. Aethelred defended his country by a diplomatic alliance with the duke of Normandy. The Battle of Maldon on 11. August 991 AD involved 2,000-4,000 fighting Viking men led by Olaf Tryggvason against the Anglo-Saxon leader Byrhtnoth who was the Ealdorman of Essex. This ended in defeat for the Anglo-Saxons and King Aethelred was forced to pay tribute, also known as Danegeld, to the Danish king. This payment of 10,000 Roman pounds of silver was the first example of Danegeld in England - a pattern which would follow. The Danish army continued ravaging the English coast until a Danegeld of 22,000 pounds of gold and silver was paid - at which point Olaf Tryggvason promised to never return. Viking attacks only grew worse - Danish raids would follow leading to an even larger Danegeld payment of 24,000 pounds for peace in the Spring of 1002 AD.

The same year, Aethelred married Lady Emma, the sister of Duke Richard II of Normandy in hopes of a stronger diplomatic alliance. On St. Brice's Day, 13. November 1002, the confident yet paranoid King ordered the killing of all Danes living on border towns such as Oxford. Aethelred described this massacre in his own words: ... a decree was sent out by me with the counsel of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat, were to be destroyed by a more just extermination, and thus this decree was to be put into effect even as far as death, those Danes who dwelt in the afore-mentioned town, striving to escape death, entered this sanctuary of Christ, having broken by force the doors and bolts, and resolved to make refuge and defence for themselves therein against the people of the town and the subrubs; but when all the people in pursuit strove, forced by necessitym to drive them out, and could not, they set fire to the planks and burnt, as it seems, this church with its ornaments and its books.

An ancient cemetery was discovered in Hassleben Thuringia which remained the richest ancient grave found in Germany for almost a hundred years. Not only was the oldest written Germanic word ever discovered etched onto a comb, but hundreds of Roman coins, ceramic fragments and Roman-style brooches were also discovered. This is no accident as much of our knowledge regarding Thuringia and broader Germania comes from the Roman historian Tacitus. The Elbe Germanic tribes who moved into this region were allies of the Romans who were trading partners, a buffer to the neighbouring Chatti - sworn enemies of Rome, as well as specialised in metalworking of iron and precious metals.

Here you can see the richly outfitted grave of the Princess of Hassleben which demonstrates the influential noble class who had a very close relationship with the Romans. She was a young woman buried with a choker, golden fibulae, a ring, a collier of roman glass beads, roman coins, pottery plates and vessels. In her mouth was a Roman gold coin - known as Charons obol - which would provide payment to Charon the ferryman to allow her soul to reach the world of the dead. Next to her remains lay the skeleton of a small dog - possibly her personal pet.

French revolutionists condemned King Louis XVI to death on 21. January 1793 by means of the guillotine at the Place de la Revolution in Paris (roughly where the Obelisk decorating the Place de la Concorde stands today). After a short but defiant speech he lost his head as the crowd rushed to the scaffold to dip hankerchiefs into his blood as momentos. An ornate gourd decorated with French Revolution themes was recently uncovered which had contained a blood soaked hankerchief dating to this time. The gourd was allegedly a gift to Napoleon Bonaparte who became First Consul of France in 1799 and Emperor in 1804. An anonymous Italian family was in its posession since possibly the late 1800s and came forward with the relic. It bears an inscription that Maximilien Bourdaloue on 21. January dipped his hankerchief in the blood of the king. Dried blood was scraped out and this is the same DNA we present in this DNA spotlight! The sample contains unsually high and rare markers for the Y-DNA haplogroup G2a.

Louis XVI's direct male line ancestor Henri IV was famous for enacting the Edict of Nantes which guaranteed religious liberties to Protestants ending 30 years of fighting between French Protestants and Catholics - he was assassinated in 1610 by a French Catholic zealot. The remains had been presumed lost in the chaos of the French Revolution after a mob of revolutionaries desecrated the graves of French kings in the royal chapel of Saint-Denis in Paris in 1793. However, the head was passed down over the centuries by secretive private collectors and positively identifed in 2010 with a radiocarbon date between 1450 and 1650. The features were consistent with the king's face including a dark mushroom-like lesion near the right nostrial, a healed facial stab wound and a pierced right earlobe. The hair color and moustache and beard on the mummified head fit the appearance of the king at the time of his death as well as matched his portraits. Furthermore cutting wounds were visible corresponding to the separation of the head from the body in 1793 and digital facial reconstruction of the skull matched the plaster mould of his face made just after his death in 1610. The DNA was then tested and compared to the blood from the gourd.