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Thomas Percy

Thomas Percy was a member of the failed Gunpowder Plot. Following King James's accession to the English throne in 1603, Percy became disenchanted with the new king, who he supposed had reneged on his promises of toleration for English Catholics. He joined Robert Catesby's conspiracy to kill the King and his ministers by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder. Percy helped fund the group and secured the leases to properties in London, including the undercroft beneath the House of Lords where the gunpowder was placed. When the plot was exposed on 5 November 1605, Percy fled to the Midlands, catching up with other conspirators travelling to Dunchurch. At the border of Staffordshire, they were besieged by the Sheriff of Worcester and his men. Percy was reportedly killed by the same musket ball as Catesby and was buried nearby. His body was later exhumed, and his head exhibited outside Parliament. (This article is part of a featured topic: Gunpowder Plot.)

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Tentacled flathead

The tentacled flathead (Papilloculiceps longiceps) is a species of marine fish belonging to the flathead family, Platycephalidae. It is found in the western Indian Ocean, including the Red Sea, and also in the Mediterranean Sea, probably as a result of migration through the Suez Canal. The tentacled flathead is a well camouflaged, ambush predator of fish and crustaceans, living near coral reefs on sand or rubble substrates at depths of up to 15 metres (49 feet). The species has an elongate body, with a maximum published length of 70 centimetres (28 inches), although 50 centimetres (20 inches) is more typical. It has a depressed head with five prominent nuchal spines, ridges on its operculum and preoperculum, a spine on the rear of the suborbital ridge, and smaller spines elsewhere. The body is mottled brownish or greenish dorsally, and whitish ventrally. There are three or four dark bands on the caudal fin, and the other fins are marked with large, dark blotches. This tentacled flathead was photographed in the Red Sea in Ras Muhammad National Park, off the southern coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso


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