u/AdEquivalent3160

He is so well-written; at the very least, he is one of the best-written in the whole manga.

Hakuji was a kind and caring human who was only trying to do the right thing. He took care of his dying father, and though he stole and fought to acquire the medicine his dad desperately needed, it was out of selflessness. Even after his father’s eventual suicide left Hakuji with no one and filled him with resentment towards the world, Hakuji was still able to start over again.

Hakuji was taken in by Keizo, the man who would become his master. Hakuji would also go on to care for his master’s sick daughter, Koyuki, whom he fell in love with and was to marry. Through his training with Keizo and caring for Koyuki 24/7, Hakuji’s heart found salvation, and it seemed as if he would finally be able to live a normal life, as his father wanted.

However it all came crashing down years later when Keizo and Koyuki were murdered by students of a rival dojo. The reasoning for the rival dojo’s horrendous act of poisoning Keizo’s well was beyond petty: they could not beat him or Hakuji in a fair fight. As was to be expected, Hakuji lost it and went on a rampage, wiping out all but one of the rival dojo’s people. It was right after the massacre that Hakuji was found by Muzan and became a demon.

Once becoming a demon, Hakuji, now called Akaza, subconsciously built his entire identity and beliefs off his past human life as Hakuji. Akaza never ate or killed women, a trait created from his subconscious memories of Koyuki. The color of his hair, eyebrows, and vest became part of the same color palette as the kimono Koyuki once wore. His compass needle technique became a snowflake, and Koyuki used to wear a three-snowflake hairpiece, with the latter part of her name containing the kanji for “snow” (yuki). Akaza’s obsession with strength came from his promise to Koyuki to get stronger and protect her for the rest of his life. Even his attacks and techniques were named after fireworks, again, his subconscious memories of Koyuki.

Despite being corrupted by Muzan and losing his memories, Akaza still remained deeply intertwined with his past life. That is how strong Hakuji’s love for Koyuki was. It was also that strong love that saved Akaza in the end, allowing him to finally be at peace with Koyuki, albeit in hell.

I love old Hollywood romance so much!! I will list the actors and actresses and what movie the scene is from for any person perhaps interested in watching said film.

(In chronological order from the video)  

Gary Cooper and Loretta Young—Along Came Jones (1945)

John Wayne and Gail Russell—Angel and the Badman (1947)

John Wayne and Laraine Day—Tycoon (1947)

John Wayne and Janet Leigh—Jet Pilot (1957)

James Stewart and Donna Reed—It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

James Stewart and Grace Kelly, Rear Window (1954)

Fredric March and Myrna Loy—The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

John Wayne and Geraldine Page—Hondo (1953)

All of them are great movies by the way. Though some are more underrated than others.

Barret had only 30 minutes of screen time in the entire show. Yet he stole every scene he was in as young Kreese and became my favorite character in the show. Like many, I loved seeing Kreese in a different light and showing us viewers how he became the merciless sensei we first saw back in KK1. 

 

Information comes from the 2015 canon novel Lords of the Sith by Paul Kemp.

In 14 BBY, members of the Free Ryloth movement, led by Cham Syndulla, father of Hera Syndulla from Star Wars Rebels and Ahsoka, were able to lure Vader and the Emperor into a pretty clever trap. As part of the trap, disguised members snuck aboard Vader's flagship at the time, the Perilous, and blew the entire Star Destroyer up from within. Though Vader eventually figured out that there were intruders aboard and quickly dealt with them, he realised it was too late to save his Star Destroyer. Before continuing, it must be noted that the Emperor had already foreseen these events. He simply let things play out as they did to root out the full scale of the rebellion and wipe them out for good in one swift stroke. Leaving his flagship in a Lambda-class T-4a shuttle, which he personally piloted for the sole reason that the Emperor was on board, Vader was engaged by more rebels and took some serious damage to his shuttle. Through some expert piloting, Vader was able to safely crash-land on the world of Ryloth just below. 

After departing their downed T-4a shuttle and without any way to communicate with allied forces off-world, Vader and Sidious, alongside some royal guards made their way through the surface of the planet, encountering rebels whom both Sith killed with ease and in epic displays of power. Vader and Sidious were supposedly being hunted by the Free Ryloth movement when, in actuality, it was the complete opposite: both Sith Lords were doing the hunting. During the venture on-world, the master and apprentice also came across and slaughtered an entire nest of lyleks, hundreds and hundreds in a single battle, including the queen. For anyone that doesn't already know, Lyleks were the apex predators on the planet. They are huge insectoid creatures that bear a pair of poison-coated tentacles and powerful stabbing limbs and jaws. Their thick exoskeletons were even strong enough to resist heavy blaster fire. To a mere mortal it would be difficult to kill a single lylek, but Vader and Sidious were far from such. 

Once reaching the surface following the battle at the Lylek nest, Vader, the Emperor, and a sole remaining royal guard called Deez came across a young Twi'lek girl named Drua. Sidious immediately attacked the girl, but Vader had sensed his master's intention and moved with greater speed, igniting his own blade and intercepting his master's before it hit the girl. The Emperor was not happy; however, Vader and he eventually came to an agreement: the girl could be of some use. Not knowing the true identities of the two beings before her, Drua led them back to her remote village, which unknowingly welcomed in the Sith Lords. The introductions came, with the Emperor introducing himself as Krataa and Vader as Irluuk, meaning 'death' and 'fate' in old Sith tongue. Drua also introduced the Emperor, Vader, and Deez to the rest of the villagers, which included her grandfather, Mala, and a pregnant Twi'lek named Naria.

With the welcomed travellers, the village began celebrating with music and food, while Vader and the Emperor sat around a big fire in the village centre, not joking either. But Vader wasn't just sitting still by the fire; he was repairing an old communications device that Drua had got from her grandfather. Eventually, the rebel fighters found Vader and the Emperor and launched an attack. The villagers fled into the nearby mining tunnels, their village's fortified hideout, and Vader mainly dealt with the rebels and slayed Isval, the lieutenant of Cham Syndulla.

The rebels may have been defeated, but it was not over yet, as there were still the villagers who saw too much. So Vader entered the mining tunnels where they were hiding and began slaughtering them, including Drua, Mala, Naria, and 35 others. As he was doing so, the emperor was only laughing, something that lingered in Vader's mind louder than the screams of the very people he was cutting down. When it was all said and done, Sidious praised Vader, and they subsequently left the world via an imperial shuttle dispatched by Moff Delian Mors.

I've seen lots of random posts about this photograph of a beautiful young woman from the early 1900s, but I never really saw anyone explain who she was. Being a history buff myself and wanting to know more, I did some research and got her full story.

Her name was Frances Virginia Lee, and she was born in June 1886 in Darien, Georgia. She was the third child of what would be eight total children of Sarah Ann Lee (birth 1860) and William James Rogers Lee (birth 1845). Frances's siblings were Susan Elizabeth Lee (1877-1959), George Washington Lee (1878-1933), David William Lee (1883-1910), Henry Grady Lee (1888-1968), Ethel Malilda Lee (1892-1973), Willie Pearl Lee (1894-1982), and Joseph Lemuel Lee (1896-1958).

In December of 1863, on the 18th birthday of France's father, William, he joined the 26th South Carolina Infantry, a Confederate regiment that formed the previous year. He served until the Civil War's end but also got very sick by then. So William was sent to a hospital near Richmond, Virginia, where he was discharged only five days after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. In early 1874, William had met and married 14-year-old Sarah Ann Huggins, who was also from South Carolina. By 1880, after their first two children were born, William and Sarah were still living in the state, doing so in Williamsburg. It was the following decade, circa 1896 when they finally moved the family to Florida.

By the year 1900, Frances, age 13, was living with her family in Leon County, Florida. Six years later, in March of 1906, a 19-year-old Frances Lee married 24-year-old John Pleasant Harris. Like her mother before, she too went on to have eight children, five sons and three daughters. James Edward Harris (1907-1973), John Cecil Harris (1908-1933), Donald Emanuel Harris (1910-1973), Douglas Kingsley Harris (1913-1983), Hazel Frances Harris (1914-2006), Mary Lee Harris (1917-1999), Sara Ann Harris (1919-1991), and Kenneth Hoover Harris (1921-1988). By 1910, Frances and John moved their family to Crawfordville, in Wakulla County, Florida, situated 27 miles away from Leon County (currently). By 1920, Frances and John returned to Leon County, residing in Woodville, where they remained for the rest of their lives. 

In late 1949, after 43 years of marriage, John and Frances filed for divorce. John went on to live to the age of 72, passing away in 1954. He was subsequently buried in Woodville cemetery. Frances lived even longer, also remaining in Leon County until her death in 1971, at the age of 84. By both of their deaths, none of France's parents were living. Sarah passed away in 1935 at age 74, with William dying at 90 years old the following year.  They are resting alongside Frances and some of their other children at Woodville Cemetery, in Leon County.

Born in Needham, Massachusetts, in 1871, Marriott would start working at the Stanley Motor Carriage Company, a company that was founded in 1897 and which manufactured steam-powered vehicles until 1924. In 1906, less than a decade after French racer Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat set the very first automobile land speed record driving an electric-powered car to an average speed of 39.24 mph in December 1898, Stanley decided to get involved in land speed. They constructed a steam-powered car to attack a record that would be known as the Stanley Rocket. It was a very light vehicle, weighing only 1600 pounds and coming in at three feet wide and 16 feet long, and was made from wood and canvas. Its power plant was a 3.1-liter twin-piston double-acting steam engine that was capable of producing upwards of 1000 psi and had 30 horsepower. 

On the 23rd of January, 1906, at Ormond Beach, just north of Daytona Beach, Florida, Marriott shattered the previous land speed record of 109.59 mph with 113.2 mph, and days later he broke that with 127.66 mph, doing the mile in just 28 1/5 seconds. Fred was not done, though. He returned to Ormond Beach the following year with an upgraded Stanley Rocket. While traveling at a speed estimated between 140 and 150 mph, he hit a hard rut in the beach and went airborne for 100 feet before crashing. It was a violent crash, with the Stanley Rocket ripping in half, nearly killing him. Following the accident, Fred Marriott never raced again. He continued to work at the Stanley Carriage Company, presumably until its closure in 1924, and would live until the age of 83, passing away in April 1956.

Frederick Arthur Dufty was born in February 1881 in Plymouth County, Iowa. He was the second-born child of Henry James Dufty (born 1849) and Mary Ann Clark Dufty (born 1860). Zaidah Grace Dufty, the Duftys' third and last child, was born more than two years after Fred, on the 3rd of June, 1883, in Sanborn County, South Dakota. Mary Dufty, their mother, was originally Canadian-born, migrating to the United States at the age of 18 in 1878. The same year she arrived in the U.S., she met and married 29-year-old Henry Dufty. He had emigrated to the United States from Canada as well, arriving by 1870, at the age of 19.

Zaidah and Fredrick grew up in Austin, Minnesota, and as of 1900, they were still living there. Sometime after they settled in Los Angeles, California. By early April 1902, Zaidah, now aged 18, married 22-year-old Ferdinand Ernest Michael La Com. La Com, like Zaidah's mother and father, emigrated to the United States, doing so in the 1880s from London, England, where he was born. In late 1902, Zaidah gave birth to her first child, Margaret May La Com, born on the 7th of November 1902. By mid-1908, she was pregnant with her second child, who was soon to be expected.

Also by 1908, her older brother, Fredrick Dufty, a car machinist, was living in a one-story home, which was situated back from street view on Mountview Avenue in Los Angeles alongside father, Henry Dufty, age 60, who by then seemed to be separated from his wife Mary. On the morning of the 13th of August, 1908, around 7 o'clock, Fredrick was asleep when, out of nowhere, Henry entered his room with a sharpened ax and brutally murdered him. The first blow was to Fred's neck, and it was powerful enough to nearly sever his head from his body, which, of course, killed him instantly. Following the slaying of his 27-year-old son, Henry immediately headed to a home on Northwest Lake Avenue, which was only minutes away on foot. That residence was occupied by his daughter, 25-year-old Zaidah La Com, and husband Ferdinand. Mrs. Mary Dufty was, by this point, temporarily living with her daughter and son-in-law to help care for Zaidah following her child's birth, which was only days away.

At the La Com residence that fateful morning, Mary and Zaidah were preparing breakfast for Henry and Fredrick but could have never known that Fred had already been murdered by his own father. It was during that time of preparation, at 8 o'clock, when Henry Dufty arrived, entering the home through the rear. The absence of Fred was immediate, and either Mary or Zaidah asked Henry about his whereabouts. Henry then made up excuses about Fred's absence, and it worked; none of the women suspected anything, as there was no reason to. For the next two to three minutes Zaidah was getting the dining room table ready, laying the cloth down and placing the dishes. Mary remained in the kitchen preparing, where Zaidah's daughter, 6-year-old Margaret, was playing. Everything at this moment was perfectly normal, with Zaidah and Mary engaging in a regular conversion. Henry Dufty was also in the kitchen, tumbling through an old gunny sack that contained an ax. There was nothing suspicious about that either, as every day for nearly a month, Henry had come to breakfast carrying an ax. So his wife and daughter had become quite used to that strange yet regular occurrence. Like I mentioned before, there was no way Mary or Zaidah could have ever known what Henry did only an hour before he arrived. 

At some point all the women were gathered in the kitchen, and that's when all hell broke loose. Without anything warning whatsoever, Henry pulled out the ax from the sack and attacked Mary, who was the closest to him. But unlike Fredrick, who was sleeping when he was attacked, Mary had the chance to fight back, and she did so. She was able to briefly hold back Henry, fighting over the weapon. In the struggle for the ax, Mary was wounded; the ax took a gash from her arm, and blood was spilling out of the wound and all over her clothes, but she still kept fighting. At the same time, Zaidah pushed her young daughter Margaret from the kitchen into the small dining room, and soon followed her. Mary finally let go of the ax and made a run for it. Making her way through the dining room, she saw Margaret by a door that led to the outside porch and instantly grabbed her. Everything was happening so fast that Mary never realized that Zaidah had stumbled and fell to her hands and knees in her attempt to escape due to her being seriously pregnant. By the time she got back on her feet, it was already too late; Henry was upon her. Mary was outside on the front porch by then. All she heard was a suppressed scream before a crashing sound, as if something fell to the ground.

Mrs. Mary Dufty managed to make it safely across the street to the neighbors. That woman, Mrs. Evelyn Leeman, immediately took in a terrified and desperate Mary and her six-year-old granddaughter. She kept them quiet until a few minutes passed, when she realized Henry was not coming. Soon after they went back to the house and found that Henry had escaped out the back. The scene there was horrific; blood was spattered for feet around the dining room where Zaidah was lying face down. The first blow from Henry's ax went into her skull in a line running from the top of one ear diagonally down to the middle of her back. The other severed her head, with only a little portion of her skin remaining on her neck. 

Police and officials from the coroner's office arrived soon after and took away Zaidah's body, with Mary being taken to the receiving hospital. The horrendous scene was then cleaned up by women living in the neighborhood. Having killed his son, daughter, and unborn grandchild, Henry returned to his son's residence on Mountview Avenue and attempted suicide. But police were able to get there in time and subdue him, though it was not easy as it took three officers to get him under control. Following Henry being taken into custody, he too was brought to the hospital to be treated for his throat wound from his attempted suicide. While in the hospital Henry confessed to detectives and claimed he was insane. That seemed to fit, considering he likely suffered from some kind of mental illness, as he admitted that his mind was not clear on the circumstances that led to the murders but that he was compelled to do so by a powerful force he could not resist. The statement of Doctor Barber, superintendent of the county hospital, would also lean towards the belief that Henry had a mental illness. Barber states that Henry was delusional, was obsessed with religious fantasies, and was affected by paranoia. But there is also a fact that was discovered only after the tragedy, which contradicts Henry being insane. That Henry, months before committing the murders, had purchased three coffins and a grave lot/markers, one for himself and the other two for his son and daughter, possibly suggesting a premeditated act. Still, Henry Dufty would serve no prison time but was instead sent to a mental institution, where he remained for the rest of his life.

The funeral of Fredrick Dufty and his younger sister Zaidah La Com occurred at the chapel of Pierce Brothers on the 15th of August, 1908, and was preceded by Reverend John W. Thursby. Following the services, the two white caskets were conveyed in hearses to Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles, California. Mrs. Dufty did not attend the funeral, stating she did not want to see the bodies of her kids; instead, she remained at the matron's department of the receiving hospital. The only relatives to attend were Zaidah's widowed husband, Ferdihand, alongside his mother, brother, and sister. Subsequently, the interment of Fred and Zaidah took place in the lot purchased by their murderer father. They were buried side by side, with Zaidah's unborn child also laid to rest with her. When Henry Dufty died in 1910, at the age of 61, while still at Southern California State Asylum for the Insane and Inebriates, now called Patton State Hospital, he too was buried alongside his kids. His grave lies right in between Fred and Zaidah.

Ferdinand La Com was at work when everything occurred, but he eventually moved on with his life following the loss of his wife and unborn child. In 1918 he married a woman named Blanche Charlotte Heinmiller (1890-1979) and would go on to have two sons, Alfred Lee La Com (1921-?) and Wayne Carl La Com (1922-?). Ferdinand would live until the age of 72, passing away in 1952. Mrs. Mary Dufty basically had a nervous breakdown following her kid's murders, but she would live to a pretty old age of 71 years, passing away in 1932. As for Zadiah's only surviving child, six-year-old Margaret, well, she went to live with her father, Ferhanhand, and his family. In November 1920, Margaret, age 18, married William Alexander Conners (1901-?). They had one daughter, Mary Louise Connors, who was born three years later in 1923. Margaret lived a long life, passing away in 1995 at 92 years old. Mary Conners, on the other hand, married Harold Andrew Lichnecker (1919-1997) in late 1949. Their marriage lasted for the rest of their lives and would produce no children. Mary died at the age of 75 in 1999.

 

Leila Adele Welsh was born on the 7th of November 1916 in Lee's Summit, Jackson County, Missouri. She was the youngest daughter of what would be four total children of George Winston Welsh Sr. (1880-1952) and Marie Fleming Welsh (1883-1965). Her siblings were James Breath Welsh (1908–1909), Mary Frances Welsh (1909–1979), and George Winston Welsh Jr. (1913–1979).

Leila came from a prominent family; her grandfather, James Welsh (1852-1926), was a wealthy real estate magnate in Kansas City, Missouri. Her childhood was normal, she grew up on her family's farm and attended a local schoolhouse near where she was born, later furthering her education in her hometown as well. In 1935, Leila enrolled in the newly opened University of Kansas City, now called the University of Missouri-Kansas City, having previously gone to Western College, a girls' school that opened in Oxford, Ohio, in 1855 and the same school her grandmother was president of from 1888 to 1904. By all means she was a very bright and beautiful student; she quickly became popular, and her friends eventually started calling her “Lee.” Her grades were above average, and she joined the Cho Chin sorority and was an officer of the Women's Pan Hellenic Council. During her junior year at college, circa 1937, she was among the finalists for a beauty contest that was sponsored by the Kansas City University's yearbook. In 1938, for training purposes in connection to her studies, Leila began teaching at Ruhl-Hartman School in the outskirts of Kansas City.

Years before, at some point in 1935, while attending university, she met a man named Richard W. Funk, whom she started dating. Unlike Leila, Richard was from a working-class background; he was a Western Union messenger boy with no interest in attending college and was an employee at an oil company at the time. They dated on and off for years, until the fall of 1938, when Leila graduated from college and left to teach grade school in Knoxville, Illinois. Leila taught grade school in Illinois until 1940, when she quit at her mother's request. Returning home, Leila and Richard had started going out again, the last time being March 9, 1941, when he escorted her home at 1:30 am after going out on a date to a circus that was sponsored by the local police.

Less than two hours later, sometime before 3 o'clock in the morning, 24-year-old Leila Welsh was brutally murdered after a perpetrator entered her family's home at 6109 Rochill Road through her opened bedroom window.  Leila's body was discovered by her mother, Marie Welsh, at 9:15 am, when she went to her daughter’s room to wake her for church. Marie had discovered the door to her daughter's room was jammed but managed to open it with a hard push. That's when she found out that a chair had been propped against the door, seemingly to prevent it from being opened. Finally entering the room, she saw her daughter on the bed and with the sheets pulled over her head as if she were sleeping. When Marie tried to wake Leila, she saw that her face was covered in blood; that's when she realized her daughter was dead.

The authorities arrived on the scene soon after, followed by then Kansas City police chief and former FBI agent Lear Broadus Reed (1900-1972). What Reed discovered at the Welsh home was horrific, poor Leila was mutilated and beaten, her skull had been crushed in numerous spots from blows by a 5-pound hammer, which is what killed her. To make things even more disturbing, the perpetrator then covered her neck with a shirt he had stolen from a neighbor's garage, slashing and stabbing her throat with a butcher's knife until the cut was into the vertebra before stuffing the shirt into the gaping wound. Then the killer cut off a piece of Leila's flesh from her right buttocks, as if he was collecting a trophy. The killer exited through the window he came in, walked across backyards and down the alley, leaving a trail of evidence behind him. He left the murder weapon, the hammer, in Welsh’s bedroom and stuck the butcher knife in the ground in the backyard. He discarded the piece of Leila's flesh in another yard, 100 yards away from the Welsh home, along with a pair of small, bloody cotton gloves and washed his hands in snowmelt, creating a bloody puddle. The crime scene yielded no fingerprints except for a pair on the outside of the windowsill. These fingerprints would later be identified as those of Leila’s older brother, George Welsh Jr.

The funeral service of Leila Welsh was held not even two days after her murder, at McClure Chapel, Kansas City, Missouri, at 11:30 am on Tuesday, the 11th of March, 1941, and was preceded by Reverend James Lapsley McKee (1864–1942). Her services drew a thousand people, including police, sympathizers, and hundreds of students from the university she attended. The funeral entourage arrived in Carrollton, Missouri, 70 miles away from Kansas City, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and Leila was subsequently buried at Oak Hill Cemetery, where she currently rests alongside her father, George; mother, Maire; and baby brother, James. 

Through the investigation, a number of suspects came and went, as police dealt with tips and false leads. Perhaps a shocking suspect was none other than Leila's own brother, 28-year-old George Welsh Jr., who was actually indicted and put on trial for his sister's murder, originally being arrested on the 22nd of January 1942.  The evidence against her brother was his fingerprints, which were found on her windowsill, where the unknown perpetrator entered Leila's room. There was also a hardware business owner named Joseph Louis Alport who had sold the knife to the killer and who claimed he could surely identify him. At first he gave the investigators a vague description of the man he sold the knife to, that being a short, 30-40-year-old man with auburn hair. But a month later Alport showed up at the station and claimed he remembered the identity of the man he sold the knife to as George Welsh Jr. That was somewhat suspicious considering the detectives already showed him photographs of suspects, including one of Leila's brother, yet Alport claimed that it wasn't the man. Despite the suspicious nature, the arrest and trial of George Welsh Jr. occurred.

However, on the 17th of April, 1943, the jury decided unanimously that George Welsh Jr. was innocent of the murder of his sister. Following that verdict there were never any more arrests made in Leila's case, including that of 25-year-old Richard Funk, who, to what I could find, was never really a suspect in Leila's murder. Despite the best efforts of Chief Reed and all those involved, Leila's murder remains unsolved to this day, more than 85 years after her death. 

Esther Ann Granger was born on the 26th of October 1848 in Lake County, Indiana. She was the third born of what would be six total children of Hascal Granger (1823-1877) and Eunice Dibble Granger (1826-1915). Her siblings were Charles A. Granger (1843–1921), Zara Granger (1844–1862), Sarah "Sallie" Granger Crisman (1850–1925), Evelyn Augusta "Eva" Granger Knode (1861–1930), and Flora Granger (1862–1864).

On the 20th of December 1864, Esther, aged 16, married a 27-year-old Civil War veteran named Zalmon Edward Peck (1837-1923). About a year and a half later, Esther, now age 17, gave birth to a daughter, Esther Ann Peck, doing so on the 29th of May 1866. Though unfortunately she died soon after due to complications from giving birth. Esther was then given a proper funeral and burial in Merrillville, Indiana. Esther's only child would live until 30 years old, dying in 1897. Though she did marry in 1882 to John Henry Matheson (1855-1936), and together they would have five children, four sons and a daughter. As for what happened to her widowed husband Zalmon, well, he would remarry in March 1867 to Elizabeth Jane Curtis (1845-1922). They would be married for the remainder of both of their lives and would have nine children, the last passing away in 1967.

In November 1978, over 112 years after Esther Granger passed away, a man was doing renovations on his home in Batavia, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago 80 miles from Merrillville, where Esther was buried. When knocking down a wall, he came across a human skull. Following the discovery, the man contacted Batavia police, who confirmed it was indeed human and opened an investigation. The investigators did the best they could given the resources they had at the time, but the most they were able to do is surmise that the skull belonged to a young female who had died sometime before the year 1900. The case grew cold and by 1979 the skull ended up at the local Batavia Depot Museum, where it would eventually be forgotten about. 

Decades later in 2021, employees at the museum were cleaning up the inventory and came across the skull in a box. Of course they alerted the authorities, who were then able to find the police report from 1978. But unlike the investigators back then, the new ones had more tools available to solve the mystery behind the skull. Originally it was sent to the cold case unit of the coroner’s office for further investigation, where it remained for two years. In 2023, Ortham stepped in and, using their own state-of-the-art forensic genetic genealogy technology, were able to confirm the skull belonged to 17-year-old Esther Granger. They were even able to track down and test the DNA of Esther's living great-great-grandson, which also confirmed they had the right identity.

Though the identity behind the skull was finally revealed after forty-plus years since it was found, there were still unanswered questions. Like, how did the skull of a young teenager who had died in 1866 and who was also properly buried end up in the wall of a house in a different state, 80 miles away from her burial? The most logical answer to that was that Esther's grave was robbed at some point following her death. Grave robbing was common at the time and was quite lucrative, so it's a good possibility, though we can never say for certain that it was that. 

Tommy finally had everything, though unbeknownst to him it would be short lived. 

First off, I have to say that I've never really been a John Wayne fan, but I was always a fan of old movies and Hollywood. Eventually I decided to start watching his films, and I was not disappointed one bit. Whether he was playing a gunslinger or a Civil War general or even a retired boxer returning to his ancestral home in Ireland to live out a quiet life, his performances were all great. Then I came across Tycoon, a 1947 film about an American railroad engineer (John Wayne) who is tasked with building a railroad through a dangerous mountain in a South American town but who ends up falling in love with the rich builder's daughter (Laraine Day). It being a Duke film, I ended up watching it. As with John Wayne's other films, Tycoon 1947 was actually great. It was a lot better than what the review scores paint.

John Wayne turned in a solid performance as Johnny Munroe, a down-to-earth man who is just trying to do the job that he was hired to do yet gets dragged into an impossible battle with an unrelenting rich figure that wants him to fail at all costs. Laraine Day turned in a solid performance as Maura Alexander, the daughter Munroe ends up falling in love with. She was nothing like the typical rich woman you may think of, and like the duke, her character was also likable and down-to-earth. I also have to commemorate Cedric Hardwicke's performance as Alexander, the rich father of Maura, whom I hated dearly in the film. I guess it shows how good the actor was at playing a character that is so unlikable yet is still one of the best in the film. There were other good performances from the more secondary characters in the film, but it was Wayne, Day, and Hardwicke who turned in the most notable ones for me. But it's not just the cast that makes Tycoon such a good movie; the sets and scenery were quite beautiful, and the pacing was good. In all, I recommend anyone to give this severely underrated Duke film a watch if they have not seen it already.

Every scene with Tommy and Grace was amazing in the show. But the scene where Tommy gives Grace the cursed sapphire is my favorite of theirs by far, besides the one with Tommy, Grace, and Charlie at the stables. Tommy at this point was at his happiest and was on a path of healing before, unfortunately, tragedy struck later on, forever changing Thomas for the worst.