Happy Guy Fawkes Day

Most people are familiar with the face, but I’m guessing not as many really know the interesting story behind the man, Guy Fawkes, who is now a symbol of anarchy.

 Wintour introduced Fawkes to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters secured the lease to an undercroft beneath the House of Lords, and Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder they stockpiled there. Prompted by the receipt of an anonymous letter, the authorities searched Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and found Fawkes guarding the explosives. Over the next few days, he was questioned and tortured, and eventually he broke. Immediately before his execution on 31 January, Fawkes jumped from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, thus avoiding the agony of the mutilation that followed.

Here is a more entertaining version than the Wikipedia entry, and with a much snazzier headline: Guy Fawkes 2013: From timid testicles to gunpowder plot truthers, ten things about bonfire night you probably didn't know

And if ten are too many, here are five things to know about the Fifth of November.