"This is why I read history."

It turns out that back in the '80s, when corporate executives came up with the idea of a "poison pill" to make their firms less attractive to hostile takeovers, they were lifting a page from Queen Elizabeth's book. Four hundred years earlier, she had drafted the Bond of Association, signed by all the members of her privy council, as well as thousands of other volunteers from across her realm, in which they swore that, in the event of her murder, they would not only kill her killers, but anyone who laid claim to the throne as a result of her demise, _regardless of their innocence_, **I'm looking at you, Mary Queen of Scots.**

This is why I read history.

via Colin MacDonald - Poison Pill .