This day in history - 12:06:1270.4

On this day Grand Wizard Michael Devious of the Fourth Planum was awarded Gurdendorf’s highest medal for gallantry and down right bloody mindedness - Posthumously. By order of the King, and by that we mean Prime Minister Grypp, Devious was instructed to discover the magic that created Firedust. With a rudimentary knowledge of chemicals and a little information supplied by various spies and agents, Devious quickly found a method for removing his eyebrows in the blink of an eye, while deafening everyone around for an area of two streets.  Subsequent experiments lead to the burning down of two laboratories, several carts and at least seven cats that were too stupid to realise that sleeping on warm roof tiles anywhere near Devious’s location was a spectacularly bad career move. After several weeks of near misses and burned lab coats, Devious moved to a new location outside the city walls. In doing so, he also changed his ‘modus operandi’ and employed several laboratory assistants who he used like human guinea pigs, while sheltering behind a large mound of earth. Unfortunately, with a rising death toll amongst the lab assistants and a lack of a decent union, one of the hapless fellows decided he’d had enough of fire and possible damnation, flinging the latest experiment over his shoulder and legging it.  With a nudge from fate, the small container of the latest experiment sailed over Devious’s earth defences and landed at his feet.  His last words were not recorded for posterity, probably because they were too rude to print, but it is noted that, in death, Michael Devious had become the first man to invent the hand grenade - if not a very, very unstable one.