Today's announcement of the upcoming resignation of Pope Benedict XVI made me think back to one of the very first news stories I remember: the death of Pope John XXIII in 1963, when I was six. We weren't Roman Catholic, and I didn't know what a pope was, but I was intrigued by what I thought was his last name: XXIII. I asked my mother about it and she explained it was Roman numerals.
Mom was more forthcoming about Roman numerals than she was, the previous summer, when the TV news reported the death of Marilyn Monroe. The reporter described her as a "sex symbol," and I asked Mom about that, too, but she thought that was something a five year old shouldn't know about!
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