What an unbelievable honour to receive an MBE! Music has been my life and I’ve been very lucky to share this journey with many amazing people and fans, and I’m very grateful for all the support along the way. It's been a privilege doing something I love and then to see that music connect with so many over the years. And, to be able to help raise money for charities close to my heart has meant the world to me. Thank you, Tony (MBE!)
Gary Moore was a legendary Northern Irish blues guitarist widely regarded as one of the best blues guitarists of his generation
passed away at age 58 on 6-02 2011 in his sleep while on holiday in Spain
Fans around the world still remember and celebrate his legacy every 6-02
Most people know Tutankhamun — the boy king whose tomb and “Pharaoh’s Curse” still fascinate the world.
But ancient China had its own haunting story: a little girl’s stone coffin engraved with four chilling characters — “开者即死” — “Whoever opens this shall die.”
Her grave was a hidden treasure chest of love and luxury. Inside the house-shaped sarcophagus lay a simple jar of walnuts, slipped in by her grandmother who worried the child might get hungry in the afterlife.
A golden butterfly hairpin so delicate its paper-thin wings trembled as if about to flutter away. And a breathtaking necklace of gold beads, pearls, and deep-blue lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, crafted with Persian artistry.
How did a nine-year-old girl come to own such wonders?
The National Museum of China is now telling her story in the exhibition “Li Jingxun and Her Era.”
Her name was Li Jingxun (李静训) — “Little Child” to those who loved her. The person behind all this was her grandmother, Yang Lihua, a woman whose life read like a historical drama.
She had been Empress of the Northern Zhou, until her father Yang Jian seized power, killed her husband’s family and founded the Sui dynasty, turning her from empress into princess. In her later years, little Jingxun became her greatest source of joy.
In 608 CE, while traveling with her grandmother to a summer palace, the little girl suddenly fell ill and died within days. Devastated, Yang Lihua did something remarkable: she built her granddaughter a miniature palace as a coffin — complete with roof tiles, doors, windows, and tiny studs.
On the lid she engraved that powerful curse. In an age of Buddhist beliefs, it worked. For 1,400 years, grave robbers stayed away.
That jar of walnuts? It wasn’t listed in any official record. It was simply a grandmother’s quiet fear that her beloved granddaughter might go hungry in the next world.
The story gets even sadder. Six years later, Jingxun’s father was executed for alleged treason and her mother was forced to drink poison. Her grandmother passed away the following year, and the family was eventually wiped out in political purges.
In a twist of fate, dying at nine may have spared her from witnessing the horrors that awaited her family.
When archaeologists opened the tomb in 1957, they found far more than a child’s grave — they uncovered a perfect Silk Road time capsule.
That butterfly hairpin? The wings were made so thin and attached with hair-fine wires that they actually quiver with movement — a frozen instant of life captured in gold.
The necklace traces ancient global trade: 28 golden spheres adorned with pearls and Persian techniques, ending in lapis lazuli from Afghanistan engraved with a Sogdian unicorn-deer motif. In the early 7th century, treasures from Chang’an, Samarkand, Persia, and beyond all came together on a little girl’s neck.
Power eventually destroyed her family. But her grandmother’s curse kept her safe — wrapped forever in love, untouched by the bloodshed of her time.
A nine-year-old girl, wearing the world around her neck, resting peacefully in a palace-coffin sealed by a grandmother’s final promise.