1.   Perhaps, like the lead coffin of Osiris, which suffered a similar fate, it is the real secret of alchemy.

2.   Lead coffins were very rare in colonial America, and could only be afforded by the very rich.

3.   Legend has it that Sarah Helen was put to death in her home town of Blackburn for practising witchcraft, locked alive inside a lead coffin.

4.   In fact, it was the body of William Shy, a Civil War colonel killed in battle and buried in a sealed lead coffin.

5.   His body, in a lead coffin, was returned to Bucharest on Friday on a flight from Vienna on which his brother Valentin Ceausescu also travelled.