Shroud of Turin - just a handkerchief!

Researchers at Oxford University have found evidence that the infamous 'Shroud of Turin', said to be the death-cloth of Jesus Christ, does indeed date back to the first century AD.

The cloth is said to hold the image of the Christian saviour and has been heralded as proof of eternal life. However, as researcher Margaret Dawson explained, it's more complex than that:

"The Shroud of Turin does, at first glance, have an imprint of a face. The image itself is recognisible as the visage of a first century middle-eastern man, and the cloth does date to the correct period of time we'd be looking at..."

"However...we've since examined what look like little pieces of nasal gunk or 'snot'. You may know them as bojangles. Anyway, upon examination of these yellow-green pieces, we've determined that the cloth was once used as a hankie, and was therefore unlikely to have been placed over Jesus' face."

Indeed, the researchers continued to speculate that the face might have been imprinted onto the hankie simply by repeated use.

"If you continually hold your hankie up to your face to blow your nose...imagine a man who works on the roads, his face becomes dusty and his nose becomes itchy. The man blows his nose with this dirty face and it quickly soaks the image of his face into the cloth."

The mystery is solved.