Zagreb, Croatia -- Catherine's crown denotes her position as the daughter of the governor of Alexandria, for a millennium the capital of Egypt and home to the greatest library in the world. If the scholarly Jesuits are to venerate a female, she's probably the right one. By the end of the middle ages, she was the most popular virgin-martyr. But in 1969, the church removed her feast from its calendar because they were not sure she ever existed. Never mind!Eventually the Roman emperor tired of his scholars' attempts to convert her and had her killed on the wheel -- which fell apart so he had her head removed instead.

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