How does one survive a 70-foot drop?

Can it be done?

Some would say that it would take an act of divine intervention.

Others say that a fortuitously placed pile of crap might be equally effective.

If you lived in central Europe in the early 1600s, this question wasn't just the subject

of an offhand bar room debate.

Now amazingly, your answer to that question could have had deep political and spiritual

ramifications.

Your understanding of how a man might survive a 70-foot drop could have shown your allegiances

in one of the most deadly wars to ever hit Europe up to that point in history.

In the 1600s, central Europe was rocked by a complex, multilateral conflict known to

history as the 30 years war.

It's a war that famously defies easy explanation.

Not only was it long, you know, 30 years, as you might expect, it was also characterized

by a constantly shifting list of belligerent nations, each with their own unique motivations

for being involved.

But oddly enough, the whole thing may have begun with a 70-foot drop.

Allow me to explain.

In May of 1618, a meeting was held in the Bohemian chancelry, which was part of Prague's castle

district.

Prague, which is today the photogenic capital of the Czech Republic, was at the time part

of something known as the Kingdom of Bohemia, a quasi-independent kingdom that had been

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