In 2019, something unexpected happened. That was when an Englishman living in Florida decided

to return something that scientists and historians had assumed was gone forever, an actual piece

of Stonehenge. Everyone knows Stonehenge, right? The ancient ring of standing stones,

then a few that have fallen over the millennia almost serve as a mascot for a long forgotten time,

and because of that, people have been studying the place for centuries, looking for answers,

trying to put the puzzle back together, a game that's made harder when some of the pieces

are missing. It seems that back in 1958, an archaeological team lifted the pieces of one of the

monuments fallen arches, and stood it back up, all put together, but to do so they needed to repair

a fracture, which meant drilling three long cores into the stone and putting metal rods inside

them for stability. And these cores? Well, they went missing, and for 60 long years, everyone had

assumed they were lost forever. But of course, now we know the truth. It seems that one of the

workmen helping that day took a piece of it home, and at the age of 90, he decided it was time to

send it back. To him, it was most likely a reminder of a very special day, to archaeologists,

it's of the utmost scientific importance. But to most everyone else, it's just a rock,

and it's a perfect example for how we as humans can place meaning and value on something benign

and ordinary. Some people have a lucky penny, perhaps you wear a necklace handed down over the

generations, or maybe you just have a shelf in your room where you keep small reminders of happy

moments or better days. All of them have meaning, and all of them have power, and sometimes those

objects have something else, a little bit of magic. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore.

Sometimes we need to start with a textbook definition of something, and the work our way out from

there. And for that, Wilene on Gerald Brosu Gardner, who spelled out exactly what a talisman was

back in the 1942 issue of folklore. Objects specifically made or assumed naturally to possess

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