In 1767, the farmers of Northamptonshire and the parliamentary members were in constant clash about the grazing fields for their livestock. The government did not want to subsidize the use of wire fences to mark out the various grazing areas farmers can use. This caused many issues for the farmers of the East Midlands. As a result, Theodore Bombervan decided to go against the will of the government and bought many rolls of wire and wooden spikes to be used as fences. At a secret anti-government meeting of the farmers, Theodore stood up and showed all the farmers the new demarcated map of the Baybrooke field, his homestead and that of his 2 sons. Flabbergasted, the other farmers started praying for his soul to be delivered unto heaven, as it was seen as a huge sin to go against the government. But Theodore maintained his stance, and went about installing fences around his farms. Below is the maps that he presented at the farmers meeting:
All was going well for Theodore, but some farmers went behind his back to parliamentary members, and ratted him out. Disgusted at their betrayal, Theodore went into hiding, vowing vengeance on the farmers he once called friends. It was in exile that he met a chemist called Luthor von Braughurst, a young German scholar from the collage of Kaiserslautern. Luthor helped Theodore in his nefarious plans, and gave him the formula to a new kind of poison he was working on. This poison can be sowed into the grazing fields, where livestock will eat plants infected with the poison.
With this new weapon, Theodore went back to Northamptonshire to enact his revenge. He moved in the night, sowing the fields with this poison. Ironically, his map (as above) came in very handy to ensure he covered all the different fields with poison.
Few weeks later, almost all the cows within the county started getting sick, and it was not long after that they died. Doctors started noticing that these cows were infected with a new kind of virus, a virus never before seen. The cows seemed to do things completely out of their natural behavior, and dubbed the illness "Mad Cow Syndrome". It seems the poison triggered a dormant virus within these cows, causing the illness to manifest itself worse than ever.
Now, many years later, we still see the effects of Theodore's vengeance. Mad Cow is still an illness that many cows around the world are struggling with, and biologists have been working for years on a cure.
The picture is that of some of these biologists, trying to get soil samples of those fateful fields of Northamptonshire. This particular photo is of Theodore's farm itself, Baybrooke Field, now dubbed the epicenter of the Mad Cow epidemic troubling the world hundreds of years later.