Mike Mistry was just your regular old parking lot attendant, working for the local municipality, and now he’s been fired just because they found an incredibly famous king buried in his parking lot. Sad, but true!
Richard III was king of England from just 1483 to 1485, when he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York, and his reputation was generally trashed after his death, to the extent that Shakespeare depicted him as a deformed villain in the eponymous play.
And after he died, they buried him in a church. Where they forgot about him. Even when they demolished the church. Which they then turned into a parking lot. You can watch an extremely fascinating and hilarious and sad documentary about the whole thing right here:
Which brings us to our man Mike Mistry, who was the attendant at said parking lot, the BBC reports. Mistry is the one who even painted a big “R” right over the spot where Richard III was buried, mind you, even though he had no idea the King was down there and he was just marking it as a restricted spot:
But after old Rick was found down there, they closed down the parking lot, and built a visitor’s center on top. So Mistry was sadly made redundant.
So this should be a lesson to all of us. Before you start at a new place of employment, always check whether or not it was built over a centuries-dead English king.