Where oh where do they get their facts about history?
Q: While researching for Signora da Vinci is there anything you learned about Leonardo da Vinci that surprised you or that you didn’t already know?
A: Just about everything. Like most people, I knew Leonardo was an amazing artist, anatomist and inventor (I’d been to one of the exhibits that display the inventions — flying machines and hydraulic systems to name a few) — that he’d created and that modern engineers executed. But I’d had no idea that he was a brilliant philosopher, an atheist who first and foremost worshipped nature; a vegetarian (at a time when such a thing was considered heretical); at different times in his life bisexual, homosexual and asexual; that he was publicly and excruciatingly tried for the crime of "sodomy"; and that he was probably a prime mover behind the Shroud of Turin hoax.
Don’t blame the interviewer: Passages to the Past: Author Interview with Robin Maxwell of Signora da Vinci