A Love Story Like Titanic

Love stories about old people make us happy—why do you think Titanic and The Notebook did so well?—and a story in the Guardian this week could easily become Gena Rowlands’ next movie. Almost 70 years ago, a woman and her fiancé got into a huge fight just months before their wedding date. Violet Booth was so upset that she threw her diamond ring away, but she and her fiancé, Samuel, made up almost immediately and tried desperately to find the ring, to no avail. Fast forward seven decades. Violet’s grandson, whose hobby is metal detecting, searched the area and found the ring in just two hours. “I went round to my Nan’s with some maps and she managed to pinpoint the field. Then I got permission from the landowner and headed out. It was buried three to four inches down, and it wasn’t even damaged. I just had to give it a wipe,” the grandson said. And the discovery brought Violet, who has been a widow 15 years, to tears: “I was in such a state when we couldn’t find it. Samuel didn’t tell me off—he wasn’t like that. We got a new one, but it’s not the same, is it?” [Guardian U.K.]