In the 17th century an ingenious smoker came up with the pipe tamper, or stopper, as it's known in England, a tool for pressing down lit tobacco in the pipe's bowl.

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As it turned out, authorities' decision to rely on every tool at their disposal was a wise one: Dykes had planted an explosive device in a ventilation pipe he'd told negotiators to use to communicate with him on his property in the rural Alabama community of Midland City, and also placed another explosive device inside the bunker, the FBI said in a statement late Tuesday.

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