History for the day

Rico says that one of the dubious privileges of being awakened by the ladyfriend's clock radio is listening to the news on NPR, which is always more erudite than a standard news broadcast. Just this morning, for instance, they referred to the Pakistanis being 'hoist on their own petard', which is not a phrase you hear every day. Just to be sure he remembered it correctly, Rico had to look it up: "Injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others." (The reference was to their harboring of Osama bin Laden, thus very appropriate.)
There's a longer explanation here, but basically a petard was a small bomb, used since Shakespeare's time, as he referred to them in Hamlet in 1602: "For tis the sport to have the engineer Hoist with his owne petar." (The lack of a 'd' on the word was a French spelling.)