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Lost & Found

Wait a minute - did he rescue the organ with help or by himself? Because if it was by himself that makes it even more remarkable.
 
gncxx said:
Wait a minute - did he rescue the organ with help or by himself? Because if it was by himself that makes it even more remarkable.
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I know! ;)

I can't find any specifics on the organ itself, nor any claim the former organist had helpers. However, one report at:

http://www.wcsh6.com/news/watercooler/a ... get-church

... mentions a church manager noting the pipes could only be accessed via a ladder up into the ceiling. The organ was located in a choir loft.

The first video at this local CBS affiliate news site:

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2013/03/ ... ealing-it/

... mentions the following:

- The church had ceased operations about a month earlier
- It took the guy 3 days to dismantle and remove the organ apparatus

There's no mention of the guy having accomplices.

This particular church was in the process of being closed down, and at least some of its furnishings were being transferred to the church with which it was being merged.

I suspect anyone witnessing the "organ extraction" would have assumed it was part of the decommissioning and moving activities - especially since the thief had a key to the building.
 
Years ago, I assisted an organist friend who wanted to rescue some of the pipes from a church organ. That church was being demolished and he was motivated by a newspaper photograph of the organ's keyboard with a demolition-man's axe through it.

Taking an eight-foot wooden pipe across town was a slightly surreal adventure. Needless to say, bus conductors refused us entry, citing the Transport of Organs Act, 1939. Or something.

My school-chum amassed several of these pipes, which he stored in a shed at his suburban home. The way some people take in cats, I suppose.

Just a crazy memory stirred by this story. :spinning

edit 21st March. Pronoun preferred to repetition of "keyboard" in first paragraph.
 
A nice little news item from Australia about an old cinema as time-capsule.

Last Picture Show

It seems to be from last year and marked the disposal of items which, until then, had remained in the locked projection-booth of what is now a store. I'm sure they went to loving homes but a shame they were dispersed. :)
 
An unusual case:

Overturned inflatable sparks Lizard lifeboat search
3:00pm Sunday 14th April 2013 in News

A drifting rigid inflatable boat led to the volunteer crew of the Lizard lifeboat being launched, over fears the boat may have capsized.
A report came in at 3pm last Thursday that the RIB had been seen 11 miles south east of The Lizard by a merchant ship.

After nearly an hour of searching, the RIB was found by the crew of seven, who quickly realised that it was unmanned due to the engine covers being untouched.
It had most likely been attached to a larger vessel before getting washed away.

Second mechanic Johnny Bray said: “We were amazed that we located the craft so quickly.
“The sea conditions were quite choppy with lots of white water and to spot a small craft which was white and grey in colour and upside down was fantastic.”

On arrival back at the Lizard lifeboat station the sea conditions were too rough to get the RIB up into the boathouse, so it was taken to Falmouth and handed over to the town’s coastguard rescue team.

Falmouth Coastguard later confirmed that the boat had been lost in the Solent just over three weeks ago and that the owner would be contacted.

...

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/10 ... ch/?ref=la

I'm amazed it hadn't been rammed and sunk after all that time adrift.
 
A vintage lost & found, with a mystery attached.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/retired-taxi-drivers-missing-wallet-1832571

Retired taxi driver's missing wallet turns up in Paisley.. seven years after he lost it in Cyprus

JAMES COONEY, who lost his wallet in a field in Cyprus, received a phone call to say his wallet had been found in a street near his old home in Paisley.

Daily Record .co.uk 15.04.13


A RETIRED cabbie’s wallet has turned up in Paisley – seven years after he lost it in Cyprus.

James Cooney was working as a taxi driver on the sunshine island in 2006 when he dropped his wallet in a field.

He was amazed when he got a phone call to say it had been found – with all his cards and documents inside – in a street near his old home in Paisley.

James told our sister paper the Paisley Daily Express: “I couldn’t believe it when the wallet was returned to me.”

James, who used to work as a cabbie in Paisley, set himself up as a taxi driver in the Cypriot resort of Paphos in 2006.

He had been working on the island for two weeks when he lost his wallet in a field.

James said: “I was caught short one night and went into a field to relieve myself.

“The next day, I discovered my wallet was gone and realised I must have dropped it.”

A friend of a friend found the wallet in Paisley. But James has no idea how it got there.

He said: “The wallet was found lying outside 92 Lounsdale Drive and I used to live round the corner at 92 Lounsdale Road.”

James, who now lives in Kilbarchan, is hoping to trace the person who brought the wallet back, so he can say thanks.

* IF you can shed any light on how James’s wallet made it back to Paisley, call our reporters on news 0141 309 3251.
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I reckon his wallet realised it was no use staying in Cyprus as the banks are skint & returned home where it could fulfil it's purpose.
 
1,400 Stolen Books Returned to Lambeth Palace

They knew of sixty that had gone missing but had no idea of the extent of the pilfering by someone "associated with the library."

Did the deathbed confession assure him of anonymity? Some damage was done, as if the thief intended to disguise the origin of his (assuming it was a he) haul but no attempt was made to try to sell them.

All very odd. 8)
 
Revealed: Eerie new images show forgotten French apartment that was abandoned at the outbreak of World War II and left untouched for 70 years


Eerie new images have emerged of a French apartment abandoned at the outbreak of World War II and left untouched in the seven decades since.

Other than a thick layer of dust covering the furniture, the room looks exactly as it would have done 70 years ago when its occupants fled Paris for the south of France as the Second World War erupted in Europe.

With Germany devising the Fall Gelb – a military sub-campaign later known as the Manstein Plan, with an objective conquering Northern France – the owner of the chic apartment decided that leaving the capital was the only way she could guarantee her safety.

The flat’s titleholder, a woman known only as Mrs De Florian, never returned to the apartment and never rented it out. Its existence only came to light in 2010, when Mrs De Florian died without issue at the age of 91 and experts were brought in to value the property.

The flat, which is close to the Pigalle red-light district in Paris’ 9th Arrondissement, was said to be like a “stumbling in to the castle of Sleeping Beauty” by one expert, as a room full of artworks and beautiful furniture was discovered behind its long-locked font door. . . .
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Have a look. It's beautiful.
 
Wonder why she never returned...perhaps she had other properties. :confused:
 
Bristol Airport lost teddy bear 'seeks' owner
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-22717020

Glyn the bear, as staff think he is called, was left at Bristol Airport by a passenger over 14 months ago

Bristol Airport is trying to find the owner of an antique teddy bear left in a carrier bag within the departure lounge over a year ago.

Staff said the bear, who they believe is called Glyn, was found with an old photograph dated 1918, and other items.

On the reverse of the photograph - sent to "our darling daddy" - it names the children and Glyn the bear.

Airport police and security have tried to trace the passenger but to no avail, and are now asking the public for help.

Airport spokeswoman Jacqui Mills said it was obvious Glyn had been "well loved" for many years.

"Glyn's temporary home is by my desk, but he needs to find his family," said added.

"During the last 14 months we had been hopeful that the search would result in Glyn being reunited to his family.

"We have not been successful in this search and have drawn a blank, we would be delighted if anyone can help solve the mystery of Glyn."

Anyone with information is asked to contact Bristol Airport via email.
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Venezuelan missing plane found five years after crash
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22985957

A Venezuelan plane which went missing in 2008 with 14 people on board has been found underwater off a Venezuelan island resort, officials say.

Wreckage of the small aircraft was located 9km (5.6 miles) south of Los Roques archipelago at a depth of 900m (3,000ft).

The pilot had reported engine problems shortly before losing contact with air traffic control on 4 January 2008.

Five Venezuelans, eight Italians and a Swiss citizen were on board.

Venezuelan officials said the wreckage had been located by a US search vessel which had been looking for the plane under an agreement between Venezuela and Italy.

The twin-engine Transaven Airlines passenger plane was flying from Simon Bolivar International Airport near Caracas to Los Roques airport when its pilot reported that one of the engines had failed.

'New Bermuda triangle'
The co-pilot's body was found in the sea off Los Roques days later, but neither the wreckage nor the remaining crew and passengers could be located.

The disappearance of the Transaven plane, and that of a small aircraft carrying Vittorio Missoni, director of Italian fashion house Missoni, has given Los Roques a reputation for mysterious vanishings.

More than a dozen aircraft have either crashed, disappeared or declared emergencies while flying through the area, prompting some locals to call it the "new Bermuda triangle".

A search is still under way for Mr Missoni, his wife, and four other passengers and crew who disappeared while flying from Los Roques.

A piece of luggage from the missing plane was found three weeks after the plane's disappearance off the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao.
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Vivian Maier: lost art of an urban photographer
By Jill Nicholls, Director, BBC One imagine

[Video: A web-exclusive clip in which Vivian Maier's French friend Nelly Raymond talks about Vivian's outcast, impoverished grandfather and about their youthful friendship.]

She's been called 'the greatest photographer you've never heard of'... the mysterious Vivian Maier, a nanny based in Chicago who took about 150,000 photographs in her lifetime and stashed them away, not showing them to anyone.
She left thousands not even developed, and most as negatives from which she never made prints. :shock:

It was sheer accident that her life's work was discovered.
Two years before she died in 2009, Vivian Maier stopped paying the rent on five storage lockers in Chicago. Without her knowledge the contents were sold.
At locker sales, you have to stand at the door and buy without touching. So auctioneer Roger Gunderson saw only a jumble of boxes and suitcases:
"A Paris sticker on one trunk caught my eye. I thought maybe there's going to be some perfume or jewellery."
Gunderson bought the lot for $250 - "a truck and a half load of stuff", he says: papers, magazines and thousands upon thousands of photographs.

People who then bought them at auction posted a few online. Before long, Vivian Maier went viral. Now her prints sell for thousands of dollars a piece.

But what prints are we talking about?
In her lifetime Vivian Maier had perhaps 5,000 prints made. Some she made in the bathrooms of her lodgings - moving from family to family, she never had a home of her own.
Some were made at drugstores where she had negatives developed.

She put some of these prints into albums. Ron Slattery, who bought boxes of her work at auction, has a beautiful album with small prints of the extraordinary world tour she went on, all alone, in 1959.

At least one print she framed and hung on her wall
It must have been one that she particularly liked. And the fascinating thing is that this print - like most prints she made - is cropped.
Like many of her photos, it looks stylish, framed on minimalist apartment walls.

But in her cluttered apartment (right), she would never have seen her pictures looking like that.

Vivian Maier had several cameras, most with rectangular negatives. But her favourite camera, the Rolleiflex, has a large, square negative.
She started to use the Rolleiflex in 1952, and in time this camera became her trademark. Looking down into its viewfinder, Vivian would see her picture in colour, and square.

Nowadays, the black and white photos she took on the Rolleiflex are being printed large and square.
Richard Cahan co-edited Out of the Shadows, a book of Vivian's photographs. He was unaware that she ever cropped her photos.
"Photographers are either square or horizontal people", he said, "and Vivian was a square person."
His co-editor Michael Williams added: "When you see her other work where she did use a 35mmm rectangle, it's just not quite there."

Pamela Bannos, distinguished senior lecturer at Northwestern University in Illinois, says Vivian herself frequently cropped.
She would have seen the image square in the viewfinder, and her composition within the square is unfailingly beautiful. Yet when she printed, she would crop the sides of the square to highlight the human drama in the centre of the frame.

We can't show the negative from which Vivian made this print as it is in the collection of John Maloof, who did not want us to use his pictures. (The print is owned by Jeff Goldstein, who did give us access to his collection, as did Ron Slattery.)

Pamela Bannos calls this "Vivian Maier's fractured archive", which makes research into her work so very difficult.
But you will find a square print of this image on John Maloof's website. The comparison is amazing - Vivian trimmed the sides to focus on the confrontation.

In other words she cut off the passing human life that viewers now so admire and adore - that sense that W.H. Auden writes about in Musée des Beaux Arts:

About suffering they were never wrong

The old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position: how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

Icarus falls from the sky but people just pass on by, busy with their own preoccupations, not even noticing.

In another photograph highlighted by Pamela Bannos, Vivian captures a down-and-out being taken away by police, while a well-dressed woman passes by.
We love that juxtaposition of worlds. But Vivian didn't print that shot - it has been chosen for her.

In another frame that she DID choose to print, she was close up on the old man at the police van, working more like a photojournalist than a poet of the human condition. In fact she cropped it to get even closer to the action. Quite likely a photojournalist is what she aspired to be.

Of course it would be presumptuous of owners and editors now to crop her photos, even if they wanted to, which they don't.

Richard Cahan said, "We've never cropped any of her pictures. Two reasons: one, it's a little unseemly to decide 50 years later what should be cropped, and two, they don't need it. I've looked at hundreds of her negatives and can't think of one I would really like to crop."

People are perfectly justified - as in our film for BBC One's imagine - in presenting Vivian's images square. Maybe, just maybe, 'we' know her strengths better than she knew them herself...

But it's a great example of what has happened in the strange case of this unknowable woman, who quite deliberately and conscientiously kept both her life and her work a secret, away from the public gaze.

As Michael Williams put it, "Everything that we can learn about her is going to come from the pictures. We really are just left with the images."
Which is true, and wonderful they are, even if they are being presented not quite as she would have done herself….

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/0/23007897
 
The story above resonates with me. I too have many photos, and I wonder how best to pass them on where they'll be appreciated when I'm gone.

I have, for example, many sailing photos from the 60s onwards, but when I offered them to the National Maritime Museum Cornwall they were very sniffy and uninterested, even though I know that the pictures document interesting developments in the sailing scene that started shortly after WWII.

As for my more recent pics, a small selection of them is available on my websites:
http://haylenewbridge.weebly.com/index.html
http://cornwalltidesreach.weebly.com/index.html

But these are in the The Cloud, and how long will that last?
(And those images aren't full-size anyway.)

But there are many more pics. I have them all backed up on CDs and DVDs, but how long will they last? They may all be thrown in a skip after I die, when the council clears out my flat.

I've tried to pass copies to my remaining family, but I get the feeling they'll be as disinterested as the NMMC after I'm gone. :(
 
I have a similar problem. My father was a chef and patissiere, and he used to cater for weddings on the side. I have dozens of wedding photographs he took or which were sent to him, and which show his cakes, some of which I helped to decorate, but also of course show fashions etc. in wedding dress and so on. None of my family are the slightest bit interested, and no doubt they will throw them away when I die, but surely they are of interest to social historians and so on? If not, I might as well chuck them now. I've no idea who the families in the pictures are.

Don't know what to do.
 
Well...there are Internet picture libraries out there who might like them and keep them alive. Perhaps leave them to those guys?
 
imagine... - Summer 2013
- 1. Vivian Maier: Who Took Nanny's Pictures?

The incredible story of a mysterious nanny who died in 2009 leaving behind a secret hoard - thousands of stunning photographs. Never seen in her lifetime, they were found by chance in a Chicago storage locker and auctioned off cheaply.

Now Vivian Maier has gone viral and her magical pictures sell for thousands of dollars. Vivian was a tough street photographer, a secret poet of suburbia. In life she was a recluse, a hoarder, spinning tall tales about her French roots. Presented by Alan Yentob, the film includes stories from those who knew her and those who revealed her astonishing work.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... _Pictures/

Duration
70 minutes

Available until
10:44PM Tue, 6 Aug 2013

One of Forteana's Strange Folk.
 
Venezuela finds Vittorio Missoni crash plane
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23088866

File picture of Vittorio Missoni and his wife Maurizia Castiglioni

Vittorio Missoni and his wife, Maurizia Castiglioni, were on board the plane

Officials in Venezuela say they have found a plane that disappeared carrying the boss of Italian fashion house Missoni in January.

Vittorio Missoni, 58, and his wife were among six people on board the flight from Los Roques islands to Caracas.

Interior Ministry spokesman Jorge Galindo announced the discovery of the plane on Twitter.

Officials said it was found 70m (230ft) under water, north of Los Roques islands in the Caribbean.

Following the plane's disappearance on 4 January, investigators from the Italian Agency for Air Safety (ANSV) said the company that owned the small plane was not fully licensed to operate.

A piece of luggage from the aircraft was found off the Dutch island of Curacao, about 320km (200 miles) west of Los Roques, later that month.

Map locator
Mr Missoni was the son of the fashion brand's founder, Ottavio Missoni, and co-owned the firm with his siblings.

He was returning from a Christmas and New Year holiday with his wife, Maurizia Castiglioni, and two friends - Elda Scalvenzi and Guido Foresti.

Two Venezuelan pilots were also on board the BN-2 Islander plane.

Minutes after take-off, one of the pilots reported that the plane was at 5,000ft (1,524m) and 10 nautical miles from Los Roques airport, Italy's air safety agency has said.

The last radar report showed the aircraft accelerating at 5,400ft (1,645m) before it rapidly lost altitude and speed, veering to the right until it disappeared from the radar.
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Vietnam war veteran reunited with long-lost arm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23124347

Dr Sam Axelrad, right, hands over arm bones belonging to former North Vietnamese soldier Nguyen Quang Hung at Hung's house in Gia Lai province, Vietnam on 1 July 2013

Mr Hung, left, said he would use the arm to try to claim a war veteran's pension

A former North-Vietnamese soldier has been reunited with his arm after more than 40 years.

Nguyen Quang Hung, a Vietcong soldier during the Vietnam war, had his arm amputated by US army doctor Sam Axelrad in 1966 after his arm caught gangrene.

Dr Axelrad kept the bones of the arm as a reminder of the good deed he had performed by treating an enemy soldier.

He began a quest to track down the owner of the arm in 2012, meeting Mr Hung on Monday to return his bones.

"I'm very happy to see him again and have that part of my body back after nearly half a century," Mr Hung said.

"My arm bone is evidence of my contribution to the war. I will keep it in my house... in the glass display cabinet," he said, adding that he hoped the arm would help him claim a veteran's pension, as his army files had been lost.

He also plans to be buried with his bones.

Returning mission
Dr Sam Axelrad, left, with Nguyen Quang Hung in October 1966 in front of his military clinic in the former South Vietnam
Dr Axelrad, left, amputated Mr Hung's arm in 1966
Dr Axelrad said he was "unbelievably happy" to be able to return the arm.

"When I amputated his arm [in 1966], our medics took the arm, took the flesh off it, put it back together perfectly with wires, and then they gave it to me," he said.

"When I left the country six months later, I didn't want to throw it away, I put it in my trunk and brought it home, and all these years it has been in my house," he added.

In 2011, he returned to Vietnam and tried to find the man whose arm he had amputated - a move he later said would help provide "closure".

A local journalist wrote about his mission, and the news eventually spread back to Mr Hung.

When he heard he would get his arm back he said he "really could not believe it".

"I can't believe that an American doctor took my infected arm, got rid of the flesh, dried it, took it home and kept it for more than 40 years," he said.

He added later that he considered himself "very lucky" compared to many of his comrades who died in the war.

The Vietnam war, which ended in 1975, killed an estimated 58,000 US soldiers and three million Vietnamese.
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How weird is that! Being re-united with your amputated arm! :shock:

I'm glad they're all happy about it. 8)
 
Wedding ring lost on Great Barrier Reef found by divers

A new husband is celebrating after the wedding ring he lost on his honeymoon on Australia's Great Barrier Reef was found by other divers just days later.
Eirian Evans, 29, of Cardiff, was snorkelling with his bride Bethan off Green Island, Cairns, when the silver ring slipped off his finger into coral.
Scuba school divers searched for the ring for hours with no luck and the couple returned to Wales without it.

But the ring is now back on his finger after arriving by post from Down Under.
Mr Evans had an email in the middle of the night to say the wedding band had been found by another customer of the scuba school who saw it glinting in the coral.

He said: "Because the ring was new and I'm not used to wearing rings I had been playing with it non-stop since our wedding day.
"I got out of the sea and went to fiddle with it and realised it had gone. I was absolutely gutted as I thought I'd lost it forever.
"When we got back on the boat and said it was missing, two of the scuba divers offered to go and look for it but they couldn't find it.
"They asked me to leave my contact details with them but I thought they were humouring me. I was convinced I would never see it again.
"I was absolutely gobsmacked when I got the email from the diving company saying someone had found it. I couldn't believe it."

The couple, both 29, met at a rugby club when they were 21.
Mr Evans proposed in October last year and the pair married in June before setting off on their two-week honeymoon.
"The trip to Australia was the trip of a lifetime," he said.
"Coming back without the ring was heartbreaking but getting it back like this is the icing on the cake."
Mrs Evans said: "I was so shocked and relieved when we found out someone had found it."

The email said another customer of the Ocean Free scuba school had been on the same snorkelling trip days later and had been looking at the seabed when he spotted the ring lodged in coral.

School co-owner Taryn Agiun, said: "It's a beautiful omen to their marriage, which I think shows they are meant to be together forever.
"It's truly amazing the ring survived, especially because fish often eat shiny or sparkly objects mistakenly for food."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-sout ... s-23388667
 
Film geeks will probably be aware that a previously-undocumented version of Buster Keaton's 1922 comedy The Blacksmith has been unearthed by the same researcher who found the complete Metropolis.

While silents were typically filmed with two cameras at this period, for domestic and overseas negatives, the footage in this European copy of The Blacksmith includes material which is missing from the standard prints.

The rediscovered footage has cast new light on Keaton's working methods and the studio history

There is something delightful about this level of detailed information coming from a length of old film. :)
 
German boy finds 'a mummy' in grandmother's attic
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23553074

A sarcophagus with a mummy on the attic of a private house in Diepholz, Germany (August 2013)

The Kettler family plan to get their "mummy" examined by archaeological experts in Berlin

A 10-year-old German boy has found what appears to be a mummy hidden in a corner of his grandmother's attic.

The "mummy" was inside a sarcophagus complete with hieroglyphic adornments, packed in a wooden crate.

But it is unclear whether the bandaged item found by Alexander Kettler in Diepholz, northern Germany, is a genuine relic from ancient Egypt.

Alexander's father Lutz Wolfgang Kettler, a dentist, said he had not X-rayed the mysterious find.

Instead he plans to load it into his car and drive it to Berlin to be examined by experts, he told the Bild newspaper.

A tourist takes a camel ride at the Giza Pyramids in Giza, Egypt (May 2013)
Could the boy's grandfather have brought home an unusual souvenir from Egypt?
Mr Kettler said he had little doubt that the sarcophagus, as well as a death mask and a canopic jar - used by ancient Egyptians to store removed organs - found nearby, were replicas.

Mummy unwrapping?
However, he believes the mummy may be real.

The dentist's late father travelled to North Africa in the 1950s.

At that time there was still a trade in genuine mummies, Mr Kettler told his local paper, Die Kreiszeitung.

And there was a trend for mummy unwrapping parties in the 1950s, he said.

Asked if the "mummy" smelled bad, Mr Kettler said no.

It had lain undisturbed in the attic for at least 40 years, he said.
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Douglas woman 'shocked' at return of purse stolen in 2003
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe- ... n-23547247

Denise Coates reported her purse missing in August 2003

A woman has been reunited with her purse almost 10 years after it was stolen in the Isle of Man.

Denise Coates from Douglas reported the missing purse to police on the island in August 2003.

She said: "It is absolutely remarkable. It still contained photographs and papers of great sentimental importance."

It was found under the floorboards of a property in Douglas by a local builder who was renovating the property.

David Atkins took the purse to the police station and they tracked down Ms Coates.

Insp Derek Flint said: "It is a great story and we are delighted to have been able to help.

"We never found the culprits but it is fantastic to reunite Mrs Coates with her photographs."

The hairdresser had changed her surname twice since the theft but police tracked her down with help from police in Northern Ireland.

She said: "They tracked me down from papers I had from an old flat mate from Belfast. I was in shock - it is amazing.

"It just shows what can happen and I can't thanks Mr Atkins and the police for their help."
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Hastings church bible thief returns it after 42 years
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-23811659

Bible that was taken from church

The 200-year-old bible was taken from the church 42 years ago

Medieval panels 'hacked' from church

A 200-year-old bible that was stolen from an East Sussex church 42 years ago has been returned by the man who took it.

Simon Scott, treasurer of Holy Trinity Church in Hastings, said a German man had taken the book in 1971.

He had come to the town with his wife to take an English language course, but was not satisfied with the teaching.

He then took the bible intending to read it and improve his English, but never got round to it.

Mr Scott said that he received an anonymous letter from the thief, which said: "You won't believe receiving this letter and you certainly won't believe receiving a bible in the post shortly."

Interior of Holy Trinity Church
The huge leather-bound edition of The Holy Bible was sent in a box
A big box containing a huge leather-bound edition of The Holy Bible with brass clasps, later arrived.

'Guilty conscience'
"He found the course was very much below par, it fell very short of expectations, despite being quite expensive," Mr Scott said the man had written.

"Some of the lessons were held in the church premises and he said he saw these bibles just sitting there, unused he felt.

"And by some sort of compensation for this very poor, expensive course, he decided to take one and try and read it at home and improve his English that way.

"In fact, he said in the letter 'I never got round to doing it'."

The thief said his wife had been "pretty angry" with him for taking the book.

"Whenever I came across the bible I would have this guilty conscience about doing it," he added in the letter.

"I've never managed to pluck up the courage to come and hand it back personally.

"But now that I've retired, I've definitely decided to get on the right side of things."

Mr Scott said he did not think the book was worth much.

"These kind of bibles were kind of standard for well-to-do families in the old days," he said.

"They used to bring it out at meal times and read it to the children but these days of course, we don't do that sort of thing and so there are a number of them lying around in churches.

"We've got ours back."
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Lost - but not yet found:

Plea for return of man's lost artificial nose

A man who lost his artificial nose while on a visit to his dentist is appealing for its safe return.
Cyril Osment, of Alweston, Dorset, noticed the prosthesis was missing when he returned home from the trip in his car on Monday.

The retired newsagent, 83, had his nose removed last year because of cancer.
The silicone replacement had been held in place by magnets but Mr Osment said it had recently started to fall off.
He said: "Something must have gone wrong with the magnetic studs as it wouldn't fall off otherwise.

"My son said to me that someone could pick it up and think it was a joke nose." :shock:
He said he was hoping he would be able to get a replacement from Salisbury District Hospital, where the original prosthetic was fitted.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-23980195
 
'Priceless' butterflies found at Oxford museum
By Sean Coughlan, BBC News education correspondent

An A-level student on work experience at an Oxford museum has found rare examples of butterflies lost since the 19th Century.
Athena Martin, aged 17, has found butterfly specimens described as "priceless" by the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
They had been brought back from South America by a Victorian naturalist.
Many of the butterflies were thought lost at sea in the 1850s.

Ms Martin's discoveries came during the summer when she was taking part in a science-related work experience project.
The school girl, who wants to study zoology at university, found and identified butterflies collected by the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace.

They had been buried away in more than 3,000 separate drawers of butterflies at the museum.
Painstakingly going through the collection turned up more than 300 of Wallace's butterflies.
The biggest find made by the work experience student was a butterfly called Dismorphia, brought from the Amazon and which had remained undiscovered and unacknowledged within the museum since the end of the 19th Century.

The confusion over Wallace's collection had been caused by a fire breaking out on his ship when he was bringing back specimens from South America in 1852 - and it had been believed that most of his butterfly collection had been lost.

"The re-discovered Amazonian specimen in particular is a significant find in terms of the history of science and natural history collecting in the 19th Century," says Dr James Hogan of the Hope Entomological Collections, which are based at the museum.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24015880

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace
He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection, which he jointly published with Charles Darwin in 1858.
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Work Experience in a Museum! What is the country coming to?
Have we a sudden shortage of Poundlands? :monster:
 
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