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Lost & Found

Relish lovers no longer in a pickle after lost recipe comes to light
Last updated at 12:50pm on 19th March 2008

Pickle lovers are rejoicing after a secret recipe for a popular brand of the relish thought lost forever was found in a workshop in Essex.

Widow Sheila Cracknell was stunned to come across the rare jar of Pan Yan Pickle - the spread of choice for thousands of Brits and a favourite addition to the traditional cheese sandwich or ploughman's lunch.

Production of the once-popular apple-based relish ended six years ago. Hopes of a revival were dashed after the product's maker - Premier Foods - revealed the original and only copy of the recipe had been destroyed in a factory fire in 2004.

Mrs Cracknell, of Great Maplestead, Essex, said: "My husband Leonard was a self-employed carpenter and he died recently.

"I was clearing out his very large workshop and there were screws and tools everywhere and then I found this jar. He had used it to store nails. I read the label and it said Pan Yan Pickle and I knew I had heard about that from somewhere.

"The label is in perfect condition and you can read the ingredient list perfectly."

Premier Foods launched a public appeal for anybody who had a jar of Pan Yan to come forward earlier this year.

The company, which acquired the pickle brand in 2002 as part of the Branston business, brought production to an end because of falling sales.

At the time Premier's pickle manager Jamie Crofts, said: "We were not planning to make the pickle again so we never bothered to transfer the recipe to our technical database.

"It was literally on a piece of paper in a file so when the factory was destroyed by fire, the recipe went with it.

"We had had the odd letter from people over the years asking for the product to be reinstated. But we didn't really start to take it seriously until Chris Evans talked about it on his show and we were literally deluged with requests from consumers wanting the brand brought back."

It took 150 fire fighters more than 12 hours to extinguish the blaze at Premier Food's factory at Bury in October 2004, Much of the building was wrecked - leading to fears of a Branston Pickle shortage over the Christmas period.

Pan Yan Pickle was first made by Scottish firm Maconochies in 1907, in their factory in east London's Isle of Dogs.

It quickly became a household favourite and was part of an era of food inspired by exotic spices and fruits which were being shipped through the West India Docks in the East End.

Even the name of the pickle was chosen to reflect its Oriental tastes.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=539489&in_page_id=1770
 
Is this the right place for this story?
http://news.scotsman.com/uk/Mystery-of- ... 3902738.jp

Mystery of skeleton found in tent

By SHÂN ROSS

IT COULD be the beginning of the latest mystery to confound DCI John Rebus or the hardened detectives of Taggart. But the grim discovery of a human skeleton, lying for years in a tent, was all too real for forestry workers hacking back trees in a remote forest on a Highland estate.

Auch Forest, near Bridge of Orchy, lies close to the 95-mile long West Highland Way used by thousands of walkers each year. However, few venture off the marked route and into the thick woodland, which means the corpse could have lain hidden for several years.

Now the painstaking detective work to identity the remains has begun. They are said to be so badly decomposed it is not known whether the person is male or female.

A human body takes about a year to become a skeleton but this is dependent on a variety of factors including soil conditions. A forensic examination was carried out at the scene before the skeleton was removed for further tests.

Detectives are also scouring missing persons reports for any clue to the identity of the dead camper. Strathclyde Police said there did not appear to be any suspicious circumstances and they were examining missing persons reports "as a matter of routine".

The skeleton was found by forestry workers clearing the forest to create a scenic path at around 1:15pm on Friday

The Black Mount estate on which the forest is located belongs to the family of Ian Fleming, the creator of the James Bond novels.

A force spokeswoman said: "The remains would appear to have been there for some time.

"Inquiries will be carried out to establish the identity of the deceased and a post-mortem examination will be arranged to establish the cause of death." It will take place in Glasgow on Tuesday.

An employee on the estatesaid the spot where the corpse was discovered was very isolated.

"The forest here can be quite impassable. There is investment money in woodlands here with Sitka spruce making it too thick for walkers to go into."

The West Highland Way, linking Milngavie outside Glasgow to Fort William in the Highlands, attracts up to 40,000 walkers each year and is extremely popular with visitors from overseas. Much of it follows ancient routes of communication.

It makes use of military roads built by troops to help control the Jacobite clans and the drove roads along which Highlanders herded their cattle and sheep to market in the Lowlands.

Passing the Black Mount estate walkers may spot a stone monument which is a memorial to Peter Fleming, the travel writer and brother of Ian .

Last night, local people who run businesses along the route said they had been "shocked" to hear about the skeleton.

A worker at The Outdoor Store at the Green Welly Stop, at Tyndrum, Perthshire, said: "I was really taken aback.

"Most walkers tend to stick to the marked route and stay in bunk houses or bed and breakfasts.

"But depending on the weather some people might camp out. Local people wouldn't tend to go into the forests nor the tourists either, so maybe that's what has happened."
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Sad really. But odd that it was so close to so many walkers going by.
 
Must've been a pretty ineffective science project ...
Message Arrives 21 Years Later

By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP – 9 hours ago

SEATTLE (AP) — Merle Brandell and his black lab Slapsey were beachcombing along the Bering Sea when he spied a plastic bottle among the Japanese glass floats he often finds along the shore of his tiny Alaskan fishing village.

He walked over and saw an envelope tucked inside. After slicing the bottle open, Brandell found a message from an elementary school student in a suburb of Seattle. The fact that the letter traveled 1,735 miles without any help from the U.S. postal service is unusual, but that's only the beginning of the mystery.

About 21 years passed between the time Emily Hwaung put the message in a soda bottle and Merle Brandell picked it up on the beach.

"This letter is part of our science project to study oceans and learn about people in distant lands," she wrote. "Please send the date and location of the bottle with your address. I will send you my picture and tell you when and where the bottle was placed in the ocean. Your friend, Emily Hwaung."

Brandell, 34, a bear hunting guide and manager of a water plant, said many of the 70-plus residents of Nelson Lagoon were intrigued by his find. Beachcombing is a popular activity in remote western Alaska. Among the recent discoveries was a sail boat that washed onto shore last October.

"It's kind of a sport. It keeps us occupied. It's one of the pleasures of living here," Brandell said of the village reachable only by plane or boat that is too small to have its own store.

Brandell tried to track down the sender: a fourth grader from the North City School in the Shoreline School District.

No one answered when Brandell called the school in December so he sent the school district a handwritten letter, which eventually ended up on the desk of district spokesman Craig Degginger.

After some searching, Degginger discovered Emily Hwaung is now a 30-year-old accountant named Emily Shih and lives in Seattle. She was in the fourth grade during the 1986-87 school year at a school building that closed more than a year ago.

Shih said she was flabbergasted by the news and immediately shared it with her Kirkland co-workers.

"I don't remember the project. It was so long ago. Elementary school is kind of foggy," Shih admitted during a recent interview. "I've been getting a kick out of it for a month now."
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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gI64nSH8n8FYelUgcRsBJX0tmrFQD8VJQCE00
Link has photos
 
£5m surprise as lost Jean-Antoine Watteau masterpiece reappears
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent

An 18th-century masterpiece long presumed to have been destroyed has been found languishing in the corner of an English country house.

The whereabouts of La Surprise, by the French artist Jean-Antoine Watteau, has been a mystery for almost 200 years. Its existence was known about only because of a 19th-century copy in the Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace.

The original’s reappearance was described yesterday as extraordinary. It is expected to fetch up to £5 million when it comes to auction at Christie’s of London on July 8.

Watteau was one of the most brilliant painters of his time. La Surprise, painted in 1718, was one of the relatively few works that he created before his death at the age of 37. The painting of a couple in a passionate embrace was spotted during a routine valuation by Christie’s at the country house.

James Bruce-Gardyne, Christie’s director of Old Master paintings, said: “I’ve been here for 20-odd years and this is one of the most exciting pictures that we, as a team, have seen come to the market. We all live for this type of picture.”

The owner, who wishes to remain anonymous, had no idea of the painting’s importance when he asked the auctioneers to view a work that he felt sure was by the 17th-century Dutch Master Gerrit Dou. Just as the auctioneers were telling him that the painting was only “School of Dou”, their eye was caught by another painting in a corner. “It got everyone excited immediately,” Mr Bruce-Gardyne said. “It had literally been sitting there unknown for many, many years.”

Such is the rarity of Watteau’s paintings on the open market, let alone in public collections, that nothing as important has appeared for decades. The £2.42 million record price for his work of is expected to be broken when La Surprise is sold.

Jean-Antoine Watteau suffered ill-health throughout his life. He died of tuberculosis in 1721, having travelled to London the previous year to visit Dr Richard Mead, a celebrated physician, in the hope of medical treatment. The London winter proved too much for him, worsening his condition, and he returned to France, where he died.

His influence on art was lasting, and he continues to be revered for paintings that feature figures in aristocratic and theatrical dress in idyllic landscapes. Mr Bruce-Gardyne said that Watteau was “an incredibly fragile artist in the way he applied paint”, using wonderful transparent, light, feathery touches, as can be seen in La Surprise.

The work also reflects the artist’s unusual, improvisational method of composing his paintings. Having selected several appropriate figure studies from his many bound books of drawings, Watteau reproduced them in oil paint on canvases where he had already executed a landscape background. He adjusted the groups of figures to harmonise with the landscape setting.

Radiographs of the underpaint reveal another figure, which the artist subsequently painted over. The final composition shows a parkland paradise, as the sun begins to set, with the amorous couple watched by an actor from the Comédie Italienne and his pet dog.

La Surprise was first owned by an adviser to the French King, who was one of Watteau’s closest friends. In the turmoil of the French Revolution the painting disappeared, surfacing in England in the mid-19th century, with the family of the present owners.

— Christie’s will be exhibiting the painting to the public in London from July 5 to 8.

The short life of a bucolic charmer

— Jean-Antoine Watteau was born in 1684 in Valenciennes, six years after the city became part of France

— He moved to Paris aged 18 and spent time studying various Flemish and French artists

— He was taken in by the financier Pierre Crozat, whose collection of Venetian masters inspired him. He was also influenced by Peter Paul Rubens

— In 1709 Watteau tried to obtain the Prix de Rome but was rejected. In 1712 he tried again and was accepted as a full member of the academy. Over the next years he worked on the Pilgrimage to Cythera, also known as the Embarkation for Cythera

— He is credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes: scenes of bucolic charm infused with a theatrical air. Some of his best-known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet

— He sought treatment in London for tuberculosis but died in 1721, aged 37

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 613925.ece
 
Abandoned boy in UK our son: Bihar couple


LONDON: The mystery of the abandoned nine-year-old Punjabi-speaking Indian boy found at a Southall bus stop deepened on Tuesday with the child telling the police that his parents had died, even as a couple from Bihar claimed that he is their long-lost son.

Just hours after Ganga Prasad and Bindia Devi of Aurangabad in Bihar came forward to claim Gurinder Singh, the abandoned child, as their abducted son Sintu, Scotland Yard said, "We are aware of these reports (about the Indian couple's claims) through the media." The couple's son was reportedly kidnapped in 2005.

Police added there would need to be solid proof — like a DNA test — before the boy could be handed over to the couple. But this step, now considered standard in cases of disputed paternity and claimed identity, would probably be a long-drawn process for Ganga Prasad and Bindia Devi because this is considered to be one of the first cases involving an abandoned Indian child in the UK and his alleged parents in small-town India.

According to sources, the process of establishing Gurinder Singh's identity and collecting DNA samples from his alleged parents in Bihar would probably take weeks, if not longer.

Sources said there is some scepticism in UK about the Bihari couple's claim because the child only speaks Punjabi. They said that even though there’s nothing to disprove the couple’s suggested theory that Sintu may have been sold to a childless NRI in Punjab and eventually been taken to England, child development experts say the lost child would have some memory and at least understand his native Hindi dialect, even if he really was placed with a Punjabi NRI at age six.

Scotland Yard told TOI that matters were complicated by the child insisting his parents were dead and he had lived for two or three years with a white "uncle" in a three-bedroom house in west London. A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said, "Because he only speaks Punjabi, it's slow going, but we are following up on a number of inquiries."

Meanwhile, RJD MLC Bhim Singh, who is Sintu's uncle, said the boy's mother and close relatives are convinced that the "lost Indian boy in London" they saw on two TV channels was their son. "I have contacted the CM's office and talked to the DGP of Bihar and requested their help in bringing the boy back from London," he said. The fact that the boy shown on TV channels is now about nine and sports a turban, does not deter them.
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escargot1 said:
Abandoned boy in UK our son: Bihar couple


LONDON: The mystery of the abandoned nine-year-old Punjabi-speaking Indian boy found at a Southall bus stop deepened on Tuesday with the child telling the police that his parents had died, even as a couple from Bihar claimed that he is their long-lost son.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

You never know: if that boy had parents like my parents, I would have claimed that they'd died, too.
 
If a child were abducted by someone who wanted to keep him/her alive, the abductor might tell the child that the parents were dead. So the child wouldn't exactly be the best source in the circs. :(
 
'ASSAULT VICTIM' LOST HIS FINGER
11:00 - 27 March 2008

A teenager who claimed his finger was ripped off in a St Patrick's Day attack severed it while climbing over a fence, it has emerged.

Guy Wallace, from West Somerset, had alleged that his little finger was snapped off in a row because he was British as revellers celebrated the national holiday in Dublin city centre.

But investigating officers located CCTV footage which showed the 17-year-old, who was out drinking with friends, had tried to climb over a serrated metal security fence - in Britain Place - before falling back to the ground.

More than a week after the incident, Guy's missing finger was found on top of the 8ft fence. :shock:

His parents William and Lucy Wallace said he was lost and frightened having split from his friends and genuinely believed he lost his finger in an assault.

Coun Wallace is Conservative district councillor for the Blackmoor Vale ward, near Wellington.

Guy is now recovering at home with his parents, having had skin grafts to cover the exposed area.

Coun and Mrs Wallace said that after being headbutted in a fast-food restaurant, Guy was traumatised enough to link the event with the accident which took place minutes later.

Last Monday night Dublin police found the A-level student in a distressed state close to O'Connell Street, the capital's main thoroughfare. Despite an extensive search by officers, his missing digit could not be found.

Within days he told Irish newspapers and radio stations about the alleged attack.

Police said they were now satisfied that he lost part of his finger while attempting to scale a fence in a laneway off Parnell Street, Dublin.

http://tinyurl.com/396lz6
 
Lost Locke letters rediscovered

Two 300-year-old letters by the English philosopher John Locke have been discovered among an archive collection of historical papers.

One of the letters dates back to 1694 and concerns the formation of the Bank of England.

The other dates from 1685 and concerns Locke's expulsion from Oxford University and his exile to Holland.

The letters were "found" when an archivist recognised Somerset-born John Locke's handwriting and signature.

'Incredible moment'

The Locke letters appear within the Sanford Estate archive due to his close friendship with Edward Clarke of Chipley, MP for Taunton from 1690 to 1710, and Edward's wife Mary.

The Sanford archives were purchased with the help of a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, and have now been fully catalogued.

"It was an incredible moment when we found these lost treasures," said Janet Tall, Somerset County Council's head of archives.

"These letters, written by Locke, provide wonderful insights about both himself and England's history."

John Locke is known as the "father of English empiricism".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/7324203.stm
 
'Yeti' fly lost for 40 years is rediscovered
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 1:01am BST 09/04/2008

One of the most exotic and elusive flies known to science has been rediscovered, four decades after it was first found buzzing around a Caribbean crab.

"To me it was like seeing the Yeti," exclaims Dr Marcus Stensmyr, one of the team that made the find in an expedition to Grand Cayman in the Caribbean, the sole known home of this species, to resolve enduring questions about how the fly fits into the tree of life.

To the untrained eye, it looks like just another fruit fly, one of the Drosophilidae, a family consisting of about 3,000 species.

In fact most of the members feed on microbes, not fruit, and one of the more strange choices of habitat is made by this particular fly, Drosophila endobranchia, one of only three fruit flies known to have found a home on (and inside) land-crabs.

To the surprise of scientists, though probably not to most of us, these crab flies have been neglected in research since their description in a paper in 1966. In fact, D. endobranchia has actually not even been seen since its initial discovery.

To fill in this glaring gap in knowledge, scientists from Prof Bill Hansson's group at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Germany, set out last year to relocate these elusive flies on Grand Cayman.

Expedition members Dr Marcus Stensmyr and Regina Stieber pored over the original notebooks from Hampton Carson, who first found the crab flies in 1965 but were disappointed to find that all those sites had been developed.

Soon after, says Dr Stensmyr, came the Eureka moment, which led to the collection of 66 specimens so they could resolve detailed arguments about how to place the flies in the Drosophila family:

"One day driving around we came across a place which to me looked suitable to crab life, but which did not fit the original description of the habitat. We nevertheless decided to revisit the area after darkness. Upon arriving to the area we almost immediately saw in the headlights from our Jeep this enormous crab sitting by the roadside.

This was the first decent sized crab we had seen since arriving on the island. I dashed out of the car, ran up to the crab, and in the beam of the flashlight I saw flies scurrying over the back of the crabs! I could hardly believe it! The flies were real, they were still on the island and they actually lived on land crabs." 8)

The flies strike a very peculiar sight in real life. They are absolutely reluctant to leave their crab hosts, no matter what," he says. "Even after you have picked up the crabs, something which the crabs obviously are not to happy about, the flies still sit tight.

"There are still many unanswered questions regarding the flies which we hopefully will be able to address in the coming years. A key mystery is what the heck the adult flies are doing on the crabs. When you see them they most of the time just sit there, they don't seem to be doing anything."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.j ... tviewedbox
 
Ooo-er Missus, I'm back
By Richard Smith 21/04/2008

A pub landlady is tittering again after a mystery thief returned her prized photo of late comedian Frankie Howerd - along with £20.

Kath Birch, 42, was upset when the signed portrait of the Up Pompeii star was pinched four years ago.

Since 1984, it had hung in The Phoenix in Portsmouth amid 20 pictures of other celebs who've played the nearby Kings Theatre.

And now Frankie, subject of a recent BBC drama with Little Britain's David Walliams, is back in place, Kath said: "I'm so chuffed.

"I assumed the person who stole it had just torn it up and thrown it away."

But the thieving fan not only enclosed a £20 note, he also penned an ode - in the style of 1992 heart attack victim Frankie's Up Pompeii character Lurcio - saying the photo had been "on tour" all over the UK.

And despite a "Titter Ye Not Missus" sign-off, Kath beamed: "I can't help it."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories ... -20390185/
 
Anne Frank greetings card found

A greetings card signed by the Jewish diarist Anne Frank has been found in an antique shop near Amsterdam.

The card was sent in 1937, when Frank was eight, and was addressed to one of her best friends, Samme Ledermann.

The Anne Frank museum has authenticated the card, which shows a clover-covered bell above a snowy field, and wishes "good luck for the New Year".

Frank, who wrote her diary while in hiding from the Nazis, died in Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

Paul van den Heuvel, a school teacher, was looking through items in his father's antique shop in Naarden, near Amsterdam, when he came across the card.

"I just found it in a box, which probably came from an Amsterdam flea market," he told Dutch television.

The card had been sent from Aachen, in Germany, where Frank was visiting her grandmother.

A spokeswoman for the Anne Frank museum, Maatje Mostard, said she had seen another similar card, posted on the same day from the same town, and she was sure it was authentic.

"I don't know what he will do with it," she said. "We hope we can get it for our collection."

Frank, her family and four other Jewish friends hid from the Nazis in a small Amsterdam apartment, until their arrest in 1944.

They were sent to Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camps. Anne died in Belsen of typhus shortly before the end of the war.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7364028.stm
 
Vivaldi work revived 278 years on
By Rob Cameron
BBC News, Prague

A long-lost opera by the Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi has been performed for the first time in 278 years, in the city of Prague.

Argippo was written for the Czech capital and premiered there in 1730.

But the opera - a tale of "passion, love and trickery" in an Indian maharaja's court - later disappeared without trace.

Most of the score was discovered in Germany by a young Czech musician who completed the missing parts.

Libretto clue

Ondrej Macek is a keen harpsichordist with a passion for tracking down rare music.

But all he had to go on was the original booklet from the opening night containing the libretto, and the knowledge that the troupe of Italian musicians who first performed Argippo in Prague later moved to Germany.

"I found out that in 1733, three years after the premiere, the Italian music ensemble appeared in Regensburg. They'd been invited there after the theatre in Prague burnt down," he said.

"I thought the Italians might have brought something with them, and I was lucky to find an anonymous music collection by various composers, which also included arias from Argippo."

Only about two-thirds of the score had survived the centuries, and so Mr Macek used other arias from Vivaldi to fit the preserved text.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7382451.stm
 
After the catgut, cats!

WEBCAM MYSTERY OVER MISSING CAT
11:00 - 08 May 2008

A cat which was feared dead after going missing seven months ago was spotted on a webcam - by a woman 3,000 miles away in America.

Jerry the tabby vanished last October after his owners, Abbi and Darren Rendell, moved to Polperro in Cornwall from Staffordshire. Mrs Rendell put up dozens of posters and posted messages on the village website - www.polperro.org - asking if anyone had seen her beloved pet.

The appeals went unanswered until they were seen by an American woman, Deb Wilgus, from Indiana. She regularly visits the Polperro website and realised she had seen Jerry dozens of times on a webcam outside the resort's Claremont Hotel.

Mrs Wilgus immediately alerted the couple, who asked hotel owner Bill Smith to trawl his archives until he found images of her pet curled up on the doormat. Mrs Rendell has identified the cat as two-year-old Jerry and is now staking the hotel out at night in a bid to spot the errant animal.

The 30-year-old barmaid said: "About three weeks after we moved in, Jerry decided to take himself off on a walkabout and we haven't seen him since. I was so upset.

"Then out of the blue we got this message from a woman in America saying she had seen him and when I looked at the webcam picture I knew it was him instantly.

"I felt quite emotional when I saw him. I just couldn't believe it and it's definitely going to help us find him because he's a creature of habit."

She left her "Lost cat!" message on the Polperro village forum on October 25, but it was not until April 12 that Mrs Wilgus replied saying she had seen Jerry.

Her message reads: "One night last week I read about your Jerry who went missing. There is a tabby kitty who some nights sleeps on the mat at the entrance to the Claremont Hotel.

"I know that it is strange for someone 3,000 miles away to e-mail you for something like this, but if it were my cat I would want anyone that could perhaps help me to do so."

http://tinyurl.com/5ql62c

Let's hope we get to 'Found'....
 
Divers find bust of Julius Caesar in Rhone River
By Our Foreign Staff
Last Updated: 1:35PM BST 14/05/2008

A marble bust of Julius Caesar thought to date back to 46 B.C. has been found by divers in the Rhone River in France.

The culture ministry said that the life-sized bust is believed to be the oldest of the Roman emperor ever discovered.

It portrays the Roman ruler at an advanced age, with wrinkles and hollows in his face.

Divers from an archaeological team uncovered the bust and a collection of other finds in the Rhone near the town of Arles, which Caesar founded.

Among other items in the treasure trove of ancient objects is a 5.9 foot marble statue of Neptune, dated to the third century.

Two smaller statues, both bronze and measuring 27.5 inches, were also found. One of them, a satyr with his hands tied behind his back, “doubtless” originated in Hellenic Greece, the ministry said.

“Some [of the discoveries] are unique in Europe,” said Christine Albanel, the French culture minister, who added that the bust of Caesar was an outstanding discovery and in a class of its own.

“This marble bust of the founder of the Roman city of Arles constitutes the most ancient representation known today of Caesar,” a ministry statement said, adding that it “undoubtedly” dates to the creation of Arles in 46 B.C.

Among other things, researchers are trying to uncover “in what context these statues were thrown into the river,” said Michel L’Hour, who heads the Department of Subaquatic Archaeological Research, whose divers made the discovery between September and October last year.

The site “has barely been skimmed,” Mr L’Hour said, adding that a new search operation will begin this summer.

He said that with its Roman beginnings, the Rhone and Arles region, in Provence in the southern France, and “propitious” for discoveries.

Miss Albanel called the find “exceptional” and said that the Caesar bust is “the oldest representation known today” of the emperor.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... River.html
 
Watch that's back from the seabed... And it's still working, after 67 years
By Jaya Narain
Last updated at 1:17 AM on 09th June 2008

The last time Teddy Bacon saw his expensive gold watch it was sinking down into the harbour in Gibraltar.

That was in 1941, and the watch had slipped off his wrist when Lieutenant Bacon threw a line to shore from his ship, HMS Repulse.

After two divers failed to find his lost treasure, the young officer gave up on ever seeing it again.

But 67 years later, it turned up on his doormat - still ticking.

The Bulova Automatic, wrapped in a brown paper bag, did not seem at all the worse for wear after decades on the ocean floor.

The timepiece had been discovered by workers dredging the harbour in 2007, who scooped it up with other debris in their machine.

Because the deputy harbourmaster in 1941 had made a log with a description of the watch and its approximate location, staff knew who it belonged to.

So they posted it back to the address Lieutenant Bacon had left for them on a scrap of paper all those years ago.

After being redirected from his many former homes it eventually landed on the doormat of his house in Tarvin, Cheshire.

'To say I was stunned could be considered a major understatement,' said Mr Bacon, a widower and father of four who is almost 90.

'It truly was a miracle that I had been reunited with that watch after a lifetime.

'Now I wear it every day and it keeps perfect time, even after all those years in the water. It is absolutely excellent and I consider it a long-lost friend.'

Lieutenant Bacon bought the watch in the Azores for 55 dollars on his way to Singapore as part of a fleet sent to counter the Japanese invasion, and was wearing it in Gibraltar.

He said: 'I was showing one of the sailors how to throw a line to shore and I remember, as clear as day, seeing the watch sail off my wrist and disappear into the water.

'I was pretty annoyed about it and two divers attached to the flotilla went down to have a look for it but could not see it.

'So I went to the deputy harbourmaster and left a full description, location and probable depth of around 40ft and left it at that. Obviously I didn't expect to see it again.'

He continued on to Singapore where he narrowly escaped with his life when Repulse was sunk during an attack by Japanese planes.

After the war Mr Bacon continued his nautical career with his family's shipping brokerage and is now enjoying his retirement.

Francis Cantos, a spokesman for the Gibraltar Government, said: 'It just goes to illustrate the special and enduring relationship between the Royal Navy and Gibraltar.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... years.html
 
Know anyone who has lost a jetliner?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-p ... 446469.stm

Plane abandoned at Hanoi airport

Vietnamese authorities say they are mystified as to who owns a Boeing 727 which has been abandoned at Hanoi's Noi Bai airport.

The plane was flown in from Siem Reap in neighbouring Cambodia in late 2007 and has been unclaimed ever since.

An airport official told the BBC that they believe the owners could be an airline based in Cambodia.

The official said that if it remains unclaimed, the plane will have to be sent for scrap.

The plane has a Cambodian flag on its fuselage and is emblazoned with the name Air Dream, but the authorities say they have no information about the airline.

Earlier, one security official at Noi Bai airport told the BBC’s Vietnamese Service that the plane belongs to bankrupt budget Cambodian airline Royal Khmer, but this is not certain.

Permission was originally given for the plane to remain at the airport while essential maintenance was carried out but these repairs have not been done.

Online newspaper VietnamNet reported that the owners could be unable or unwilling to pay the required airport parking fees.
Click to expand...

So, what, did the crew and passengers get off the plane and forget where they parked? It's a hell of a big thing to mislay. Or maybe it doesn't work properly and they gave up on it?
 
Lost Beatles interview unearthed
By Howard Shannon
Producer, The Lost Beatles Interview

For 44 years a canister of film had been stored in a damp garage in South London; unopened, unloved and almost thrown away.

But, finally, somebody took a look inside - and realised they had
unearthed a piece of pop history.

This is the story of a lost Beatles interview - which is to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday for the first time since it was originally recorded.

The nine-minute interview took place in the studios of Scottish Television on Thursday, 30 April, 1964.

It was thought to have been recorded on a tele-cine machine in London, and stored in a can, now rusted with the passing of decades.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that the fragile film has survived at all.

Now stored safely in a professional archive in Milton Keynes - where temperature and humidity are carefully controlled - it was found, stacked among 64 unmarked cans in a London garage, by film buff Richard Jeffs.

With a bit of detective work - using the scribbled label found inside the film can - Mr Jeffs managed to decipher the names of the two presenters who fronted the interview in 1964.

The faded handwriting was incredibly hard to read, but patience proved successful.

The hosts were Paul Young and Morag Hood - who presented Roundup, an hour-long children's current affairs programme on Scottish television network STV.

It was the second time they had featured the Fab Four on their show - a pre-fame Beatles had mimed to their second single, Please, Please Me on the show in January 1963.

Jorg Pieper, the German-born author of The Beatles Film & TV Chronicle 1961-70, says the tape is the earliest surviving long-form British studio interview with the band.

In other words, it is rare.

And it offers a revealing insight into Sir Paul McCartney and John Lennon's songwriting partnership.

"Sometimes we write them on old pianos or anything that's lying around, guitars and things. Normally we sit down and try and bash one out," explains McCartney.

"Then again, there's no formula. He [Lennon] can come up with one completely finished, but we still say we both wrote it though.

McCartney also mentions the first song he ever composed:

"We wrote funny songs then - mine was I Lost My Little Girl."

First meeting

He went on to perform the song some 30 years later in the early 1990s.

Writer and Beatles expert Mark Lewisohn describes the interview as "candid".

"It's a special piece that is so laid back it almost falls over," he says.

McCartney and Lennon recall their first meeting when they were 13.

"I was playing at a garden fete in the village where I lived just outside Liverpool playing with a skiffle group," says Lennon. "And he came along and that's how we met."

"I knew one of his mates, Ivan. A mutual mate and he introduced us," adds McCartney.

Asked how the band likes the hordes of screaming fans, McCartney laughs: "We love that ... the atmosphere in the theatres, really it's marvellous."

The Lost Beatles Interview airs at 1330 on Tuesday 1 July, and again at 1530 on Saturday 5 July, on BBC Radio 4.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7477669.stm

No jokes about grannies, please - talkin' 'bout my generation here! 8)
 
You wait ages for a lost Beatles tape, and then two turn up together...

They went out with a bang
Did someone throw a firework at the Beatles in Memphis - and did it end their touring career? Colin Fleming on the discovery of a remarkable lost tape of a seminal gig
Tuesday July 1, 2008
The Guardian

In the summer of 1966, the Beatles had just recorded Revolver, rock's first full-on foray into what a band could pull off in the studio. But they were still every bit a live, coming-to-your-town touring band when they trekked off for world tour number three. It was a tour that, in the wake of John Lennon's claim that "we're more popular than Jesus", would lead to record burnings and death threats in America's Bible belt.

Beatles obsessives have long talked about what happened on that tour, and in particular what happened at a gig in Memphis. Someone shot at the band, goes one theory. A car backfired, runs another. The general consensus, though, is that someone lobbed a cherry bomb, a powerful type of firework, at the stage, while the Beatles performed their second set. Depending on who you listen to, or which web chatroom you log on to, the Beatles stopped short - or carried on as though nothing had happened. Some people say the band were frightened by the explosion - they had mistaken it for a gunshot, each looking around to see if one of them had been shot down. Whatever the truth, collective decisions rarely come faster. As Lennon said, that was it. Last tour. We're done here.

And then, late last year, word started going around: a tape that had long been hoped for, but no one really thought would ever turn up, would soon be up on the web. It turned out that two teenage girls had lugged a portable tape recorder to the Memphis show. There were already plenty of 1966 shows available as bootleg recordings, including a number from Tokyo in near-perfect fidelity for the era. But the Memphis gig was the stuff of fantasy.

If you collect bootlegs, as I do, you live for that moment when incredulity gives way to wonder. The tapes of the 1966 Tokyo gigs don't inspire any wonder: they're a good indication of how poor the band was throughout much of their final world tour. But when I first heard what has been dubbed the "Cherry Bomb Tapes", after tracking it down online, I heard a group raring to go. These guys were up for it. However, once we get to If I Needed Someone, swagger turns to humility mighty fast. Someone does indeed set off a cherry bomb, or some kind of backyard explosive, and the men of the moment blast off into double-time, Lennon positively flogging his rhythm guitar.

With audible proof of the explosion comes debate. What, for instance, would have happened if that cherry bomb had never gone off? Touring was still a possibility for the Beatles, pre-cherry bomb. That firecracker is the sound of a decision, a ne plus ultra moment for a band that was already contemplating a seismic shift in how they were going to do business: in the studio, with rock'n'roll taking life as collage art, rather than the stuff of teenybopper caprices and the night out at the baseball stadium.

The Beatles' alleged telepathy gets a lot of play in the assorted versions of their story - like George Harrison's oft-cited remark that he wasn't sure what "we" thought about God yet, as though thoughts passed from Beatle to Beatle without need for articulation. 8) But to have the life all but scared out of you - to share that experience with three other people, and arrive at the same conclusion - isn't so much telepathy as basic humanity coming to the fore. The band who get terrified together tend to retreat together, especially when their art is better served in doing so.

Let's consider Pepperland, and how the distance from the band's final tour to the experimentation of Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane was bridged by what went down in Memphis. Once that cherry bomb went off, with no need to worry about recreating their studio work on stage, the Beatles were free to tear loose. Before long, the rest of the heavy hitters would follow suit. The Stones ended up with the jumbled Their Satanic Majesties Request, while Brian Wilson, forever in heated competition with Lennon and McCartney, soon found himself going mad. Studio fever, almost. But the demarcation had been established. Touring was no longer at the heart of what it meant to be a rock'n'roll band. If what you did in the studio was big enough, you didn't have to worry about whose town you weren't going to next. It was all about the vinyl now.

The best bootlegs function as great lost masterpieces: the 1966 Bob Dylan show in Manchester was the classic live recording of his career, but languished in the vaults for 40 years before getting an official release; check out the Stone Roses live at Glasgow Green in the summer of 1990, when even their staunchest followers were wondering if they could still cut it. Most bands, if they're lucky, have one great live album. If you want to know what those bands were really like at their best, you have to go underground.

The Beatles didn't even really get their one classic live album, unless you count the patched-together Live at the Hollywood Bowl, from 1977. But the Cherry Bomb Tapes are much more than just a live recording. It's not especially uplifting to hear a band playing as though they have just been shot at, and a lot of listeners will find their pleasure quotient ratcheted down by the sound quality. But what you're really listening for is history, the sound of a collective, immediate decision. And while the historical cachet of bootlegs typically centres on their artistry, the Cherry Bomb Tapes are different. They're about history itself, a distillation of a tall tale into the here and now, folklore becoming tangible.

http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/story/0 ... 98,00.html
 
" . . . it offers a revealing insight into Sir Paul McCartney and John Lennon's songwriting partnership.

" . . . Normally we sit down and try and bash one out," explains McCartney."

But every now and then they wrote a song instead!



:splat:
 
Wow!

We might expect to find a few old Nazis in Argentina but now they've found something rather more exciting from old Germany. Film-lovers hold onto your hats - it's the long-lost original version of Lang's Metropolis!

This article does not claim the complete film as seen in 1928 has been rediscovered but it sounds as if the missing sections can now be substantially restored.

http://www.zeit.de/online/2008/27/metro ... b-englisch

It looks to be an authentic find, though it's one of those Grail Found stories which produces a "pull-the-other-one" response at first sight. :)

More, with some images here:

http://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?t=1414

The condition is very poor but note that a poster on this normally very well-informed site declares unambiguously that the rediscovered film is complete!
 
I've never seen Metropolis - am i missing out?

I did, however, come across a paragraph-length extract from the book the other day - and that looked really good. Has anyone read it?
 
PLEASE let this be true ...
 
If you refresh the link to the thread on the Nitrateville Message Board given above, you will now find a witness account of a screening of the rediscovered Metropolis footage yesterday in Buenos Aires.

Twenty-three minutes of new footage has been found, leaving the church scene and Hel scenes still missing. So this is still not the complete Metropolis, alas. There will be a lot of discussion about how best to incorporate the new and worn 16mm elements into the rather splendid 2-hour Murnau Foundation version.

A reminder that the current Murnau Foundation print is distributed by Eureka, where it comes with a lot of extras. Thrifty customers should look out for the second-hand newspaper freebie which contains the film alone but in the same excellent quality print. Under no circumstances should anyone be tempted by the earlier Eureka-JEF-Aikman-Archive video which circulated on a lot of labels. It boasted of a long running time - 143 minutes - but runs at 16 frames-per-second and is missing several scenes. It is also amongst the worst quality-wise.

It may be some time before we get a proper 143-minute version and even with the restored footage, it is unlikely that this very strange nightmare film will ever make complete daylight sense.

Maybe one day we shall have Hitchcock's Mountain Eagle! :)
 
FA Cup final ticket from 1895 discovered in dusty scrapbook to sell for £3,000
By Nick Britten
Last Updated: 3:25PM BST 08/07/2008

A ticket for the 1895 FA Cup final discovered in a dusty scrapbook recently is expected to fetch £3,000 at auction this week.

The ticket, originally sold for 12.5p, is expected to fetch £3,000
The ticket cost 12.5p and gained the holder entrance into the match at Crystal Palace, which Aston Villa beat West Midlands rival West Bromwich Albion 1-0.

The game, the first final to be played at Crystal Palace, remains famous for the fastest goal ever scored in an FA Cup final - 30 seconds - and also for the fact that the Cup was stolen shortly afterwards and never recovered.

David Barber, the FA's official historian, said it was an extremely important piece of memorabilia sand one of the oldest tickets to surface.

He said: "1895 was certainly a significant year in the history the FA Cup. It was the year in which the final was played at Crystal Palace for the first time, but the attendance was only 42,000.

"It was also the final with the fastest ever goal, scored by Aston Villa's John Devey, and after the final the trophy was stolen when Villa decided to show it in a shop window.

"The trophy was never recovered, so it was a very important year for the cup and this is one of the oldest tickets I have ever heard of."

The ticket will go under the hammer on Friday in Shropshire.

John Mullocks, of Mullock's Auctioneers, said: "Original tickets from such early FA cup finals rarely appear on the market for obvious reasons.

"This one is in particularly fine condition, having been put in the album all those years ago and probably never seeing the light of day until our client found it a few weeks ago.

"He didn't realise its rarity but thankfully he came to us and we knew immediately that he had found something which was very special."

He said the ticket, which is in mint condition, originally belonged to someone in the north-east and was for one of the most expensive seats in the ground, adding: "He could well have used the ticket as a bookmark later - it really is a remarkable piece of history."

The 1895 final between Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion was played at Crystal Palace nearly 30 years before the original Wembley Stadium was built and was the 23rd FA Cup final.

Mr Mullock said: "In those days everyone would have thrown their tickets away, so for any serious football collector this is a very, very rare item.

"You do get a lot of fakes and copies of old cup final tickets, but we have had this one checked and it even smells right."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... 2C000.html
 
Johnny Cash: The man in black and white (9 pictures)

After 45 years lost in the archives of Columbia Records, and then in the dark of a New York closet, these photographs of legendary country singer Johnny Cash were finally unearthed four years ago, beneath the skirts and the winter coats of Silvia Koner.

Taken by Silvia’s husband, the photographer Marvin Koner, the pictures show Cash, then aged 27, in White Plains, New York in the February of 1959.

What is striking about Koner’s pictures is that they show a star poised on the edge of colossal success. You look at him here, straight-faced and heavy-eyed, be-quiffed and pale-suited, and know that it was still all to come: the hits, the amphetamines, the marriage to June Carter, the collaboration with Bob Dylan, the shows at Folsom Prison and San Quentin jail, the Man in Black, the work with Rick Rubin that revived his career, the diabetes that would claim his life in 2003. They are pictures of a man before he really walked the line.

Laura Barton

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gallery ... =335560377
 
Lots of L&F news today!

End of a Kafkaesque nightmare: writer's papers finally come to light
Documents hoarded for 40 years in Tel Aviv flat by executor's secretary
Kate Connolly in Berlin
Wednesday July 9, 2008
The Guardian

Scholars of the 20th-century writer Franz Kafka were in a state of suspense last night at the news that the remains of his estate, which have been hoarded in a Tel Aviv flat for decades, may soon be revealed.
Previously unseen documents, postcards, sketches and personal belongings of the Czech-Jewish writer, who wrote in German, have been gathering dust in the home of Esther Hoffe, the former secretary of Kafka's friend and executor Max Brod since his death in 1968. Hoffe's refusal to relinquish the documents led to a literary game of cat and mouse between her and the state of Israel, under pressure from the country's cultural elite, which on one occasion even led to her arrest on suspicion of smuggling Kafka's writings out of the country.

Now, following her death at the age of 101, Kafka lovers hope the row may have come to an end. Researchers are ready to pounce on the contents of Hoffe's flat, fully expecting the items will throw new light on the mysterious writer who died at the age of 41, as well as his friendship with Brod, his greatest champion.
But authorities in Tel Aviv have warned that the papers, with their high sulphuric acid content, may have stood up poorly to conditions in Hoffe's damp flat in the centre of Tel Aviv and to the hordes of cats and dogs which she kept until two years ago when health inspectors intervened after neighbours complained about the stench. :shock:

The items have a complex provenance reaching back to 1924, when Kafka died of tuberculosis in Vienna. Brod took over Kafka's estate, including several unpublished manuscripts, and famously defied his friend's instructions to burn them. In 1939, the night before the Nazis entered Prague, Brod fled the city with two suitcases containing what he could of the estate. He escaped via Romania to Palestine, later moving the archive to the safety of Switzerland during the Suez crisis in 1956.

In 1961 he gave most of the manuscripts to the Bodleian library at Oxford University at the request of Kafka's heirs, but kept hold of The Trial because he said it had been a gift to him from Kafka. Nearly 30 years later, Hoffe sold the manuscript of Kafka's novel for a record £1m at Sotheby's.

Few doubt that there are other treasures waiting to be found, due to tantalising utterances Hoffe made over the years about Brod's estate.

On one occasion, at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport, Hoffe was arrested on suspicion of illegally smuggling valuable archive material out of the country. Police found letters by Kafka as well as his travel journal in her luggage. Following that incident she allowed employees from Israel's state archive to catalogue the items she had, but was accused of holding back key documents.

Repeated attempts by academics to persuade her to give the items in her possession to the national library in Jerusalem failed.

The German publisher Artemis and Winkler paid Hoffe a five-figure advance for Brod's diaries in the 1980s, but has still to receive them. Hoffe let it be known in 1993 that she had transferred them to a bank vault in Tel Aviv to which she is still believed to have had access when she died. The legal battle between the publisher and her heirs is still in progress.

"Esther was always afraid that someone would steal these materials from her," Avital Ben Horin, a close friend of Brod's, told Ha'aretz, the Tel Aviv daily. Describing Hoffe's flat as an "unsuitable" location for the estate because of Tel Aviv's humidity, she added: "But it was impossible to convince her".

Puzzle

Commentators have remarked that the story could have stemmed from Kafka's own pen. Kafka, the man still considered a literary puzzle 84 years after his death, "is causing the world to hold its breath," Germany's Die Welt newspaper wrote. Ha'aretz, which broke the story, called it "Kafkaesque", turning to the very phrase inspired by Kafka's own writings to describe something which is elusive and menacingly complex.

Much to the frustration of academics, archivists and the Israeli government, Hoffe, who became Brod's lover following the death of his wife, was said to have jealously clung to the papers which Brod left to her in his will because of her wish to protect intimate details of Brod's life. It will now be up to her septuagenarian daughters, Ruth and Hava, to decide on the estate's fate. But according to reports, Israeli authorities have indicated their willingness to intervene to save what is considered an invaluable piece of Jewish cultural heritage.

"This is really very exciting, particularly if there are documents left that have not yet been published," said Professor Freddie Rokem, a lecturer in theatre arts at Tel Aviv University, who organised a conference to honour Brod on his 100th anniversary in 1984. "Hoffe more or less inherited the suitcase of Kafka papers from Brod. The question is whether she knew how much it was worth from the beginning, or did she really only learn its true value later on?"

Josef Cermak, author of several books on Kafka, said he hoped the release of the items might help clear up quarrels in the literary world in this, the 125th anniversary of his birth, which is being marked with events around the globe.

"There are so many mistruths which have been written about Kafka. For academic purposes it is crucial that we get to see what the unpredictable Miss Hoffe has kept from us for so long."

Profile

Franz Kafka was born in Prague in 1883 into a middle-class Jewish family. His most famous novel, The Trial, published in 1925, became a symbol of 20th-century totalitarianism and gave birth to the word "Kafkaesque", used to describe everything from entrapment in bureaucracy to the absurdity of life. His other works included The Metamorphosis (1915) and The Castle (1926). The themes of alienation, persecution, and hopelessness run through his writing, which attracted little attention until after his death in 1924 from tuberculosis in a sanitorium near Vienna, aged 41.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articl ... 34,00.html
 
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