• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Lost & Found

image.jpg


Found: A Historic Trolley Hidden Inside a House
When Trenton’s streetcars came to a halt in the 1930s, one literally found a home.
BY NOOR AL-SAMARRAI
MARCH 19, 2019

WHEN BRANDON BREZA AND MARC Manfredi, buddies since high school, started a real estate venture together, they didn’t expect to find themselves on an adventure in historic preservation.

In August 2018, they purchased a foreclosed house at 31 Smith Avenue in Hamilton, New Jersey, with the idea that they could transform it into an appealing rental unit. The description on the property listing said that the small home had been made out of a former rail car, but on first glance it looked like an ordinary suburban house, though perhaps a little worse for wear.

“I don’t think we’re gonna find a dead conductor or anything here … maybe there’ll be some old train parts or something,” says Breza, of his thinking at the time.

They began work a few days after purchasing the property, bringing down a couple interior walls. But they got a little hammer-happy. “We watched a lot of HGTV and thought, ‘This is awesome, let’s start knocking down walls,’” Breza recalls. “We started thinking, we’d do it the right way and make it more attractive for renters.”

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/trolley-car-inside-a-house
 
Last edited by a moderator:
oooh! I'm sure I've read critiques which talk about the genius of the quiet background!
 
Dutch statesman's diary found 200 years after it was lost

Johan van Oldenbarnevelt is arguably the greatest Dutch statesman, as one of the founding fathers who helped liberate the Netherlands from Spanish rule, but for 200 years the whereabouts of a diary chronicling his final months before he was beheaded has been a mystery.

The prose – written over an eight-month period between 1618 and 1619 – was last seen in 1825 when a pastor, the Rev Adrian Stolker, studied the manuscript and made a copy by hand to be published for wider dissemination.

But the original leather-bound book, written by Van Oldenbarnevelt’s trusty servant, Jan Francken, detailing his master’s daily refusal to accept that he was doomed for execution, had simply vanished from sight – until now, on the 400th anniversary of his execution.

Alongside William I, Van Oldenbarnevelt, who lived from 1547 to 1619, is widely regarded as one the architects of the Netherlands, who also oversaw the founding of the source of the country’s great wealth, the Dutch East India Company.

His undoing came when he fell out with William’s son, Maurice of Nassau, over a military expedition to Flanders that nearly ended in disaster. He then parted ways with the young prince over rival interpretations of the bible.

Van Oldenbarnevelt, arrested for treason on the grounds he had “breached the peace of the Church and State”, was imprisoned at the age of 72 in a small room in the Binnenhof, home of the Dutch parliament and prime minister.

Eight months later, on 13 May 1619, he was beheaded by sword – 400 years ago this week. But until then, Francken was given freedom to move in and out of his master’s rooms, smuggling in pen and paper, and recording events for posterity.

“Francken started his diary just at the moment that Van Oldenbarnevelt was arrested by a soldier in the name of prince Maurice,” said Edelkoort. “He wrote until the moment he was beheaded, noticing everything that happened in the room in which he was kept. The original was kept secret for 200 years.”
 
Quite a bit overdue but the borrower was generous.

A book has been returned to a library 52 years after it was taken out, with a £100 cheque to cover the fine.

Jo Wilde, manager at Lowestoft Library, said she was "amazed" when the copy of The Metaphysical Poets arrived in the post.

It has a date stamp to show it was due back in September 1967 and it came with a note from the borrower who said they were "extremely embarrassed".

Ms Wilde said the "very generous" gesture was a "lovely surprise".

"Most people wouldn't have even bothered to return the book," she said.

Ms Wilde said the borrower - who took out the book while staying with their parents in the town - had come across it again while moving house.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-48348971
 
... And this MIA library book turned out to be quite a bit more overdue ...
Rare book returned to Irish library almost 82 years overdue
An Irish library was surprised after a rare book was returned 80 years past its due date.

The Donegal County Library confirmed Sunday a copy of the Annie M.P. Smithson book The White Owl was returned to its Gaoth Dobhair location Friday, nearly 82 years after it was checked out in 1937. ...

... The book was checked out July 23, 1937. ...

The Irish Mirror said relatives of the person who borrowed the book found it during a house clearance at their home in Falcarragh. The book was supposed to be due 14 days after its check-out date.

Irish public libraries ended overdue book fines in January. The average overdue fee was 5 cents per day, meaning the fee for The White Owl would have been around €1,280, or about $1,428.

SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2019/0...ibrary-almost-82-years-overdue/8111558452800/
 
Quite a bit overdue but the borrower was generous.

A book has been returned to a library 52 years after it was taken out, with a £100 cheque to cover the fine.

Jo Wilde, manager at Lowestoft Library, said she was "amazed" when the copy of The Metaphysical Poets arrived in the post.

It has a date stamp to show it was due back in September 1967 and it came with a note from the borrower who said they were "extremely embarrassed".

Ms Wilde said the "very generous" gesture was a "lovely surprise".

"Most people wouldn't have even bothered to return the book," she said.

Ms Wilde said the borrower - who took out the book while staying with their parents in the town - had come across it again while moving house.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-48348971
I remember reading that book when I was doing 'A' level English.
 
image.jpg


Found: A Historic Trolley Hidden Inside a House
When Trenton’s streetcars came to a halt in the 1930s, one literally found a home.
BY NOOR AL-SAMARRAI
MARCH 19, 2019

WHEN BRANDON BREZA AND MARC Manfredi, buddies since high school, started a real estate venture together, they didn’t expect to find themselves on an adventure in historic preservation.

In August 2018, they purchased a foreclosed house at 31 Smith Avenue in Hamilton, New Jersey, with the idea that they could transform it into an appealing rental unit. The description on the property listing said that the small home had been made out of a former rail car, but on first glance it looked like an ordinary suburban house, though perhaps a little worse for wear.

“I don’t think we’re gonna find a dead conductor or anything here … maybe there’ll be some old train parts or something,” says Breza, of his thinking at the time.

They began work a few days after purchasing the property, bringing down a couple interior walls. But they got a little hammer-happy. “We watched a lot of HGTV and thought, ‘This is awesome, let’s start knocking down walls,’” Breza recalls. “We started thinking, we’d do it the right way and make it more attractive for renters.”

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/trolley-car-inside-a-house

In Essex (I will keep this deliberately vague) inside a normal looking bungalow, is one of these:

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&r...aw1xOKdujkRU6ocrdwDwSnHj&ust=1558559501901809

In excellent condition, still with its running gear. The house belonged to our old roadie. It was his bedroom when he was a child and he most definitely doesn't want people coming to look at it.
 
Brilliant! And they are all different, it's not a case of "another pawn ho hum!" :D

wish it definitely was going to a museum :(
 
Brilliant! And they are all different, it's not a case of "another pawn ho hum!" :D

wish it definitely was going to a museum :(
If I won mega millions on the Euromillions lottery you’d be able to see this piece in the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street. Would like it perhaps to be a smaller museum but a bit worried about security.
 
Yes, very desirable and very nickable.

I think the ones in Scotland are in the NMS with superb copies on show in Lewis? I'm assuming that Lewis has copies of the London ones too.
 
Yes, very desirable and very nickable.

I think the ones in Scotland are in the NMS with superb copies on show in Lewis? I'm assuming that Lewis has copies of the London ones too.
Yes 11 in NMS I believe. But having said that I’m pretty sure the wife and I were in some small town and they had a loan in their local museum.
 
Note to self ... Stow all prostheses before wading out into the water ...

Florida police find prosthetic ear owner after Facebook post

Police in Florida trying to find the rightful owner of a prosthetic ear that washed up on their beach got a happy phone call from South Carolina on Thursday.

Holmes Beach Police Sgt. Brian Hall said a woman called saying the rubber ear they posted on Facebook belongs to her husband.

Hall said the Beaufort couple was vacationing in the Tampa Bay area when the man went swimming. She said he was trying to put the ear in his pocket for safekeeping when “a wave knocked it off his hand.”

The police department posted a photo of the left ear, saying a local resident found it in the sand on Saturday after the “World’s Strongest Man” contest on Anna Maria Island.

Prosthetic ears can cost thousands of dollars. Hall said the department will mail it to South Carolina.

“We will put it in box. I hope nobody sees it and freaks out,” he said.

SOURCE: https://www.apnews.com/fd3bbf4f6a1e420cb51e463cd7f3717d
 
To the best of my recollection, this 75-year span represents the record lapse between losing a wallet and the owner getting it back ...
Stolen wallet returned to woman 75 years later

An 89-year-old Illinois woman had an unexpected reunion when her stolen wallet was returned to her 75 years later.

Pastor Seth Baltzell said a plumber working on a project to convert the former Centralia High School building in Centralia to a church discovered a stash of 15 wallets in the wall of a girls' bathroom.

The wallets had been stripped of cash, but still contained school IDs that identified their owners as students from the mid-1940s.

"We've been working on this building for six months. I've been kind of waiting for that really cool thing that nobody's seen in the last 75 or 100 years to pop out," Baltzell told CNN.

The pastor posted photos of the wallets to Facebook along with the names from some of the IDs in hopes they would be recognized by relatives.

"Most likely, the person that's owned the wallet is either at the end of their lifespan or no longer living," Baltzell said. "My best chance was to reconnect with one of their relatives."

Baltzell was surprised, however, when KSDK-TV told him one of the owners, Betty Sissom, 89, is still living in the St. Louis area.

Sissom said it was shocking to be reunited with the tattered red wallet.

"I can't imagine somebody stole all those wallets and put them behind the toilet in a space I didn't even know was there," Sissom said.

She said the wallet contained one particularly sentimental item: A photo of her brother, who has since died, while he was serving in World War II.

"I was just so glad to get that, because I don't have a picture of him," Sissom said.

SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2019/0...turned-to-woman-75-years-later/1511562770924/
 
I hate to think what this guy's blood pressure readings may have been from the time he realized his screw-up until the lucky outcome occurred ...
Man reunites with $23K found in recycling sorting facility

A man who accidentally tossed $23,000 into the recycling bin reunited with his life savings Saturday after a worker at a recycling facility in Northern California spotted a shoebox stuffed with money.

When the man from Ashland, Oregon, realized his mistake on Thursday, the recycling bin had already been emptied into a truck bound for the Recology sorting facility in Humboldt County.

The facility’s general manager told the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat most of the recyclables from the truck had been sorted by the time the man contacted Recology. Workers were nonetheless told to be on the lookout for the box.

Someone spotted the box down the sorting line Friday and recovered all but $320. The money somehow stayed in the box during the 200-mile trip to the facility.

SOURCE: https://www.apnews.com/b6c8ebba14f14c5fbf77600dfd3421fc
 
Such a lucky guy! I'm guessing the $320 went to the finder.
 
This class ring's journeys remain a mystery, but at least it's been reunited with its original owner.
Man's lost class ring returned to him 43 years later

A man who created from a Tennessee high school in 1976 was reunited with the class ring he lost while skiing 43 years ago thanks to an employee at the school.

Sandra Manning, a secretary at Sevier County High School, said a man came into the school Thursday morning bearing a Class of 1976 ring that he said his mother found years ago at a campground in Georgia.

Manning used the initials on the ring, C.E.S, and some old yearbooks to identify a prime suspect, Chris Smith.

The secretary posted a plea for help on Facebook, and just a couple hours later she was on the phone with Smith's wife, Joyce.

"I thought it was a joke at first to be honest," Chris Smith told WBIR-TV.

Smith said he does not know how his ring ended up at a campsite in Georgia.

"I lost the ring the summer that we graduated skiing out here at Douglas Lake at the local lake here. So someone had to find it and it made its way way back to Georgia," he said.
SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2019/0...returned-to-him-43-years-later/9131566581813/
 
I don't recall seeing a cat owner and a cat reunited after this long a timespan (11 years).
Woman reunited with cat missing for 11 years

A New York woman reunited with her cat 11 years after he went missing thanks to a patient animal rescue worker and a microchip scanner.

Maggie Welz, of Duchess County, said her cat Tiger never returned home after running out of her house when someone opened a door. Her family later moved down the street, but she asked the people who moved into her old house to keep an eye out for the brown tabby cat.

The neighbor never found Tiger, but Carol O'Connell, an SPCA staffer, did. She said Tiger had been coming around her house for the past three years, but she wasn't able to get close enough to pet him.

"Each year he came to my house, he deteriorated more and more each year, and that's when I realized either somebody just abandoned him or he just was missing or lost or he was just a feral cat," O'Connell said. "This spring he started to come around a little bit more in the mornings so I started to work harder to gain his trust."

O'Connell borrowed the SPCA's microchip scanner and was able to locate Welz. She said that even though they had been apart for 11 years, she definitely planned to bring Tiger back home.

"At that point we determined that he was coming home ... " Welz said.

... "I have no idea where he was for the years in between, I'm sure he could tell us many tales, but the thing is that he is now home with us and he will be with us for the remainder of his life."

The SPCA said Tiger was in remarkably good health for living on the streets for 11 years.
SOURCE: https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/lost-found.15028/page-27
 
That's one piece (of the sculpture that went MIA a half-century ago) down, with two more to go ...
Piece of missing sculpture resurfaces in antiques store 50 years later

A piece of a sculpture that went missing from the Los Angeles Public Library 50 years ago has resurfaced in an Arizona antiques shop.

Floyd Lillard, owner of the Miners and Merchants antiques store in Bisbee, said he obtained the sculpture portion about 10 years ago, and his quest to find its origins was put on hold for a time while he battled cancer.

"If I hadn't made it through, no one would have remembered," Lillard told KOLD-TV. "No one would have known."

Lillard said a recent hunt for clues on Google brought him an old photo from a California newspaper showing the Well of Scribes, a sculpture that disappeared in 1969 from the Central Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library.

"You could only see half of the well in the picture," Lillard said. "That's the half that I had."

Lillard's portion is one of three pieces that composed the entire sculpture. He said he has been in contact with the Los Angeles Public Library about bringing the sculpture home.

The final two pieces of the sculpture are still missing, but Lillard said he has hope they might still be found.
SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2019/0...re-50-years-later/7601568834625/?spt=slh&or=1
 
That's rather fine - I wonder what the full list of figures is?
 
That's rather fine - I wonder what the full list of figures is?

If you're asking about the missing LA Public Library sculpture ...
Well of Scribes

1926, Bertram Goodhue and Lee Lawrie. Now lost. The well commemorated scribes of all nations. Formerly in front of the Los Angeles Public Library. The scheme was as follows (the is based on the "Hand Book of the Central Building Los Angeles Public Library", published in 1927, p. 16.): it showed writers of all races and times inscribing the records of their nations. Central was Pegasus with the torch, serpent and stars, symbols of knowledge, wisdom and inspiration. To the right was the group that represented the European tradition - the Greek, the Roman, the Hebrew, the Monastic Clerk, followed by the two American figures, the Aztec, with the symbol of the Sun above his chisel, and the North American Indian painting his pictographs upon a skin. To the left were the Egyptian, the Chaldean, the Phoenician the Chinese, the Arab, and the Paleolithic artist with a sabre-tooth over his head, sketching his cave image of the mammoth. The shell above the fountain, from which water issued, represented the western sun sinking beneath the waves.
SOURCE: http://www.publicartinla.com/LAPL/well_scribes.html
 
This painting's discovery is going to be a huge windfall for the elderly woman who'd had it hanging in her kitchen.
Long-lost 13th-century painting found hanging in woman's kitchen

A long-lost painting by pre-Renaissance painter Cimabue is headed to auction after being found hanging in an older French woman's kitchen.

Experts said the Compiegne woman decided to have the painting hanging in her kitchen appraised and numerous tests were conducted that confirmed it to be the work of 13th-century Italian artist Cimabue, aka Cenni di Pepo.

Eric Turquin, an expert who examined the painting, said it appears to be a panel from a polyptych, a work of several painted scenes divided into multiple panels. He said the wood panel of the painting matches with other known Cimabue paintings from the same work.

The 10-inch painting, titled Mocking of Christ, is expected to fetch up to $6.5 million when it is auctioned Oct. 27 by Acteon.

SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2019/0...hanging-in-womans-kitchen/5661569336023/?sl=4

See Also:
https://www.apnews.com/a18e2d27e5a64d80801e9c854d9a2ab1
 
Back
Top