Thread: Strange News

Originally Posted by prawnograph

A climate activist has sparked fury by pouring a bucket of what she says is human faeces over a memorial to a beloved UK figure in a bizarre protest over the use of private jets.

What a bizarre woman . . .

Originally Posted by S Landreth

I’ve been to MAPLINS

The repatriation of these stolen artefacts was made possible through a collaborative effort between the country's Ministry of Tourism

11.15-carat Williamson Pink Star set record for pink diamond per-carat at US$58.1 m

To a medley of gasps and applauses tonight, the 11.15-carat Williamson Pink Star – the second largest, internally flawless Fancy Vivid pink diamond to ever appear at auction, fetched HK$453 million (around US$58.1 million) at Sotheby’s Hong Kong to set the new auction record for pink diamond per carat.

Offered at a single-lot auction between two blockbuster events, Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sales, this Williamson Pink Star is without doubt this season's highlight. In the end, its price per carat reached a staggering HK$40.6 million – outperforming the previous auction record, achieved by the 18.96-carat 'Winston Pink Legacy' valued at HK$20.6 million per carat, by almost twofold.

The Williamson Pink Star
11.15-carat Fancy Vivid Pink diamond, internally flawless
Estimate on request (Expected by the auction house to fetch more than HK$170,000,000)
Hammer Price: HK$392,000,000
Sold: HK$453,223,000 (around US$58.1 million)

Auction House: Sotheby's Hong Kong
Sale Date: 5 October 2022

The auctioneer Ian MacGinlay started the bid at HK$140 million. After 11 bids, the price was already at HK$200 million. From that point on, the bidding battle was between a gentleman in the saleroom and the telephone bidder represented by Patti Wong, Senior International Chairman of Sotheby’s.

With both parties making cautious moves, the showdown lasted for more than 20 minutes. After more than 30 bids, the hammer finally fell at HK$392 million to the floor bidder with paddle number 8808. The room was then filled with a round of applause. Patti Wong and Nathan Drahi, Managing Director of Sotheby's Asia, even walked over to congratulate the winning bidder, a collector in Boca Raton, Florida, who renamed it the Rosenberg Williamson Pink Star.

Across auction history, Williamson Pink Star is the second internally flawless Fancy Vivid pink diamond weighing over 10 carats to ever go under the hammer – the first being the 59.60-carat CTF Pink Star, which fetched a record-breaking HK$553 million (US$71.2 million) in 2017.

Not only has the present lot reached the highest colour and clarity grades, it is also a Type IIa diamond – the highest level in terms of chemical impurities, where only less than 2% of all gem diamonds falls into this classification.

Following the recent closure of the Argyle mine, prices for top-quality large pink diamonds has surged over the past decade. Driven by rising demands and limited supply, it comes as no surprise that Williamson Pink Star could set a new per carat price record for a Fancy Vivid pink diamond.

Called ‘Williamson Pink Star’, it is named in homage to two legendary pink diamonds. The first is the celebrated ‘Williamson’ stone – a pink diamond presented as a wedding gift to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1947 by the Canadian geologist Dr. John Thorburn Williamson.

One of the Queen’s favourites, the pink stone originated in the Williamson mine in Mwadui, Tanzania, which was established and once owned by its namesake Dr. Williamson. Having started operation in 1940, it was one of the oldest diamond mines in the world, reputed for producing fine ‘bubblegum’ pink diamonds.

The Williamson stone was refined from a rough stone of 54.50 carats into a 23.60-carat round brilliant-cut diamond. When the polishing was complete, the pink diamond was mounted as the centerpiece of a floral brooch designed by Cartier. Since then, the Queen has worn it on many occasions of her reign, including the Silver Jubilee.

Also yielded at the same mine, the Williamson Pink Star was crafted and polished from a 32-carat rough diamond into a cushion-cut by the master craftsmen at Diacore, bringing out the diamond’s innermost beauty to full display.

The second is the record-smashing CTF Pink Star mentioned above. The giant 59.60-carat pink diamond, also cut by Diacore, was sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for 2017 to Chow Tai Fook, a renowned Hong Kong-based retail jewellery chain. Up to the present, it still holds the world auction record for any diamond, gemstone or jewel.

Pink is one of the rarest colours to occur naturally in diamonds. Of all the diamonds submitted to the GIA, less than 3% are classified as coloured diamonds, and less than 5% of those are considered predominantly pink. In 2002, GIA conducted a data analysis on over 1,400 pink diamonds – and only 4% of them could reach the grade of Fancy Vivid Pink, most of which are often small in size.

Currently, the auction record for pink diamond is still at HK$553 million (US$71.2 million), held by the CTF Pink Star; while the previous auction record for pink diamond per carat once belonged to Winston Pink Legacy.

In 2018, Winston Pink Legacy was acquired by famous American luxury jeweler Harry Winston at CHF 50.4 million (around US$50.66 million) in Geneva. Weighing 18.96 carats, it is valued at HK$20.6 million per carat.

Not sure how that's considered strange, to be honest.


There's a rapper that had a $24 million diamond implanted in his forehead.




Stage dived into the crowd and had it gouged out by the crowd (pwned)


Attention Required! | Cloudflare

Which is probably a bit stranger.

^ You have to have a hole in your head to do something like that. (cha-ching)

• Stained, doodled and stolen: Lost Beatles' linen up for auction

Tablecloth scrawled with the Beatles’ doodles from their final gig goes to auction

A pilfered relic from the night of the last concert the Beatles played together has been recovered and is going on the auction block.

It’s a 14-inch by 17½-inch cotton tablecloth bearing food and drink stains, autographs and several “acid-inspired doodles” and portraits by the Fab Four and Joan Baez. The group created the item during a catered dinner they had in a locker room at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on Aug. 29, 1966 — the night of the Beatles’ last gig. The piece is being offered to the public in a Bonhams online auction beginning Friday for an estimated $15,000 to $25,000.

That night, the locker room had been set up as iconic band’s dressing room and dining area and had been described as “chaos.” The scene — even John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison’s doodling with Pentel markers — was chronicled in the concert’s many music reviews at the time.

“At some point in the time the band had before going on stage, the Beatles sat down to dinner with Joan Baez and others, to eat around this tablecloth, doodling and writing on the cloth in between eating their food,” according to the Bonhams listing.

“As the scene unfolded around the table, the band were experiencing mixed feelings of relief and celebration,” it said. “The significance of that night was not lost on the band and Lennon and McCartney both carried cameras on to the stage with them to record the moment.”

The tablecloth belonged to caterer Joe Vilardi, the owner of Simpson’s Catering, which provided the evening’s meal. After that night, the caterer kept the linen and proudly displayed it in his Clement Street storefront in San Francisco for six days. That is, until the glass was smashed and the tablecloth was stolen, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The Vilardi family searched for the tablecloth for 55 years.

Incredibly, after all this time, the tablecloth was returned to the grandson of Vilardi earlier this year, Bonhams said.

“Fast forward to 2022 when the owner [Vilardi’s grandson Michael Vilardi] was contacted by someone who was in possession of the tablecloth after her brother was given it in lieu of a debt in the 1970s and the tablecloth was happily given back to the rightful owner,” the listing said.

The tablecloth features a number of sketches, including a yellow one by Lennon depicting a hairy creature on a bike next to a series of wheels; a series of portraits in various inks by Baez (possibly with minor contributions from McCartney, with an inscription “in an unknown hand ‘did not lay a hand on this table’ and bubble lettering in orange pen ‘Paul McCartney,’” the listing said); Starr’s autograph in black; and Harrison’s autograph in red pen.

• Levi's jeans that sold for $76K reflect racist sentiment of 19th century

A pair of Levi's jeans sold for more than $75,000. Don't worry. Inflation hasn't gotten that bad.

The (really, really) old pair of jeans hails from the 19th century. The jeans were put up for bid at an auction in New Mexico. Two vintage-clothing collectors teamed up to put down the cash in order to bring this piece of history back to California.

With the 15% buyer's premium, the duo (Zip Stevenson and Kyle Haupert) put down a combined $87,400. The agreement to go into the deal together was made as the jeans were being auctioned. The deal was captured by Haupert's phone and posted on Instagram.

The pants were found years ago by denim historian Michael Harris in an abandoned mine shaft, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Aside from the pants' wear and tear and what the buyers and Harris believe to be candle wax from the former wearer (a miner, they seem to believe), the jeans hold another piece of history — one that Levi's is likely to want to forget.

One of the faded pockets of the pants bears the phrase "The only kind made by white labor."

"Levi Strauss & Co. is a company with a long and mostly proud heritage. Across our history, we have strived to do good in and beyond our business and to be a positive force for equality and racial justice," a Levi Strauss & Co. spokesperson told NPR in an emailed statement. "But there have been times when we've fallen short."

"An economic crisis in the United States in [the] 1870s led to high unemployment and fueled anti-Chinese sentiment and rampant discrimination. In 1882 when Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, there was significant social pressure not to hire Chinese workers and LS&Co. adopted an anti-Chinese labor policy," the spokesperson said.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first instance in U.S. history that immigrants were prevented from entering the United States based solely on race and class, according to prior reporting by NPR. The law established a 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the United States. Further restrictions on the immigration of Chinese laborers continued well into the 20th century, according to the National Archives.

During this time in the 19th century, Levi's declared in ads and on its products that the products were "made by white labor." The thinking was that this would improve sales and align with consumers' viewpoints at the time. The company later reversed its policies in the 1890s, the spokesperson said.

"We are wholly committed to using our platform and our voice to advocate for real equality and to fight against racism in all its forms as it persists today," the company said.

If you're intrigued by this piece of clothing, Denim Doctors, a vintage showroom in California run by Stevenson, is showing the jeans in its store.

"We are showing by appointment only as these are kept in a bank vault," the store said on Instagram. "Feel free to make an appointment by calling."

Jurassic dinosaur fossil will go up for auction in Paris - CNN Style
Jurassic dinosaur fossil will go up for auction in Paris

A 150 million-year-old dinosaur skeleton will go up for auction in Paris next month.

With an estimated sales price of 400,000 to 500,000 euros ($405,180 to $506,670), the fossil dates back to the Upper Jurassic period and is called Zephyr -- from the Greek word "Zephyros," or "west wind" -- as a nod to where it came from.

Workers discovered the ancient skeleton by accident in 2019 while doing road construction on private land in a quarry along Skull Creek in Moffat County, Colorado, according to Iacopo Briano, the paleontology expert curating the fossil's sale for the Parisian auction house Giquello & Associés. The site is not far from the Dinosaur National Monument and the small town of Dinosaur, he said.

"Luckily enough, a team of commercial paleontologists -- people whose business is investing time, money and energy in digging fossil remains -- have been able to recover the remains" that were later purchased by Flavio Bacchia, the founder of Zoic, Briano said. Zoic, based in Trieste, Italy, provides tools and technology for the discovery and preparation of ancient life forms and paleontological specimens.

An iguanodon -- a herbivorous species named for its teeth, which are similar to those of modern iguanas -- Zephyr is small by dinosaur standards at roughly 10.7 feet (325 centimeters) long, 2.5 feet (75 centimeters) wide and 4.3 feet (130 centimeters) tall. Briano had been "looking for such a small-sized specimen" as the auction house had "so many clients and collectors asking for 'a dinosaur that can fit my living room,'" he said.

The dinosaur will go up for sale at the Hôtel Drouot, an auction venue in Paris, at 3 p.m. local time on October 20 after three days of public exhibition, Briano said. Natural history enthusiasts will also have the opportunity to bid on 12 to 15 other fossils, including a just over 13-foot (4-meter-long) giant predatory fish discovered in Kansas that lived during the Cretaceous period, a nest of dinosaur eggs from France, and mammoth tusks, he added.

Briano isn't sure how high the bidding could go, but he said that dinosaur skeletons at past Giquello auctions sold for more than expected. Big Sara, an allosaurus, was estimated at 1 million euros but sold for 3 million euros in 2020. He had thought Big John, a triceratops, would sell for 1.2 million euros, yet a buyer paid 6.6 million euros in 2021.

"Let's say if we do our job properly, we'll be able to attract enough potential buyers to have small bidding war in the room," Briano said.

Ethical debate over fossil auctions

Some scientists have considered auction or private ownership of dinosaur skeletons like Zephyr to be problematic, while others also acknowledge that museum collecting has historically included acquisitions from commercial sources.

One rare find -- the ancient skeleton of a Gorgosaurus, which is just over 9 feet (2.8 meters) tall and 22 feet (6.7 meters) long -- sold for more than $6 million at a Sotheby's New York Natural History auction in July. About 77 million years old, the Gorgosaurus species is related to the deadly Tyrannosaurus rex, but faster and with a stronger bite force, according to Sotheby's. The fossil was discovered on private land in the Judith River Formation in Montana's Choteau County and was the only one of its kind offered for private ownership, as all other known Gorgosaurus specimens are in museum collections.

"In my own opinion, there are only cons," P. David Polly, a professor and chair of the department of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, told CNN in July. "While certainly there is no law in the US that supports this for fossils that come off private land, it's easy for me as a scientist to argue that that fossil is important to all of us, and really ought to be going into a public repository where it can be studied -- where the public at large can learn from it and enjoy it."

Fossils on private lands in the United States belong to individuals who can do with them what they choose, whereas fossils on public lands are regulated by the federal government and essentially belong to the government or "the people, if you will," Polly said.

The auctioning of Zephyr is Giquello's sixth dinosaur sale, Briano said.

• Jurassic dinosaur fossil will go up for auction in Paris

A 150 million-year-old dinosaur skeleton will go up for auction in Paris next month.

With an estimated sales price of 400,000 to 500,000 euros ($405,180 to $506,670), the fossil dates back to the Upper Jurassic period and is called Zephyr -- from the Greek word "Zephyros," or "west wind" -- as a nod to where it came from.

Workers discovered the ancient skeleton by accident in 2019 while doing road construction on private land in a quarry along Skull Creek in Moffat County, Colorado, according to Iacopo Briano, the paleontology expert curating the fossil's sale for the Parisian auction house Giquello & Associés. The site is not far from the Dinosaur National Monument and the small town of Dinosaur, he said.

"Luckily enough, a team of commercial paleontologists -- people whose business is investing time, money and energy in digging fossil remains -- have been able to recover the remains" that were later purchased by Flavio Bacchia, the founder of Zoic, Briano said. Zoic, based in Trieste, Italy, provides tools and technology for the discovery and preparation of ancient life forms and paleontological specimens.

An iguanodon -- a herbivorous species named for its teeth, which are similar to those of modern iguanas -- Zephyr is small by dinosaur standards at roughly 10.7 feet (325 centimeters) long, 2.5 feet (75 centimeters) wide and 4.3 feet (130 centimeters) tall. Briano had been "looking for such a small-sized specimen" as the auction house had "so many clients and collectors asking for 'a dinosaur that can fit my living room,'" he said.

The dinosaur will go up for sale at the Hôtel Drouot, an auction venue in Paris, at 3 p.m. local time on October 20 after three days of public exhibition, Briano said. Natural history enthusiasts will also have the opportunity to bid on 12 to 15 other fossils, including a just over 13-foot (4-meter-long) giant predatory fish discovered in Kansas that lived during the Cretaceous period, a nest of dinosaur eggs from France, and mammoth tusks, he added.

Briano isn't sure how high the bidding could go, but he said that dinosaur skeletons at past Giquello auctions sold for more than expected. Big Sara, an allosaurus, was estimated at 1 million euros but sold for 3 million euros in 2020. He had thought Big John, a triceratops, would sell for 1.2 million euros, yet a buyer paid 6.6 million euros in 2021.

"Let's say if we do our job properly, we'll be able to attract enough potential buyers to have small bidding war in the room," Briano said.

Ethical debate over fossil auctions

Some scientists have considered auction or private ownership of dinosaur skeletons like Zephyr to be problematic, while others also acknowledge that museum collecting has historically included acquisitions from commercial sources.

One rare find -- the ancient skeleton of a Gorgosaurus, which is just over 9 feet (2.8 meters) tall and 22 feet (6.7 meters) long -- sold for more than $6 million at a Sotheby's New York Natural History auction in July. About 77 million years old, the Gorgosaurus species is related to the deadly Tyrannosaurus rex, but faster and with a stronger bite force, according to Sotheby's. The fossil was discovered on private land in the Judith River Formation in Montana's Choteau County and was the only one of its kind offered for private ownership, as all other known Gorgosaurus specimens are in museum collections.

"In my own opinion, there are only cons," P. David Polly, a professor and chair of the department of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, told CNN in July. "While certainly there is no law in the US that supports this for fossils that come off private land, it's easy for me as a scientist to argue that that fossil is important to all of us, and really ought to be going into a public repository where it can be studied -- where the public at large can learn from it and enjoy it."

Fossils on private lands in the United States belong to individuals who can do with them what they choose, whereas fossils on public lands are regulated by the federal government and essentially belong to the government or "the people, if you will," Polly said.

The auctioning of Zephyr is Giquello's sixth dinosaur sale, Briano said.

• Human burial grounds and bullets from Spanish guns uncovered at site of last Mayan stronghold in Guatemala

Ceramics, human burial grounds and bullets from Spanish guns are among artifacts that have been uncovered by archaeologists in Guatemala at the site of the last Mayan city to resist European conquest, officials said Friday.

The new excavation project began last June in an effort to understand more about the Tayasal outpost where Mayan inhabitants first settled in 900 BC during their Preclassic period, the archeologist in charge of the dig told AFP.

Tayasal was the last Mayan city to yield to the Spanish conquest in 1697, a century after Europeans entered the western highlands of what is now Guatemala, Suarlin Cordova said.

"More than 100 years passed in which the northern part of Guatemala was totally outside of Spanish rule, and this happened mainly because the jungle functioned as a natural border that made the arrival of the Spaniards to these places very difficult," Cordova said.

In 1525, Tayasal was also part of the route used by Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes on his journey to present-day Honduras.

Most of the buildings at the Tayasal site are buried under earth and vegetation inside a seven-square-kilometer area near Lake Peten Itza.

Among partially exposed structures at the site is a 30-meter-high acropolis that according to research functioned as the residence of the ruling elite.

Also visible is a water well used since pre-Hispanic times.

One of the objectives of the project is to enhance the site so tourists can better "appreciate" the vast region's Mayan archaeological value, said Jenny Barrios from Guatemala's Ministry of Culture and Sports.

The Maya civilization reached its height between 250 and 900 AD in what is present-day southern Mexico and Guatemala, as well as parts of Belize, El Salvador and Honduras.

In 2018, archaeologists used high-tech mapping technology to virtually unearth a massive network of Mayan ruins hidden for centuries in the thick jungles of Guatemala, CBS News' David Begnaud reported.

The uncovered landscape included previously unknown cities and more than 60,000 interconnected structures including houses, farms, highways and even pyramids. Scientists and archaeologists discovered the ancient ruins by shooting lasers down from a plane to penetrate the dense jungle canopy.

Previous assessments estimated just 1 or 2 million people lived in the Maya lowlands. But researchers now believe as many as 20 million people may have lived there.

Excavators uncover artefacts at site of last Mayan stronghold | Prothom Alo

Section of destroyed shuttle Challenger found on ocean floor

A large section of the destroyed space shuttle Challenger has been found buried in sand at the bottom of the Atlantic, more than three decades after the tragedy that killed a schoolteacher and six others.

NASA’s Kennedy Space Center announced the discovery Thursday.

“Of course, the emotions come back, right?” said Michael Ciannilli, a NASA manager who confirmed the remnant's authenticity. When he saw the underwater video footage, “My heart skipped a beat, I must say, and it brought me right back to 1986 ... and what we all went through as a nation."

It's one of the biggest pieces of Challenger found in the decades since the acciden t, according to Ciannilli, and the first remnant to be discovered since two fragments from the left wing washed ashore in 1996.

Divers for a TV documentary first spotted the piece in March while looking for wreckage of a World War II plane. NASA verified through video a few months ago that the piece was part of the shuttle that broke apart shortly after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986. All seven on board were killed, including the first schoolteacher bound for space, Christa McAuliffe.

The underwater video provided “pretty clear and convincing evidence,” said Ciannilli.

The piece is more than 15 feet by 15 feet (4.5 meters by 4.5 meters); it's likely bigger because part of it is covered with sand. Because there are square thermal tiles on the piece, it’s believed to be from the shuttle’s belly, Ciannilli said.

The fragment remains on the ocean floor just off the Florida coast near Cape Canaveral as NASA determines the next step. It remains the property of the U.S. government. The families of all seven Challenger crew members have been notified.

“We want to make sure whatever we do, we do the right thing for the legacy of the crew,” Ciannilli said.

Roughly 118 tons (107 metric tons) of Challenger debris have been recovered since the accident. That represents about 47% of the entire vehicle, including parts of the two solid-fuel boosters and external fuel tank.

Most of the recovered wreckage remains buried in abandoned missile silos at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The exception is a left side shuttle panel on display at Kennedy Space Center's visitor complex, alongside the charred cockpit window frame from shuttle Columbia, which broke apart over Texas during reentry in 2003, killing seven astronauts.

Far less has been recovered of Columbia — 42 tons (38 metric tons) representing 38% of the shuttle. The Columbia remains are stored in converted offices inside Kennedy’s massive hangar.

Launched on an exceptionally cold morning, Challenger was brought down by eroded O-ring seals in the right booster. Columbia ended up with a slashed left wing, the result of foam insulation breaking off the external fuel tank at liftoff. Mismanagement was also blamed..

A History Channel documentary detailing the latest Challenger discovery airs Nov. 22.

From NASA

NASA Views Images, Confirms Discovery of Shuttle Challenger Artifact

NASA leaders recently viewed footage of an underwater dive off the East coast of Florida, and they confirm it depicts an artifact from the space shuttle Challenger.

The artifact was discovered by a TV documentary crew seeking the wreckage of a World War II-era aircraft. Divers noticed a large humanmade object covered partially by sand on the seafloor. The proximity to the Florida Space Coast, along with the item’s modern construction and presence of 8-inch square tiles, led the documentary team to contact NASA.

“While it has been nearly 37 years since seven daring and brave explorers lost their lives aboard Challenger, this tragedy will forever be seared in the collective memory of our country. For millions around the globe, myself included, Jan. 28, 1986, still feels like yesterday,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “This discovery gives us an opportunity to pause once again, to uplift the legacies of the seven pioneers we lost, and to reflect on how this tragedy changed us. At NASA, the core value of safety is – and must forever remain – our top priority, especially as our missions explore more of the cosmos than ever before.”

The last Challenger mission, dubbed STS-51L, was commanded by Francis R. “Dick” Scobee and piloted by Michael J. Smith. The other crew members on board were mission specialists Ronald E. McNair; Ellison S. Onizuka, and Judith A. Resnik; payload specialist Gregory B. Jarvis; and teacher S. Christa McAuliffe.

A major malfunction 73 seconds after liftoff resulted in the loss of Challenger and the seven astronauts aboard. An agency investigation later showed unexpectedly cold temperatures affected the integrity of O-ring seals in the solid rocket booster segment joints.

The launch was scheduled as the agency’s 25th shuttle mission. While the spacecraft waited overnight on Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a cold front brought freezing temperatures, causing ice to form on the shuttle. Despite concerns raised by some shuttle program employees, managers cleared the mission for launch, with liftoff occurring at 11:38 a.m. Eastern time.

The loss of Challenger, and later Columbia with its seven astronauts – which broke up on reentry in February 2003 over the western United States – greatly influenced NASA’s culture regarding safety. NASA created an Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, developed new risk assessment procedures, and established an environment in which everyone can raise safety concerns. The agency also created the Apollo Challenger Columbia Lessons Learned Program to share these lessons within the agency and with other government, public, commercial, and international audiences.

“Challenger and her crew live on in the hearts and memories of both NASA and the nation,” said Kennedy Space Center Director Janet Petro. “Today, as we turn our sights again toward the Moon and Mars, we see that the same love of exploration that drove the Challenger crew is still inspiring the astronauts of today’s Artemis Generation, calling them to build on the legacy of knowledge and discovery for the benefit of all humanity.”

The History Channel documentary depicting the discovery of the Challenger artifact is scheduled to air Tuesday, Nov. 22. Although the episode will appear as part of a series about the Bermuda Triangle, the artifact was found in waters off Florida’s Space Coast, well northwest of the area popularly known as the Bermuda Triangle.

NASA currently is considering what additional actions it may take regarding the artifact that will properly honor the legacy of Challenger’s fallen astronauts and the families who loved them.

By law, all space shuttle artifacts are the property of the U.S. government. Members of the public who believe they have encountered any space shuttle artifacts should contact NASA at ksc-public-inquiries@mail.nasa.gov to arrange for return of the items.

• Bob Dylan's love letter collection sold for $670,000

A collection of touching and sometimes prescient personal letters written by a young Bob Dylan to a high school girlfriend has been sold at auction to a renowned Portuguese bookshop for nearly $670,000.

The Livraria Lello in Porto, Portugal, which bills itself as "the World's Most Beautiful Bookshop," plans to keep the archive of 42 handwritten letters totaling 150 pages complete and available for Dylan fans and scholars to study, auctioneer RR Auction said in a statement Friday.

Dylan, a native of Hibbing, Minnesota, wrote the letters to Barbara Ann Hewitt between 1957 and 1959 when he was still known as Bob Zimmerman. They provide an insight into a period of his life of which not much is known.

Remarkably, in some of the letters Dylan writes about changing his name and hoping to sell a million records. Decades later, the now 81-year-old Dylan and 2016 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature has sold about 125 million records.

The young musician also expresses his affection for Hewitt, invites her to a Buddy Holly show, includes little fragments of poetry, and talks about the sorts of things that generations of high school students have been concerned about, such as cars, clothes and music.

Hewitt's daughter found the letters after her mother died in 2020. The original envelopes addressed in Dylan's handwriting were sent to the Hewitt family's new home in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburb of New Brighton.

Several other items of Dylan memorabilia were also sold at the auction, including an archive of 24 "Poems Without Titles" written when the singer-songwriter attended the University of Minnesota, which sold for almost $250,000; and one of the earliest known signed photographs of Dylan that went for more than $24,000.

Other high ticket items have also been sold recently.

A rare Buddy Holly poster from "The Day the Music Died" sold for $447,000, and the first Star Trek comic book sold for $46,500.

STDs Surge Among English Men Over 65 Years Old | ZeroHedge

weird people

French men tackle birth control with homemade jockstraps

French men are taking birth control into their own hands with homemade jockstraps that warm their testicles which they claim naturally reduces sperm count.


The intention is to remove the onus from women to avoid falling pregnant.


To produce sperm in large quantities, male testicles require remaining outside the body. However, if heated up to anything above 35 degrees Celsius, the sperm count drops dramatically. Anything below one million sperm per millilitre is tantamount to being infertile.


These pants - or jockstraps, depending on which way they are worn - lift the testicles towards the body, thus heating them up by two degrees.


After three months of wearing them for 15 hours a day, a man becomes effectively sterile.


The technique has been around since the late 1970s when Roger Mieusset, an inventor and Toulouse doctor, first tested his thermic pants on a herd of rams.


While he prescribed them to a handful of men per year, he never received funding for a trial, which he said would cost around €900,000 to conduct, and they failed to catch on.


However, with men now eager to redress the gender imbalance in the field of birth control and with no commercial options available, do-it-yourself contraceptive jockstrap workshops have been cropping up in cities such as Toulouse, Paris and Nantes.


Among the pioneers is Erwan Taverne, 43, who runs sessions in Toulouse and an association called the action and research group for contraception, whose French acronym is Garcon.


“It’s basically a customised commercial pair of pants,” Mr Taverne, who has been wearing such contraceptive pants and jockstraps for the past six years, told Midi-Libre newspaper. “You make an orifice in the front to allow the penis and scrotum through. The testicles don’t have room to pass and so they go up into the entrance of the inguinal canals.”


If a man decides to stop using the underwear, his sperm count should, in theory, go back to normal after a few months.


He insists that between 5-10,000 men use heating contraception in France today.


The jockstrap is just one technique. Another is to slip on a silicon ring that does a similar job.


“My girlfriend doesn’t take the pill because she doesn’t want more hormones in her body. And this heating method is without hormones,” Anton Ménard, 32, who wears a contraceptive ring told France 3. “It’s true that to start with it feels a bit strange to have this object that you’re not used to but after two or three days, I was over that.”


However, French health authorities banned the sale of a commercial version invented by a nurse last year on the grounds it had not passed costly European safety tests.


Given the lack of studies on the impact of such heating methods, doctors currently advise not to wear them regularly for more than three years.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/11/25/french-men-tackle-birth-control-homemade-jockstraps/

No wonder 'Stumpy' drinks Bourbonne whiskey

• ‘Zombie’ virus revived after 50,000 years trapped in Siberian permafrost

Researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research have revived more than a dozen prehistoric viruses that were previously trapped deep within the Siberian permafrost, according to a pre-print study.


From seven ancient permafrost samples, scientists were able to document 13 never-before-seen viruses that have been lying dormant, frozen in ice, over tens of thousands of years.

In 2014, the same researchers unearthed a 30,000-year-old virus trapped in permafrost, the BBC reported. The discovery was groundbreaking because after all that time, the virus was still able to infect organisms. But now, they’ve beaten their own record by reviving a virus that is 48,500 years old.

The ancient virus was given the name Pandoravirus yedoma, which acknowledges its size and the type of permafrost soil that it was found in, according to Science Alert.

Scientists are thawing out these ancient viruses in order to assess their impacts on public health. As the permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, melts in the Northern Hemisphere, the thawing ice releases tons of trapped chemicals and microbes.

“Due to climate warming, irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic matter frozen for up to a million years, most of which decomposes into carbon dioxide and methane, further enhancing the greenhouse effect,” the study’s authors wrote. “Part of this organic matter also consists of revived cellular microbes (prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes) as well as viruses that remained dormant since prehistorical times.”

Some of these “zombie viruses” could potentially be dangerous to humans, the authors warn. And, in fact, thawing permafrost has already claimed human lives.

In 2016, one child died and dozens of people were hospitalized after an anthrax outbreak in Siberia. Officials believe the outbreak started because a heat wave thawed the permafrost and unearthed a reindeer carcass infected with anthrax decades ago. About 2,300 reindeer died in the outbreak.

The revived viruses that researchers spotted belong to the following sub-types of viruses: pandoravirus, cedratvirus, megavirus, pacmanvirus and pithovirus. These viruses are considered “giant” because they’re large and easy to spot using light microscopy.

For this reason, researchers believe there are many other smaller viruses that have escaped scrutiny.

The scientists also used amoeba cells as “virus bait” to see which viruses were still active and capable of infecting an organism. The researchers said this limited their results to detecting only “lytic viruses,” which destroy their host, as opposed to other kinds of viruses that can merge with a host’s DNA.

One silver lining is that the study’s authors say there is a “negligible” risk of these amoeba-infecting viruses having a hazardous impact on humans. But that’s not to say that all ancient viruses are harmless.

The authors noted that the “risky” search for viruses found in the “permafrost-preserved remains of mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, or prehistoric horses” is another story altogether.

It’s unclear if these ancient viruses would be able to infect a host once exposed to outdoor conditions like heat, oxygen and UV rays. But researchers say the chance of such a situation is increasing as more of the permafrost thaws and more people begin to occupy the melting Arctic for commercial and industrial ventures.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...11.10.515937v1

Abstract

One quarter of the Northern hemisphere is underlain by permanently frozen ground, referred to as permafrost. Due to climate warming, irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic matter frozen for up to a million years, most of which decomposes into carbon dioxide and methane, further enhancing the greenhouse effect. Part of this organic matter also consists of revived cellular microbes (prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes) as well as viruses that remained dormant since prehistorical times. While the literature abounds on descriptions of the rich and diverse prokaryotic microbiomes found in permafrost, no additional report about “live” viruses have been published since the two original studies describing pithovirus (in 2014) and mollivirus (in 2015).

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

I applied the same principle with heating pads but I kept tripping over the extension cord. Then one day I drunk too much beer and peed on myself .
The ensuing sort.... well lets just say it was not a pretty sight

what is it with you Greeks and Frenchies, European nutters. The simple solution is usually the best, just put your nuts in your Mrs mouth every few days to heat the up. sheesh.

What is it with you weird pommy cnuts

I just put my cock in her mouth every day and so far there has been no pregnancy

Originally Posted by baldrick

I just put my cock in her mouth every day and so far there has been no pregnancy

could it have been a bloke dear Balders?, just askin'

I tried the self same method but despite being a hansum Celt a Chinese baby came out the other end who oddly is the spitting image of the remarkably helpful Immgration Captain next Door Nop Threetimes?

Which excitable member of the media coined the phrase, 'Zombie Virus'?

When the ice melts, and the inevitable floods consume the planet, 'Noahs Ark' might be more appropriate as a cause of death.

^Coming back from the dead (Zombie)

and one of the main reasons I posted this news.....

Abstract

One quarter of the Northern hemisphere is underlain by permanently frozen ground, referred to as permafrost. Due to climate warming irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic matter frozen for up to a million years, most of which decomposes into carbon dioxide and methane, further enhancing the greenhouse effect.