Stolen Amati viola recovered

The Viola del Crocifisso, Italy's most famous stolen instrument, has been recovered by police after a sting operation at a barn outside Milan.

The £3.5 million viola, so named because its back is stamped with a cross, was commissioned by the Medici family in 1595. It was made by Antonio and Girolamo Amati, who also taught Stradivarius.

It was stolen 26 years ago from Luigi Alberto Bianchi, a virtuoso violinist, who left the instrument in his car, parked outside Milan's La Scala opera house. Mr Bianchi was also unfortunate enough to have a violin made by Stradivarius stolen in 1998.

From the Telegraph.

Time running out on key Roman London site

Archaeologists fear 1,000 years of history may be shovelled into skips as time runs out on a key site in London. Harvey Sheldon, an officer of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, called the situation at the church of St George the Martyr, in Southwark, where substantial evidence of Roman buildings may be destroyed without being recorded, "a disgrace". . .

Southwark, once seen by archaeologists as a nondescript marshy suburb on the wrong side of the river from the Roman city of London, has through recent excavations emerged as a key part of the Roman administration of Britain. Other sites a stone's throw away have produced startling Roman finds, including a tomb claimed to be that of a woman gladiator, the oldest inscription with the placename "Londinium", and a monumental bronze foot, all that remains of a huge public statue. Dr Sheldon believes the evidence from a contemporary major Roman building is now about to be destroyed without record at St George's.

From the Guardian.

Hitler's globe

The globe Adolf Hitler gazed upon while contemplating world domination is in remarkably good condition but for one blemish - the bullet hole directly through Berlin, inflicted by a Soviet soldier after the Nazi dictator's defeat in 1945.

The oversized orb is just one highlight of the more than 8,000 artifacts in the German Historical Museum's new permanent display on the country's 2,000-year history, which seeks to help Germans rediscover their identity.

From the Guardian. The museum website is here.

Steve Wynn surprises, again

Once the slight, grey-haired American was recognised in the Hong Kong auction room, it was no great surprise that Steve Wynn went on to pay the world record price for a small, beautiful, copper red and white porcelain vase - 78,520,000 Hong Kong dollars (£5.5m).

What happened next was extraordinary: the Las Vegas casino owner, regarded as one of the most spectacular art collectors since the Medicis, gave the Ming vase away.

Full story here.

Big Constable

Constable: The Great Landscapes, which runs at Tate Britain until August 28 2006, brings together all of the celebrated English painter’s most famous landscapes for the first time.

Along with The Hay Wain, perhaps the most famous painting by an Englishman, the exhibition unites all six of his large paintings – the ‘six footers’ - of the Stour Valley in Suffolk as well as a number of earlier works and later large paintings.

Full article here.

Tankfest

June 25th is the date of this biannual event at Bovington's Tank Museum. They actually drive a number of the tanks in the collection around during this event, though this year the Tiger may be too worn out to be fired up. A King Tiger will be on temporary display at the museum, however, though this article does not note if it is in driveable condition.

Battle of Jutland anniversary

The most important sea engagement of World War One - the Battle of Jutland - is being commemorated 90 years on.

The Imperial War Museum is holding an exhibition on HMS Belfast, while wreaths have been laid at the scene of the confrontation, off Denmark's coast.

One of the last survivors, 109-year-old Henry Allingham, from Eastbourne, East Sussex, was at the exhibition's launch.

Some 8,648 British and German sailors lost their lives in one day's fighting on 31 May into 1 June 1916.

From the BBC. It is worth remembering that casualty rates of this order were the norm for industrial-age warfare (the British army suffered over 19,000 dead during the first day of the Somme) -- not to play down the hellishness of contemporary combat, but rather to appreciate just what previous generations went through.

Brunel photos on exhibit

Rare images of industrial pioneer Isambard Kingdom Brunel have gone on display at the Science Museum, London.

The collection includes Brunel's iconic pose in front of the chains of his Great Eastern ship - along with two other "takes" of the same scene. . .

The display is one of the activities to mark the 200th anniversary of Brunel's birth.

The exhibition also includes pictures taken by photographer Robert Howlett of the construction of the Great Eastern. Launched in 1858, it was the largest ship of its time.

From the BBC (with slideshow).

Turkish museum theft an inside job?

TURKISH police have detained nine people - including the director of a state museum - over the theft and replacement with fakes of two pieces from the fabled treasure of King Croesus.

The hugely valuable items - a coin as well as Croesus' golden brooch, in the shape of a winged sea-horse - had been switched with replicas at the Usak museum, in western Turkey, according to the tourism minister, Atilla Koc.

Full story here. The brooch had resided for a number of years in New York, before the Metropolitan Museum was pressured to return it along with a good number of other misappropriated objects from the same hoard.

Resolution found?

Three amateur divers trying to free snagged lobster pots have discovered the well preserved remains of what is thought to be the 17th century warship Resolution . . . Their find, made last April but kept secret until this week so as not to alert treasure hunters, has led to the Government giving the wreck protected status to allow archaeologists the chance to establish beyond doubt that it is Resolution.

At least 45 cannon have been found and there are high hopes that the hull, preserved in silt, remains substantially intact. "This is a hugely significant find," said Adrian Barak of the Nautical Heritage Association.

From the Telegraph.

Voicemail machete

Hack your way through the automated answering system maze with the help of the gethuman database.

The road to riches is paved with . . . tree frog slime?

Fernando Katukina is chief of an indigenous tribe that lives largely without running water, electricity, or links to the world outside this remote corner of the western Amazon.

But Chief Fernando says he possesses a treasure that could be at the cutting-edge of biotechnology. If a plan initiated by the chief is successful, his tribe's fortunes will be transformed by an asset he and the Brazilian government believe holds great promise for the global pharmaceutical industry: the slime from a poisonous tree frog.

From the NY Times.

BBC's wrong Guy

Odd incident from a couple of weeks ago:

Guy Goma was at the BBC for a job interview but a mix-up meant he was taken to a studio and asked on-air about the Apple vs Apple court case. . .

Mr Goma, a graduate from the Congo, was interviewed on BBC News 24 in place of Guy Kewney, editor of Newswireless.net.

Mr Kewney had watched in horror in the reception area of BBC Television Centre as Mr Goma was introduced.

The BBC's own writeups of the incident here and here.

Another quake casualty

The recent earthquake on Indonesia's island of Java badly damaged the famous Prambanan temple complex, sending intricate stone carvings crashing to the ground and destroying years of restoration work in less than a minute.

Recognized as a U.N. World Heritage Site, the ninth-century temple and the nearby Borobudur Buddhist complex are reminders of the rich Hindu and Buddhist past of what is now the world's most populous Muslim nation.

From Discovery News. The UNESCO link is here, though which I found this link to a panoramic virtual reality view of the site.