Mughal (?) Koran seized in India

The odd thing about this BBC story is that there is no explanation of why the manuscript was seized. Is it stolen property? Or does India have laws prohibiting private ownership of former imperial property?

Police in the Indian city of Bangalore have seized a copy of the Koran they believe may have belonged to Mughal emperor Aurangzeb over 300 years ago.

The book was discovered after a raid on a hotel in the city. Police arrested a man who was trying to sell it and an antique painting for more than $1m. . .

Bangalore police have sent the Koran to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to see if its experts can verify how old the book is and if markings found on it were made by the emperor.

HERE is a bit more detail:

Speaking to presspersons here on Wednesday, Police Commissioner N. Achuta Rao said the CCB police, on a tip-off, arrested M.G. Sukumar (44) from Thrissur, Kerala, at a hotel on M.G. Road where he was waiting for potential buyers. He said they were yet to ascertain whether the Koran and the painting were indeed antiques, as claimed by Sukumar. "We have to first check if the `antiques' have already been registered with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). We have invited ASI officials to give their expert opinion."

Mr. Rao also said the Director-General of the ASI would have to certify that the items were antiques.

Saliera thief facing new prosecution

Austria's Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the retrial of a man who carried out Austria's most spectacular art theft — the stealing in May 2003 of a €50 million (US$65.5 million) Renaissance figurine from Vienna's prestigious Art History Museum.

Cellini's famed saltcellar is not a figurine, though a number of figurines do adorn it. The story is also in error in describing it as gold plated, for it is gold (with applied enamel, and an ebony base).

In September, a Vienna court sentenced Robert Mang, an alarm systems expert who said he stole the prized work as a prank, to four years in prison.

The court convicted Mang of the theft but acquitted him on a separate charge of attempted extortion after the court decided there was insufficient evidence to prove he allegedly threatened to destroy the prized work unless up to €10 million (US$13 million) in ransom was paid. Prosecutors appealed against the decision.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled the court had made a mistake and that Mang's alleged threat was an extortion attempt, the Austria Press Agency reported.

From the International Herald Tribune. Previous posts about the theft here, here, here, and here.

Nobel Prize medal stolen

Famed physicist Ernest O. Lawrence's Nobel Prize - a medal made of 23-karat gold and worth about $4,000 - has been stolen from a locked display case at the Lawrence Hall of Science in the Berkeley hills, police said.

University of California-Berkeley police said Monday that the coin-like 1939 Nobel Prize in physics was displayed with other artifacts from Lawrence's life and work in the sprawling E.O. Lawrence Memorial Room at the science museum.

Thursday morning, a staff member noticed the medal was missing and the display case was empty. Police don't yet know whether someone picked the case's small lock or whether a key was used.

Full article here. Lawrence's Nobel Prize biography is here; the Lawrence Hall of Science website is here. When I was a boy, the Lawrence Hall of Science was a favorite destination, perched on the hill with a great view, and easily accessible by either bus or bike (a good climb with our old clunkers!).

UPDATE: A quick recovery: a Berkeley undergrad who worked at the Hall of Science appears to have been the culprit.

Slap on the wrist for stealing Teddy Roosevelt's revolver

A former Queens resident was sentenced to two years probation and a $500 fine Friday after pleading guilty to stealing the pistol Theodore Roosevelt used in the Spanish-American War.

Anthony Joseph Tulino, 55, a postal worker from DeLand, Fla., was also sentenced to 50 hours of community service by U.S. Magistrate A. Kathleen Tomlinson in Central Islip.

Tomlinson said she decided not to send Tulino to jail for the violation of the American Antiquities Act of 1906 because he had turned his life around since the theft 17 years ago from a locked display case without an alarm at the Old Orchard Museum at Sagamore Hill National Historical Site in Cove Neck.

Full article here. I'd feel a lot better about the sentence if the man had turned himself in, or at least made some attempt to return the gun to the museum. And buried at the end of the story: Tulino was on probation for stealing a painting at the time he stole the revolver.

Bodmer Papyri to the Vatican

The world's oldest known copy of the Gospel of Saint Luke, containing the earliest known Lord's Prayer, and one of the oldest copies of the Gospel of Saint John have been acquired by the Vatican . . .

Now stored in the Vatican's Library, the documents are for the first time available for scholarly review. In the future, excerpts may be put on display for the general public.

I don't think this is quite accurate, since the papyri had been fully published already.

Collectively known as the Bodmer Papyrus XIV-XV, the documents date to 175-225 A.D. and consist of 51 leaves from a manuscript that originally consisted of 72 leaves folded in the middle to form a single quire. . .

From Discovery News. We reported on the outrage occasioned by the Bodmer's plans to sell back in October.

Pump up the (fan) volume

In this weekend's Wall Street Journal there's an article (online by subscription only, unfortunately) on the rebuilding and reconfiguration of sports venues in order to maximize home court advantage. This includes giving the loudest and craziest fans the best seats, where they can shake visiting teams and encourage their own; replacing sound-absorbing surfaces with sound-reflecting; installing bleachers that make more noise when stomped upon; and deliberately designing seating to be uncomfortable so as to encourage spectators to stand.

Am I out of touch, or does this all seem grossly unsporting? I took my daughter to a rather sparsely attended Brown vs Princeton women's basketball game Friday night, and was looking askance at one Brown fan sitting courtside who would kick up a drumroll on the metal seats whenever a Tiger was taking a penalty shot. I was wondering when some official would confront him, but from the WSJ article it seems that that sort of fan harassment of visiting players is now the norm, embraced and encouraged by colleges and universities nationwide.