Einstein "tip" earns untold gold

From the Jerusalem Post

The Jerusalem auction house that sold a note written by Albert Einstein for $1,560,000 on Tuesday night said it was flabbergasted by the winning bid. “We were in total shock, we didn’t believe it was happening,” said Avi Blumenthal, a spokesman for Winner’s Auctions and Exhibitions. “It’s the highest price ever for an item sold at auction in Israel.”

The note, written shortly after Einstein learned he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, says simply: “A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.”

According to the auction house, located in the Givat Shaul neighborhood of Jerusalem, the letter was written by Einstein in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo in October 1922. When a messenger delivered something to his room, the scientist found himself short of a tip. Instead he gave the bellboy two notes and “told the messenger to keep them, as their future value may be much higher than a standard tip,” said the auction house.

Blumenthal told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday morning that the letters came to them directly from the great-nephew of the bellboy who delivered the message to Einstein.

He held on to the letter for many years, and a few months ago we held an auction of letters Einstein wrote to Prof. David Bohm, on mathematics, and they were sold at a nice price,” Blumenthal said. In that auction, the letter that fetched the highest price went for $84,000.

“It was publicized in a newspaper in Germany where he [the great-nephew] lives, and he saw this and said, ‘Okay, if they get good prices on Einstein, I’ll turn to them.’” 

Bidding on the item started at $2,000 and the auction house estimated it would go for $5,000-$8,000; the final price was close to 200 times that amount. While Winner’s didn’t dream of the final sum the letter garnered, it did have an idea that this auction would attract greater interest than some of its others.

“In the weeks leading up to the auction,” Blumenthal said, “we saw people joining the website from Lebanon, from Jordan, from places that were a little unusual.”

The other note Einstein gave to the bellboy sold for $240,000.

That note said simply, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Both letters were written in German. Two other letters by Einstein in the auction sold for $33,600 and $9,600.

The auction included many items of Judaica, Holocaust memorabilia and holy books.

The handwritten notes of the Chatam Sofer on a tractate of Talmud, dated to 1914, sold for $26,400.

Blumenthal said about 30 people showed up in person to the auction house in Jerusalem, and most of the bidding took place online, as is common in auctions today. The purchaser of the letter has chosen to remain anonymous, but Blumenthal said the buyer is based in Europe.

“It just goes to show you,” said Blumenthal, “that many people own items at home and they couldn’t possibly dream of the value those items could have.”

Vasco da Gama's astrolabe

The BBC news reports a fascinating find.

The legendary marine archaeologist, David Mearns of Blue Water recovery, salvaged an artifact from Vasco da Gama's ship Esmeralda that looked like a navigational instrument.

It has now been confirmed that it is, indeed, a fifteenth century astrolabe, used to determine the altitude of the sun. 

As the BBC reports --

David Mearns, from Blue Water Recovery, who led the excavation and is the author of The Shipwreck Hunter, told the BBC: "It's a great privilege to find something so rare, something so historically important, something that will be studied by the archaeological community and fills in a gap."

The astrolabe was discovered by Mr Mearns in 2014, and was one of nearly 3,000 artefacts recovered during a series of dives.

The bronze disc measures 17.5cm in diameter and is less than 2mm thick.

"It was like nothing else we had seen and I immediately knew it was something very important because you could see it had these two emblems on it," said Mr Mearns.

"One I recognised immediately as a Portuguese coat of arms... and another which we later discovered was the personal emblem of Don Manuel I, the King of Portugal at the time."

The excavation team believed the object was an astrolabe, but they could not see any navigational markings on it.

However, a later analysis uncovered its hidden details.

Laser scanning work carried out by scientists at the University of Warwick revealed etches around the edge of the disc, each separated by five degrees.

Image captionThe University of Warwick used laser scans to uncover etches on the astrolabe, which helped navigators work out the height of the sun

This would have allowed mariners to measure the height of the sun above the horizon at noon to determine their location so they could find their way on the high seas.

Mariners' astrolabes are relatively rare, and this is only the 108th to be confirmed catalogued. It is also the earliest known example by several decades.

Mr Mearns said: "We know it had to have been made before 1502, because that's when the ship left Lisbon and Dom Manuel didn't become King until 1495, and this astrolabe wouldn't have carried the emblem of the King unless he was King.

"I believe it's probably fair to say it dates roughly to between 1495 to 1500. Exactly what year we don't know - but it is in that narrow period."

He added: "It rolls back this history by at least 30 years - it adds to evolution, it adds to the history, and hopefully astrolabes from this period can be found."

Franklin expedition ships endowed to Canada

Sir John Franklin, by Ron Druett

From the Maple Leaf Navy magazine

Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon announced today that the UK will gift the wrecks from Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin’s historic expedition to the Canadian Government. This reflects our long shared history and the closeness of our current bilateral relationship.

The journey to locate these vessels has taken 172 years. Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin set sail from England in 1845 on an expedition to chart the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic with HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. The ships and all crew were lost after the ships became stuck in ice off King William Island and the crew abandoned them to trek overland to the South. None of the crew survived.

Many attempts were made over the years but only artefacts were found. In 1992, the wrecks were designated as a national historic site, despite neither shipwreck having been found at that time. In 1997, UK and Canadian Governments signed an agreement giving custody and control of the wrecks and their contents to the Canadian Government, whilst still remaining the property of the UK.

With a combination of traditional Inuit knowledge and state-of-the-art technology, the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were finally located under relatively shallow Arctic Waters to the south of King William Island in 2014 and 2016 respectively. Acknowledging the importance of this momentous discovery, the UK Government is proposing to update the 1997 agreement, transferring ownership of the wrecks to Parks Canada, whilst retaining a small sample of artefacts. Items from the wreckages will be displayed for future generations in both Canadian and UK museums.

Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said:

“During her recent visit to Canada, the Prime Minister emphasised the importance of recognising our shared past with Canada as we seek to reinvigorate our already strong bilateral relationship.

“This exceptional arrangement will recognise the historical significance of the Franklin expedition to the people of Canada, and will ensure that these wrecks and artefacts are conserved for future generations.”

The transfer of ownership is expected to be undertaken over the coming weeks.

With thanks to Dave Shirlaw

New Life for Old Books

In contrast to its stance against wholesale google digitization of books, the Authors Guild approves of a new venture for making old books available to readers, historians, and researchers.

As the newsletter announces, "The Internet Archive has announced a promising initiative aimed at giving new, online life to 75-plus-year-old books. Although the Internet Archive has sometimes been cavalier about copyright and dismissive of the needs of authors, we are happy about this project, which aims to make 10,000 or more out-of-print books published between 1923 and 1941 available to researchers, historians, and readers. Helping libraries as well as authors take advantage of new digital opportunities is an Authors Guild priority.

"Beginning with the pioneering Project Gutenberg, programs to scan printed books and make them available online have mostly been limited to those old enough to be in the public domain. That’s why Google’s notorious book-scanning project is able to display only small excerpts of copyrighted books, mostly with the cooperation of publishers. As a general rule, the cutoff date for displaying books in their entirety is 1923—all books published before then are automatically in the public domain.

"The people at the Internet Archive, a San Francisco nonprofit founded by Brewster Kahle, are relying on an important feature of the Copyright Act that allows libraries and archives to copy books for researchers and scholars in the last 20 years of the books’ copyright life, as long as they aren’t commercially available. The exception was added to Section 108, the part of the copyright law that provides special exceptions for libraries and archives, in 1998 when the copyright terms were extended by 20 years. The rest of Section 108 was enacted in 1976, when the idea of “copying” didn’t envision the internet, and so section 108 badly needs updating. We’re working with the Copyright Office on this."

Any author who finds that his or her book has been caught up by this project even though the book is still commercially available can get redress by contacting the Guild.

Who or what is an adult?

What, in Washington, DC, does the word "adult" mean?  And how has that meaning changed with the continuing chaos of the Trump administration?  The New York Review of Books has an interesting discussion, written by James Mann.

As he points out --- "For the first time, America has a president who does not act like an adult. He is emotionally immature: he lies, taunts, insults, bullies, rages, seeks vengeance, exalts violence, boasts, refuses to accept criticism, all in ways that most parents would seek to prevent in their own children. Thus the dynamic was established in the earliest days of the administration: Trump makes messes, or threatens to make them, and Americans look to the “adults” to clean up for him. The “adults,” in turn, send out occasional little public signals that they are trying to keep Trump from veering off course—to educate him, to make him grow up, to keep him under control. When all else fails, they simply distance themselves from his tirades. Sometimes such efforts are successful; on many occasions, they aren’t."

And so the meaning of the word "adult" has changed.  Originally, it meant a person who adhered to certain policy approaches -- usually centrist and not too far to the left.  Thus, Bernie Sanders would never be called an "adult" in Washington parlance, though I suspect no one would quite dare to suggest that he needed adult supervision.  Ralph Nader is another. 

Now, however, the word refers to behavior.  It harks back to irritated parents, who ask a wayward teenager to "please act like an adult."  This is exactly the interaction between Trump and the "adults" in the room -- he makes messes, and they are expected to step in and clean it up.  When the messes involve grave matters like endangerment of world peace, or crucially important trade pacts, the public looks anxiously for one of the perceived adults to step in and save the precarious situation.

So it is doubly interesting that three of the perceived adults are military men.  What does this mean for the future of the world?  Read the thought-provoking article for more.

Quite apart from politics, though, it is a fascinating footnote to the history of how words evolve.  Think of the maritime word "fathom," for instance.  From the earliest days at sea, it was about six feet, or the length of a man's arms outstretched. On land, to "fathom" was to encircle with one's arms.  Back at sea again, it became a useful way of measuring depth, which is probably why it then evolved to its modern meaning, to understand, or puzzle out -- as in, "I can't fathom what he is talking about."

Which is exactly what the "adults" are doing much of their time in Washington.

Plane gets a licking

Cows interested spectators at an emergency landing

The Dominion Post has an amusing report this morning that I could not resist passing on.

Cattle are surprisingly inquisitive, as I have found out many times when going out mushrooming.  They gather round and drool, and flutter ridiculously long eyelashes, and when they get really interested they start to lick.

This herd of beef cattle had the most interesting experience yet, on Sunday.  A small plane, flown by a private pilot, made an emergency landing in their paddock after the engine started shuddering.

No one was hurt, and the plane was washed.  After a fashion.  The cows, after scampering away from the landing, reassembled for a close inspection.  Then, liking what they scented and saw, they started to lick.

This happened just north of Wellington, at Te Horo on the Kapiti Coast.  The Kapiti Aero Club secretary denied all knowledge of the pilot's identity.  All he knew, apparently was that the pilot issued a mayday call, and then made a successful landing, and the plane will be trucked out this week.

More amusing still, it seems that cows are even more interested in cameras.  As you can see, they have abandoned the plane to inspect the photographer.

Ancient tablet transcribed

Well, there's a language I have never heard about before. Luwian.  Evidently a local dialect from about the time of beautiful Helen of Troy, whose face sank a thousand ships.

Long ago, a French archaeologist couldn't decipher it, either, but he had the sense to copy what he saw on a huge tablet covered with this script, before the stone tablet was used in the construction of a mosque.  And now a team of scholars has translated the message, which is a story of a mythic "Sea People."

From The Smithsonian

An interdisciplinary team of Swiss and Dutch archaeologists say they have managed to deduce the writings on a 3,200-year-old stone tablet that appears to tell tales of ancient Troy and the so-called "Sea People."

The 95-foot-long, 13-inch-tall limestone slab in question was discovered in 1878 in a small village in what is now modern-day Turkey, reports Natasha Frost of Atlas Obscura. Despite having no idea what the hieroglyphic symbols meant, French archaeologist Georges Perrot supposedly copied the entire inscription for his records before the limestone was taken away by the villagers and used to build a new mosque.

The archaeologists deciphered the copy of that inscription, which was written in Luwian, the tongue of a little-known civilization believed to exist thousands of years ago in Asia Minor, writes Owen Jarus of Live Science. The Luwians have been proposed by some to be the "Sea People" cryptically mentioned in Egyptian writings that might have helped drive the end of the country's New Kingdom. Swiss geoarchaeologist Eberhard Zangger goes further, proposing that the Luwians fueled the collapse of the Bronze Age superpowers by starting a series of conflicts in a kind of "World War Zero" some 3,200 years ago.

Since 1956, scholars have slowly worked to decipher the Luwian language, including Perrot's transcription. The copy was in the possession of the English archaeologist James Mellaart, who spent the last decades of his life trying to translate the slab, before his death in 2012.

Today, less than 20 people in the world are estimated to be able to read the Luwian language, and Mellaart's son gave the inscription to the team of archaeologists, who are affiliated with Zangger's Luwian Studies Foundation. 

According to a press release, their translation reveals an epic story worthy of being carved into stone, namely the exploits of prince from the region of ancient Troy named Muksus who advances his forces all the way to the borders of ancient Egypt.

However, some scholars are skeptical of the authenticity of this story. Dutch scholar Fred Woudhuizen was working with a copy of a copy of a copy, notes Jarus, since Perrot's transcription was later copied by a Turkish scholar, whose work was then copied by Mellaart. Without any stones left to corroborate this copy, the authenticity of the work is suspect. Mellaart's own credibility also must be considered. Scholars have spoken out against some of his claims, and in 1991, he was forced to publish a story in HALI magazine titled "James Mellaart Answers His Critics." 

But Woudhuizen and the Luwian Studies Foundation, however, argue that it would have been very difficult for Mellaart, being unable to read Luwian, to successfully forge a long, intricate inscription.

You can read a translation of the tablet yourself this December when the foundation publishes it in the journal Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society – TALANTA.

Ship stamp worth untold

An old, unused, ship stamp could be yours for a mere fifty grand in Kiwi dollars, if you link to a stamp and coin auction that is to be staged in Wellington late this week.

The stamp was designed and printed to commemorate a royal visit to the country back in 1949

Due to the ill-health of the royal in question, King George VI, the visit was cancelled, and so was the stamp.

Well, it was meant to be cancelled and destroyed in its entirety, but one sheet of the print run was "liberated" before the rest were incinerated.

There are only seven known examples.

The auction as a whole is expected to make over two million in sales.  That, however, might depend on the popularity of a rival attraction, a heavy-duty firearms fair that is to be held, if you please, at a school.  The gun fair is designed for collectors of old military weapons, but instead has raised a heap of controversy...

Read more.