In December 1999, Sotheby’s made watch-auction history. The auction house sold the so-called Henry Graves Supercomplication — a pocketwatch originally commissioned from Patek Philippe by noted watch collector Henry Graves, Jr, and which featured 24 complications — for an astounding $11,002,500, still the world record for any timepiece at auction. Last week, Sotheby’s announced that it will hold a single-owner sale on 14 June 2012 in New York that will include more rare watches from the collections of Graves and his grandson, Reginald Pete
H Fullerton, Jr, a noted collector and connoisseur in his own right — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, NY; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.
But all these dramas were facilitated by the FBI, whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Hells yeah, more iPad tentacles, enjoyed this one. I should really do a more polished version though, with a Wacom and everything. Hope you enjoy — via FuzzFace
A beachcomber on British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii islands has discovered what may be the first piece of debris from the Japanese tsunami to arrive in Canada.
Peter Mark was riding his ATV, exploring an isolated beach on Graham Island on 18 April, when he made a spectacular find.
You just never know what you’re going to stumble upon when you go for a drive, and lo and behold you just come across something that’s out of this world,
he said.
Mark found a large white cube, like the back part of a moving truck, just below the high tide mark.
The door was ripped off it and I could see a motorcycle tire sticking out,
he said. So I went closer and looked inside and saw a Harley-Davidson motorcycle
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Australian watchmakers have initiated a movement to maintain their access to Swiss-made watch parts, following the growing restriction and distribution of certain Swiss-made components to watchmakers and brands.
A report from Australian jewellery trade site Jeweller Magazine said that more than 1,000 people have signed up to the Save-The-Time initiative, which is a response to the growing restriction of distribution of watch parts from major Swiss watch companies
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Digital art — ink, tea and watercolour — via Fine Art America
Giovanni D’Ambrosio designed the Under the Moonlight house in Mount Hotham, Australia — via CONTEMPORIST
Aggressive pancreatic tumours may be treatable with a new class of drugs, according to Cancer Research UK.
Less than one in five people with this form of cancer are still alive a year after being diagnosed.
A study, published in the journal Nature, showed that a gene was being switched off in the cancerous cells — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The breeding season of the giant cuttlefish in upper Spencer Gulf in South Australia is expected to begin within days.
Point Lowly is the only known place in the world where the cuttlefish species breeds in big numbers.
But those numbers were well down last season, with only 25,000 sighted, down from a previous annual aggregation of about 250,000 — via redwolf.newsvine.com
BRM has launched a new series of watches directly inspired by the most significant fighter aircrafts of WWII: The Spitfire, the P-51 Mustang North American and the Mitsubishi Zero. Planes that would have been familiar to every schoolboy growing up in wartime.
Known as Warbirds
during World War II, these aircraft were flown by intrepid and brave young pilots. They spearheaded their nations’ air forces during the Second World War and filling history books with tales of skill and derring-do.
The BRM timepieces are crafted like a fuselage, complete with inserted rivets, propeller-shaped hands, cases featuring roundels from different countries, horns that reference exhaust pipes and harness-inspired leather straps. With this new collection, BRM once again demonstrates its deep commitment to speed, high-performance and bold engineering — via Watchuseek
They have been a feature of Edinburgh’s streets for 80 years, the city’s unique variation on the police box beloved by Doctor Who fans.
Now, people are being given the chance to own one of 22 of the blue police boxes, which are being put on sale today by police who said they were surplus to requirements.
Would-be buyers have been given no guide price on which to base their offers, and if successful, will either have to obtain council permits to keep them in situ or make alternative arrangements for the two-ton structures.
A total of 12 of the boxes are listed, so the council would have to approve their removal — via redwolf.newsvine.com
No-one does love and encouragement better than a granny. Now that love is being spread across continents, as UK-based grandmothers extend their embrace to school children thousands of miles away in India.
Jackie Barrow isn’t a granny yet but as a retired teacher she felt she might qualify for an advert in The Guardian newspaper calling for volunteers to help teach children in India.
She did and today, three years on, she is reading Not Now Bernard
via Skype to a small group of children in the Indian city of Pune.
They love it and are engaged in the experience as she holds up an Easter egg to show them how children in the UK celebrated the recent holiday — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Education Secretary Michael Gove is to examine claims the Catholic Education Service (CES) broke impartiality rules on the topic of gay marriage.
It emerged this week that the CES wrote to nearly 400 state-funded Roman Catholic schools inviting them to back a petition against gay civil marriage.
Schools and teachers are forbidden to promote one-sided political arguments.
The CES has denied breaking any laws, saying Catholic views on marriage are religious, not political.
On Thursday, the Welsh government said it was to investigate similar complaints against the CES — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Keepers at Roger Williams Park Zoo were overjoyed 5 April when they checked in on their resident female Giant Anteater, Corndog, and discovered she had given birth to a healthy baby — via ZooBorns
Price-hiking technology vendors are set to be hauled before Australia’s Parliament to justify their local markups, with Communications Minister Stephen Conroy confirming the Government will hold an official parliamentary inquiry into the issue, following a long-running campaign by Federal Labor MP Ed Husic.
Husic has been raising the issue in Parliament and publicly since the beginning of 2011 (he was elected in the 2010 Federal Election), in an attempt to get answers from technology giants such as Adobe, Microsoft, Apple and others as to why they felt it was appropriate to price products significantly higher in Australia (even after taking into consideration factors such as exchange rates and shipping) than the United States.
Just last week, for example, global software giant Adobe continued a long-running tradition of extensively marking up its prices for the Australian market, revealing that locals would pay up to $1,400 more for the exact same software when they buy the new version 6 of its Creative Suite platform compared to residents of the United States — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Your 802.11n wireless network and devices are about to become passé. Although the official 802.11ac specification won’t be finalised until sometime in 2013, wireless equipment will soon appear on store shelves sporting the faster wireless protocol.
It’s been almost five years since 802.11n wireless routers and devices became available — also well ahead of the specification actually getting ratified. Now, IEEE is finalizing the 802.11ac standard. 802.11ac is also referred to as gigabit Wi-Fi
and will be capable of significantly faster data transfer speeds than the current 802.11n — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A new satellite set to fly in 2014 will offer the chance to spot objects just 31 centimetres across … from SPAAAAAACE.
WorldView-3 will be thrust 617 kilometres into the heavens atop an Atlas V rocket and will boast several different sensors, the better to provide images to customers including the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which reportedly asked for the inclusion of short-wave infra-red sensors.
The satellite’s owner, DigitalGlobe, is also known to have substantial contracts with military customers. The company has also talked up the new bird’s ability to help the resources sector, thanks to sensors that can distinguish different types of soil — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Architect David Jameson has sent us images of the NaCl house in Bethesda, Maryland — via CONTEMPORIST
Greg Hageman’s strength is an unerring eye for visual balance and stance. For the XV920, he crafted a new rear subframe and installed a MotoLanna seat originally destined for a Yamaha SR500. The tank is a Benelli, but not just any old Benelli: it’s from a 1967 Wards Riverside Mojave, itself an interesting footnote in the annals of motorcycle history. At the behest of owner Mike Martens, it’s been painted in a variation of the classic Yamaha Speed Block
graphics — via Bike EXIF
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