Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn has lost her head again, by accident this time. An 8in high figurine of the ill-fated queen was being returned to a glass case after an auction sale when a member of staff banged it against the rostrum, knocking its head off. Terry House, of House & Son auctioneers, Bournemouth, said: “It’s the funniest thing I have seen in 50 years in the job. The entire sales room was laughing — even the chap who had bought it.”
Bridge job of the week
Mostar’s “other bridge” — an ironwork built by Austro-Hungarian imperial engineers to supplement the Bosnian city’s famous 16th-century stone structure — has now suffered an even more ignominious fate. Having survived two world wars and the even more hazardous conflict of the 1990s — in which the ancient stone bridge which gave the city its name (“most” means bridge) was destroyed — it has now been stolen by scrap metal dealers.
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It was possible to dismantle the 40ft structure without anyone noticing because of its relatively remote location outside the city. But whereas its stone cousin was recently rebuilt using much of the original material, the iron bridge — which fetched £90 at a scrap dealer — has already been melted down.
Dictionary of the week
Respected German dictionary publisher Langenscheidt is about to publish its most ambitious linguistic project to date: a handbook which translates what women really mean. Best known for its authoritative yellow-backed tomes, the new Langenscheidt German-Woman/Woman-German dictionary explains verbal and non-verbal terms. For example “Let’s just cuddle” means “No sex tonight”, and “What do you think of these shoes?” means “Please buy them for me.”
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Plague of the week
The Italian town of Matera which won fame as the setting for Mel Gibson’s controversial film The Passion of the Christ has received a visitation of truly biblical proportions: a plague of locusts. Several million of the giant insects invaded the town causing local innkeepers to complain that they had scared the tourists away.
Value judgment of the week
A cleaner at Tate Britain disposed of a supposedly valuable art work because she saw it for what it really was: a load of rubbish.
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The piece — cardboard and paper wrapped in a see-through bin-liner — was an installation by avant-garde German artist Gustav Metzger and displayed in the gallery’s Art and the Sixties exhibition. The Tate said it had offered compensation but refused to say how much the piece was worth. It has subsequently been replaced.