The vessel, which sank off the coast of Canada in 1962, was used by the explorer on his final voyage to the continent
The wreck of the ship on which renowned Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton died has been found off the coast of Labrador, Canada, searchers have announced.
Locating the Quest – a schooner-rigged steamship which sank on a 1962 seal hunting voyage – represents a last link to the “heroic age of Antarctic exploration”, said search leader John Geiger.
Continue reading...British Museum will host treasures from Samarkand in a bid to dispel cliches of camels, spices and bazaars
A monumental six-metre-long wall painting created in the 7th century, and 8th-century ivory figures carved for one of the world’s oldest surviving chess sets, are among treasures set to be seen in Britain for the first time.
The items will travel from the ancient city of Samarkand to the UK for an exhibition opening in September, as part of the first-ever loan from museums in Uzbekistan to the British Museum.
Silk Roads will be at the British Museum from September 26 2024 to February 23 2025. Tickets go on sale on Monday.
Continue reading...The KX100 design caused controversy when it replaced the classic red phone box – but now a handful may be given listed status
Campaigners are trying to secure listed status for the “boringly ugly” telephone boxes that BT controversially used to replace thousands of red phone boxes in the 1980s.
The Twentieth Century Society, which champions outstanding examples of modern design, has applied for listed status for one KX100 box each in England, Scotland and Wales before they are removed next year.
In England, the 100,000th box to be installed in the country, located at Dunsop Bridge in Lancashire, which sits at the geographic centre of Great Britain and its 401 associated islands.
In Scotland, a contender for the country’s most remote and scenic payphone near Maaruig, on the Isle of Harris. It is believed to be the only example still bearing the full original yellow British Telecom livery.
In Wales, an experimental model at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth, which is uniquely powered by a solar panel atop the kiosk and an adjacent 18ft-high wind turbine.
Continue reading...Palestinian restauranteur speaks from Bethlehem, where food stalls are sparse as farmlands are under attack
Fadi Kattan looked forlornly at the stalls inside the Bethlehem vegetable market bearing small quantities of oranges, watermelons and cauliflowers. “This stall should be heaped with products, he said. “And over there should be piles of aubergines and courgettes.”
The watermelons from Jenin looked too small for the season, while he wasn’t sure where the boxes of oranges were from. They would normally be from Gaza. At Um Nabil’s stall in the West Bank market where Kattan is a regular customer, she told him she could no longer afford to bring in the best small local cucumbers or piles of green cherries from her village of Artas.
Continue reading...Fujikawaguchiko town official says choice to erect huge barrier is ‘regrettable’ and last resort
A huge barrier to block views of Mount Fuji will be installed at a popular photo spot by Japanese authorities exasperated by crowds of badly behaved foreign tourists.
Construction of the mesh net – 2.5 metres (8ft) high and the length of a cricket pitch at 20 metres – will begin as early as next week, an official from Fujikawaguchiko town said on Friday.
Continue reading...Day-trippers will have to pay €5 to visit Italian city under scheme designed to protect it from excess tourism
Authorities in Venice have been accused of transforming the famous lagoon city into a “theme park” as a long-mooted entrance fee for day trippers comes into force.
Venice is the first major city in the world to enact such a scheme. The €5 (£4.30) charge, which comes into force today, is aimed at protecting the Unesco world heritage site from the effects of excessive tourism by deterring day trippers and, according to the mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, making the city “livable” again.
Continue reading...Doubling of related street, house and farm names since 1900 gives glimpse of flower ‘ghosts’, says National Trust
Over the last century orchards and blossom trees have been slipping out of the British landscape at an alarming rate but the “ghosts” of lost flowers are glimpsed in an increasing number of placenames recalling the vanished pinks and whites, researchers have found.
A National Trust study has discovered that the number of street, house and farm names relating to orchards and blossom has doubled across England and Wales since the turn of the 20th century, a period in which more than half of traditional orchards have disappeared.
Continue reading...Spire collapses as fire engulfs Danish landmark, which houses one of country’s most valuable art collections
Firefighters at Copenhagen’s historic former stock exchange have been battling a huge blaze that has engulfed the 17th-century building’s roof, toppled its distinctive spire and threatened one of Denmark’s most valuable art collections.
“We are witnessing a terrible spectacle. The Bourse is on fire,” the Chamber of Commerce, which occupies the building next to Christiansborg Palace, the seat of the Danish parliament, wrote on X. “Everyone is asked to stay away.”
Continue reading...In unusual election pledge, Keane Duncan says he will use public money to buy 1867 hotel, forcibly if necessary
Built for wealthy Victorian holidaymakers as the biggest hotel in Europe, Scarborough’s iconic Grand has stood proud since 1867, perched high on the seafront, just metres above the sandy South Bay beach.
So for many in the town, it has been embarrassing to watch the Grade II-listed building suffer a sad reversal of fortunes in recent decades, becoming the “shame of Scarborough”.
Continue reading...Clues at Argentina site raise possibility mammal was buried with human owners about 1,500 years ago
The remains of a fox unearthed at a human burial site in Argentina dating back 1,500 years has raised the possibility the animal may have been kept as a pet, research suggests.
Experts say the remains predate the arrival of domestic dogs in Patagonia, which occurred about 700–900 years ago, with a number of clues suggesting the fox was seen as valuable, and may even have been a companion to the hunter-gatherers it lived with.
Continue reading...Watchdog examining claims key details have not been disclosed about altar tablets it is facing calls to return
The British Museum is being investigated by the information watchdog over claims it has been overly secretive about some of the most sensitive items in its collection – a group of sacred Ethiopian altar tablets that have been hidden from view at the museum for more than 150 years.
The 11 wood and stone tabots, which the museum acknowledges were looted by British soldiers after the Battle of Maqdala in 1868, have never been on public display and are considered to be so sacred that even the institution’s own curators and trustees are forbidden from examining them.
Continue reading...A collection of more than 7,000 letters will form a publicly accessible digital archive that offers a window to the past
In the week that Ireland turns everything green and celebrates its diaspora, a new online archive has given voice to the human cost paid by generations of emigrants.
More than 7,000 letters from emigrants to North America spanning four centuries have been collected and digitised, giving poignant insight into the homesickness, tribulations, and occasional triumphs, of those who crossed the Atlantic.
Continue reading...Intervention by conservationists halts sale of 1530s roundel from Grade-I listed manor, created to celebrate king’s union with Anne Boleyn
The fate of precious Tudor stained glass marking the union of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is in dispute after its last-minute withdrawal from a private auction, the Observer has learned.
Urgent intervention by conservationists prevented the sale of English glasswork “of exceptional importance”, including a window made in the 1530s as well as older medieval glass. The windows were hanging in a 16th-century Dorset manor and were destined for a private contents auction until spotted listed alongside vintage furniture and china.
Continue reading...Latin-inscribed artwork tells story of Walter Tirel, whose son killed British monarch
The Italian descendants of King William II’s killer want to donate a work of art partly depicting William’s death to a British museum.
The three-slab triptych is owned by the Tirelli family, whose aristocratic origins can be traced back to France, for over 400 years. They have said they believe it was made by a Norman artist in 1100.
Continue reading...Instrument was adapted, translated and corrected by Muslim and Jewish users in Spain, north Africa and Italy
Almost exactly a year ago, Federica Gigante was preparing a lecture and searching the internet for a portrait of the 17th-century Italian nobleman and collector Ludovico Moscardo when an altogether different image caught her eye.
The historian’s gaze soon snagged on a photo of a metal disc with a ring at the top that was kept in the same Verona museum as Moscardo’s picture.
Continue reading...Eight-metre statue dating from fifth century BC restored and assembled piece-by-piece to be displayed in Valley of the Temples
A colossal statue of Atlas that lay buried for centuries among ancient ruins has been reconstructed to take its rightful place among the Greek temples of Agrigento in Sicily, after a 20-year research and restoration project.
The statue, standing at 8 metres (26ft) tall and dating back to the fifth century BC, was one of nearly 38 that adorned the Temple of Zeus, considered the largest Doric temple ever built despite never being completed.
Continue reading...Proposed sale of Abyssinian artefact taken during 1868 battle triggers appeal for restitution of ‘wrongfully acquired’ item
The Ethiopian government has called the auction of a looted colonial-era shield “inappropriate and immoral” as it attempts to stop its sale this week and prevent it from disappearing into a private collection.
The Anderson & Garland auction house, in Newcastle upon Tyne, was contacted by the Ethiopian National Heritage national restitution committee about the 19th-century Abyssinian shield, which it said should be removed from the auction set to take place on Thursday.
Continue reading...Artist chose study to appear in first big retrospective in 1971. Dyer was found dead in couple’s hotel room 36 hours before show’s opening
It is one of the most intimate and psychologically charged portraits that the artist Francis Bacon painted of his great love, George Dyer. So special was it to him that he personally selected it to appear at his first major retrospective at Paris’s Grand Palais in 1971.
But what should have been a monumental occasion celebrating Bacon’s stellar career was marred by tragedy when barely 36 hours before the opening, Dyer was found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills, exacerbated by alcohol abuse, in the couple’s shared hotel room.
Continue reading...Mati Diop, the director of Dahomey, which charts the restitution of 26 objects to Benin, says the tiny number involved is ‘humiliating’
The first major return of looted treasures from Europe to Africa in the 21st century has left a lingering feeling of humiliation because of the lack of follow-up action, a French-Senegalese film-maker who accompanied a hoard of artefacts on their journey from Paris to their country of origin has said.
In her film Dahomey, which premiered at the Berlin film festival on Sunday, the director, Mati Diop, documents the 2021 journey of 26 treasures that the commander of French forces in Senegal looted from the royal palace of the kingdom of Dahomey, part of modern-day Benin, in 1890.
Continue reading...Chilean social media users target institution, forcing it at one point to close comments on posts
The British Museum is tackling an influx of social media trolls from Chile, who have flooded the museum’s Instagram posts calling for the return of a moai statue, one of the stone monuments from Easter Island.
The museum has two moai, which were taken from Rapa Nui (Easter Island) by British surveyors in 1868, and there have been longstanding demands for the British to return them to Rapa Nui, which is Chilean territory.
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