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A menu of the last meal served to first class passengers on board the Titanic sold for £76,000 yesterday.
It was the star lot in an auction at Henry Aldridge & Son’s saleroom in Devizes, Wiltshire, with memorabilia from the stricken ship. The menu is dated April 14, 1912, the day the cruiser hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank, killing 1,522 people. The menu was on the table of first-class passenger Dr Washington Dodge, a prominent banker from San Francisco, who was travelling with his wife and son.
Mrs Dodge slipped the menu into her handbag before carrying on with her day – unaware of the tragedy to come. She and her son survived after being ushered onto a lifeboat and the menu, which had remained in her bag, has stayed with the family ever since. Dr Dodge also survived from the sinking vessel.
Six-legged calf defies odds
A six-legged calf has defied the odds by thriving despite a vet’s prediction at birth that it would not survive.
Seven-week-old Lilli is now a minor celebrity in her native Switzerland after images of the calf frolicking across a sunny field were splashed over local media.
Farmer Andreas Knutti, from Weissenburg, near the capital Bern, said he could not bring himself to have her put down because she was “so full of life”. He told Swiss daily Blick that a curve in her spine meant Lilli may never become a normal milk cow.
Scouts’ clothing for Muslims
The Scout Association in the UK has launched a new clothing range for Muslim girls in response to an increasing number from the faith joining the organisation.
A “hoodie dress” and a T-shirt dress, both with long sleeves, are to be made available for activities including abseiling and climbing following requests from the Muslim community.
The knee-length outfits feature a graphic print inspired by Scout badges and activities and have been designed by Sarah Elenany, a 27-year-old British designer of Palestinian and Egyptian origin. The Scout Association – founded in 1907 – said more than a third of all Scouts worldwide now are Muslim, with an estimated 2,000 Muslim Scouts in the UK.
V2 rocket located, removed
British bomb disposal experts have removed the remnants of a German war-time V2 rocket which was found submerged in mudflats off the English coast.
The four-feet-long section of the WWII missile was pulled out at low tide from the River Stour between Harwich, Essex, and Felixstowe, Suffolk. It was discovered nose down and was projecting about two feet out of the mud, around 300 feet from the shoreline, a Royal Navy spokesman said.
It was lifted from the mud onto a barge following a delicate operation by a six-man Navy team who worked with the Army’s 101 Engineer Regiment bomb disposal team. The team excavated around the lowest part of the missile to discover the warhead section missing, meaning it posed no safety risk.
Britain’s nicest place to live
The best quality of life of any rural area in Britain is found in East Cambridgeshire, a study suggested.
The South dominates the list in Halifax’s Rural Areas Quality of Life survey, with nowhere in Wales making the top 50. The study looked at the performance of local authority districts in terms of employment, the housing market, the environment, education and health, to determine the overall quality of life.
East Cambridgeshire includes the bustling city of Ely, known for its imposing cathedral which towers over the Fens.