An acoustic guitar that John Lennon used to record and write Love Me Do, I Want to Hold Your Hand and other songs by The Beatles has sold for $2.4 million at auction.
Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills, California, said the Gibson J-160E guitar was sold on Saturday to an undisclosed buyer.
The auction house said the guitar was one of only two of its type flown from America to England in 1962 for Lennon and fellow Beatle George Harrison. Lennon used the guitar for about a year before swapping it with Harrison; it later went missing in 1963.
Favourite tree in path of rail link
An old pear tree which lies in the proposed path of the HS2 high-speed rail link has been voted England’s Tree of the Year.
The Cubbington Pear Tree near the village of Cubbington in Warwickshire sits on the proposed phase one line of the new rail route and is facing the possibility of being uprooted once construction begins.
The Woodland Trust, which runs the competition, said that more than 10,000 votes were cast by the public in favour of the winner. Believed to be more than 250 years old and the second largest of its kind in the UK, the wild tree has stood for generations on top of a hill near South Cubbington Wood.
Life-sized cake of Prince George
A talented baker has cooked up top prize in a competition after creating a life-sized cake of young royal Prince George.
The cake, which stands 3ft (0.9m) tall, won the top Gold award at the Cake International event held at Birmingham’s NEC.
Winning baker and self-confessed royalist Lara Mason, from Walsall in the West Midlands, said she decided on George as her muse as much for tactical reasons as anything else. The 29-year-old explained that having won the same award last year for her life-sized cake of Hollywood A-lister Jennifer Lawrence’s character in The Hunger Games, judges advised her that she needed to focus on detail.
Dog gone... and back with owner
A year-old black Labrador that escaped from its New Hampshire home has been found stuck in a well and has been returned to its owner.
Eileen Ketcham said she was trying to put her dogs Lillie and Sunny inside her home for the night in September when the pets took off. She says Sunny was killed along a highway that night and Lillie could not be found.
Weeks later, Adam Cheney was hunting in an obscure wooded area when he heard a dog barking in the distance. He discovered a very weak and emaciated Lillie stuck in a five-foot-deep well, sitting in a foot and a half of water. Lillie was eventually returned to Ms Ketcham, who is nursing her back to health.
Brewer ‘victim of climate change’
One of the most renowned Belgian beer brewers said it is a victim of climate change because increasingly high temperatures have shortened the brewing season by about a month compared with the 1950s.
The Cantillon gueuze brewery needs to cool its hot brew in open tanks so that the natural yeasts in the air can help produce the sour beer that has developed a niche following throughout the world.
But with temperatures staying as high as 15C (59F) at night, Cantillon has stopped brewing since it does not want to use artificial refrigeration.
“It is totally abnormal. We have those night temperatures in the summer and with such a temperature it is totally impossible to brew,” Cantillon brewer Jean Van Roy said.
Twister honoured in Hall of Fame
Twister, the parlour game cool enough for Johnny Carson, has been inducted into the US National Toy Hall of Fame.
The class of 2015 also includes the old-as-time puppet and the Super Soaker (think of a squirt gun on steroids). The inductees were chosen over nine other finalists: the spinning top, colouring book, Wiffle Ball, American Girl dolls, Battleship, Jenga, Playmobil, scooter and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
The hall of fame at The Strong museum in Rochester recognises toys for their longevity and ability to foster discovery through play. Twister, which made players into game pieces, was deemed too racy for Sears Roebuck’s 1966 catalogue. It took off, though, when Carson played it with Eva Gabor on The Tonight Show.