A set of dentures made for Britain’s war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill known as “the teeth that saved the world” sold for nearly £18,000 (€21,500) at auction yesterday.
The false teeth – which were specially designed to preserve Churchill’s natural lisp on morale-boosting radio broadcasts he made during World War II – fetched over three times their pre-sale estimate. They were snapped up by a private collector from Britain.
It is thought that only four sets of the dentures were made. One is believed to have gone to the grave with him, another is in a London museum labelled “the teeth that saved the world” and a third was melted down. (AFP)
Wrong turn
A pensioner escaped with bruises after driving his car over a garden, through a brick wall – and into a living room.
The crash happened when the 79-year-old’s silver Kia Rio went through a garden wall and into the house on the A67 at Levington Mews, Kirklevington, near Yarm, Cleveland.
Firefighters were called to the scene to cut the man free from the wreckage. He was taken to hospital with bruising. The house was empty at the time. (PA)
Whale boned
A cruise ship accidentally killed a whale after running into it off Alaska.
The dead whale became stuck on the bow of the Sapphire Princess and the vessel had to stop so the carcass could be removed.
The animal appears to have been a juvenile humpback. (PA)
Bear necessities
A black bear walked into a house, ate two pears and a bunch of grapes, took a drink from the family fishbowl and grabbed a stuffed bear on its way out.
Householder Mary Beth Parkinson said the bear apparently took advantage of an open outside door to get into her kitchen in Laconia, New Hampshire.
She thinks the garage door going up as she returned home scared the bear enough for it to flee the house. (PA)
New York battles bedbugs
Bedbugs are spreading at an unprecedented rate in New York and health officials have launched a campaign to combat them.
The pests have rapidly multiplied throughout many US cities in recent years.
In New York they have been discovered in theatres, clothing stores, office buildings, housing projects and luxury apartments. (PA)
Australia Sex Party rebuffs ‘advances’
Australia’s flamboyant Sex Party Thursday said it had rebuffed an approach from arch-conservative Family First to forge an unlikely electoral alliance.
Spokesman Robbie Swan said Family First, a Christian outfit which champions family values, offered to swap voters’ preferences – used when there is no outright winner – in August 21 elections. He said there was “no way in the world” the Sex Party, whose policies include decriminalising drugs and weakening pornography laws, would jump into bed with “diametrically opposed” Family First.
“We represent a lot of prostitutes, but we’re not prostitutes in the sense that we would sell out,” he said.
Family First’s Kane Silom said the group simply wanted to check the Sex Party’s preference deals, to avoid passing on votes to its allies. (AFP)
Forecast discrimination
The BBC should bring an end to “forecast discrimination” by putting Jersey back on its weather map, the island’s tourism authority said.
The island was only mentioned in ten per cent of BBC weather forecasts in a month, according to research by Jersey Tourism.
A BBC spokeswoman said the Channel Islands were clearly visible on the UK-wide weather map used in all network BBC weather forecasts. (PA)
Squirrel meat
A grocery store is committing “wildlife massacre” by selling squirrel meat, campaigners claimed.
Viva – Vegetarians International Voice for Animals – accused Budgens of supporting a “barbaric and needless cull” of grey squirrels by allowing an independently-owned branch in Crouch End, north London, to sell the meat.
A spokesman for Musgrave, which operates Budgens, told the Daily Mail: “As our retailers are independent, they therefore have the right and ability to secure products that Budgens do not offer for sale, within their individually-owned stores.” (PA)