Wednesday, June 6, 2007

archaeological laundry

I just read a great news report about a collection of historical letters found stuffed in a filing cabinet in the laundry room of a deceased (2005) Austrian banker! His family must have found the treasure trove while cleaning out his home to put it up for sale. Can you imagine the legal proceedings if they had not cleaned the house and the new buyers found all of it? What a mess it would have been.
Among the collection are letters by Napoleon, Winston Churchill, Peter the Great, Mahatma Gandhi, Alexander Pushkin, John Donne, Queen Elizabeth I, and Ernest Hemingway. The letters, ranging over 500 years of history, are to be auctioned off July 3 by Christie's of London and are expected to bring in over $4,000,000 dollars. Ah, to be rich!

¡AdiĆ³s!
htw

2 comments:

Kenny P. said...

I found part of an old fruit crate, and a fragment of a calendar from the 1920s under my house. I wonder if I should contact Christie's...

Holley T said...

go for it K! maybe you should make some performance art with it, like Willie Cole!