Antique Pistol Used in Massachussetts Stickup

Two Springfield, MA teens were charged with using what turned out to be an antique pistol during an attempted robbery of a bicyclist Wednesday.

Tyriesse J. Jackson, 17, and a 16-year-old juvenile whose name was not released were charged with armed assault with intent to rob. Jackson also had an outstanding warrant.

A bicyclist told police two teens approached him and tried to rob him, displaying a pistol in his waistband. Police recovered the gun in the home of the 16-year-old and described it as an antique, single-action handgun of unknown make and caliber.

Sorry circumstances and Antiqueswest hopes Mssr's Jackson and "unnamed juvenile" get what's coming to them but we'd also like to get a look at that pistol!

"Origin Of The Species" Found On Shelf In Oxford Loo

You can pick up many things in old English lavatories, germs being one. But one recent visitor to an Oxford, England WC found something quite beguiling - an 18th Century first edition copy of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species."

Christie's said today that the book - one of a run of 1,200 first printed in 1858 - had been on a toilet bookshelf at a family home for some time. The book will be auctioned on Tuesday, the 150th anniversary of the publication of the famous work. Christie's said the book is likely to sell for 60,000 pounds ($99,000).

Darwin's "The Origin of Species" outlined his theory of natural selection, the foundation for the modern understanding of evolution.

That's pretty weighty stuff for a "loo-side" read.

EBAY Service Disrupted, Shoppers And Sellers Howl

EBay Inc.'s main e-commerce sites suffered from sporadic failures on Saturday, limiting the ability of shoppers to search for products on the site in the lead-up to the crucial holiday shopping season and prompting hundreds of complaints from sellers.

Sellers say they first began noticing problems with eBay's search system on Saturday morning. At 11:17 a.m. Pacific time, the company posted a note on its announcement board stating they were aware of the problem - which intensified through the day.

More Money Than Cents At Madoff Sell-Off

Call it "Just Desserts," or "Revenge Served Sweet," but victim's of Bernard Madoff's paper-thin financial scam caught a break this week as the last of the "Wizard of Wall Street's" assets were sold off to help make reparations to those he defrauded.

Gaston & Sheehan auctioned off antiques, personal items and expensive geegaws for as much as ten times behind their appraised value as the Madoff mystique - still a mystery to us, with the namesake doing life behind bars - continues to pull in the big bucks.

Saturday's government auction of items seized from Bernard and Ruth Madoff's New York residences, expected to bring in $500,000, brought in more than $1 million.

Lots of more than 200 items, from jewelry and watches to sports memorabilia and artwork, nearly sold out in four hours of brisk bidding. A pair of platinum Art Deco Cartier onyx and diamond earrings quickly sparked a bidding war on the floor, going for $70,000, more than 10 times its low estimate. Ms. Madoff's pre-Victorian era diamond dangle earrings, expected to bring in between $14,300 and $21,400, fetched $70,000 and drew a round of applause.

The money goes toward repaying the victims of Madoff's multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme, minus an undisclosed fee by the auctioneer.

Metal Thieves Pilfer Cemetary Cannon For Scap

The scurrilous brand of night-prowling metal thieves known for stripping copper cable out of commercial refrigerators and selling it to black-market recyclers for scrap may have claimed a historic cannon this week.

We obviously have a love of old things and we find this sort of thing particularly reprehensible, but it seems a crew of meth tweakers - or perhaps something more than that - spent some time prying a 1,500-pound Dahlgren gun off its mounts at a Vallejo, CA cemetery and made off with it.

The Civil War-era Naval Dahlgren cannon similar to the one we have pictured was discovered missing from a battery of others in the Sunrise Memorial Cemetery this week. Cemetery operator Buck Kamphausen says the surviving examples have since been removed and stored in safe location.

We have heard of cases back east where thieves, either stealing for scrap metal content of the guns or for well-heeled buyers who like to have 12-pound Napoleons protecting their yards, have backed trucks up to "town square cannons" and made off with them.

This theft is particularly disturbing because it took some spectacular engineering to make off with their prize.

"They took an A-frame to it to take it out of the ground," Kamphausen told a local reporter. "They dug around it enough to loosen it from the ground." This is the second cannon theft Kamphausen knows of in Vallejo in recent years, he said. One was stolen about 18 months ago from another local cemetery, he said.

Sunrise's cannon memorial is believed to have been erected in 1906 in its Spanish-American War section.

"Say, Buddy, How Much Ya Want For That Mahmoud Mokhtar Garden Sculpture?"

A bronze sculpture of a woman carrying a water urn had rested in a Cleveland, Ohio man's garden for years. It attracted some attention, with at least one dealer offering him $3,000 for it.

The homeowner is glad he said no, apparently, as the bronze by Egyptian artist Mahmoud Mokhtar went on to sell at auction for $118,000 - not bad considering he'd inherited the artwork when he bought his house. No one knows for sure how long it has been there, at least since 1931 - when it was poured.