Revolver owned by WW2 Gen Patton fetches $75,000
London: A Colt .45 revolver once owned by General George S. Patton sold for $75,000 at auction in Los Angeles.
Profiles in History, which conducted the auction, had expected the working firearm to fetch over $60,000.
The Colt .45 Model 1873 single-action revolver with distinctive stag horn grip was acquired by the famous World War II general around 1928.
The gun, owned by Patton until his death in 1945, is often considered to be a version of his famous ivory-handled Colt. 45, which is on display at The General George Patton Museum and Center of Leadership in Fort Knox, Kentucky. The weapon's $75,000 price tag includes the buyer's premium. A host of other historic manuscripts and artifacts were also auctioned, including General William Sherman's final demand for General Joseph Johnston's surrender of the Confederate Army in 1865, which sold for $100,000. General Robert E. Lee's General Order No.9, his signed farewell to his vanquished army, sold for just over $90,000. A selection of rare and intimate letters from Albert Einstein on everything from God to his son's geometry studies and a little toy steam engine were also auctionedThursday for more than $420,000, far exceeding Profiles in History's pre-sale estimates.–DM
The 27 Einstein letters were in both English and German and written longhand and on a typewriter.
Amassed over decades by a private collector, the letters represented one of the largest caches of Einstein's personal writings ever offered for sale.
Computer in Merkel's office hit by cyberattack
BERLIN: A computer in German Chancellor Angela Merkel's legislative office was hit by a cyberattack that targeted the country's lower house of parliament in May, the Bild newspaper reported on Sunday.
The daily, which did not cite its sources, said the cyberattack was broader and greater than originally anticipated and the Bundestag struggled to control it.
The attack "infected" one of the computers in Merkel's Bundestag office. Bild said the computer was one of the first on which the Trojan Horse-style attack was discovered.
According to the newspaper, the discovery was made on Friday, with officials finding the Trojan Horse software on five computers in the Bundestag.
A spokesman for Merkel's conservative CDU bloc told the newspaper he could "not confirm nor deny" the report. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the cyberattack.–AFP
Merkel's official website, as well as those of the government and the Bundestag, were blocked in January in an online attack claimed by a pro-Russian group.
American solo rower rescued in Pacific
TOKYO: A female adventurer was rescued off the Japanese Pacific coast a week into her solo attempt to row across the Pacific, the Japan Coast Guard said Sunday.
American Sonya Baumstein, 30, had left Japan's Choshi port, east of Tokyo, on June 7 in an attempt to row across the Pacific non-stop to San Francisco. But at around 2:20 pm (0520 GMT) Saturday she sent a distress signal to a freighter travelling nearby because of expected bad weather.
She was located at about 250 kilometres (155 miles) off Iwaki, a city on Japan's Pacific coast, a local coast guard official told AFP. "She was rescued by a patrol ship of the coast guard at about 8:55 pm. She suffered no injuries," the official said.–AFP