WWII-Era Parisian Apartment Found Stopped In Time

by Megan Fernandez on

Love letters from fans bundled with a ribbon. A Giovanni Boldini painting worth more than $2 million. Hairbrushes caked in 70 years’ worth of dust. All sitting right where the owner left them during World War II.

According to the Daily Mail, a time capsule of an apartment in Paris’s 9th arrondissement was discovered three years ago upon the 91-year-old owner’s death. She had fled to the south of France when World War II broke out, and it looks as though she never returned. Authorities found the once-elegant apartment in a cluttered, lived-in state, its brocade wallpaper faded and everything covered in cobwebs.

Among the abandoned possessions, one painting caught an expert’s eye: a luminous image of a flirtatiously posed young brunette with a slinky pink silk or satin gown spilling far down her shoulders. The expert suspected it to be a Boldini (the Italian was a friend of Edward Degas and a noted portrait artist in Paris in the late-19th century). But he had no proof – until he found, among the scattered papers in the residence, a love letter from Boldini to the actress Marthe de Florian, a French star at the turn of the century. De Florian was the apartment owner’s grandmother, and those bundled love letters were from her admirers, including one French prime minister.

Later identified as a 1898 Boldini, the painting eventually fetched more than $2 million at auction, six times its opening bid and more than any other work by the artist.

[Via the Daily Mail]

Harry Truman’s ‘Seagoing White House’ Rusts In Italian Shipyard

by Libby Zay on


What was once one of the world’s most famous ships is now rusting away in an Italian shipyard. The U.S.S. Williamsburg, a naval ship that became President Harry Truman’s personal yacht in 1945 and was once considered an American treasure, could be scrapped within a few years if a last-minute attempt to save the ship fails, NBC Nightly News reports.
Originally a private vessel, the ship was bought by the U.S. Navy and spent much of World War II in Iceland, helping to safeguard the delivery of supplies from the U.S. to Europe. After the war ended, the ship became the President’s official yacht, eventually becoming Truman’s favored setting for vacations and state occasions, earning the nickname of the “seagoing White House” in the 1940s.


But when Dwight Eisenhower became President in 1953, he ordered the ship to be decomissioned after just one voyage. The yacht was given to the National Science Foundation to be used for oceanographic research, and six years later was damaged when it was attached to a floating drydock, which suddenly sank. Although there have been many proposals to revive the Williamsburg – including turning it into a cruise ship – the vessel has been slowly degrading in an Italian shipyard for the past 20 years. Owners say the ship will likely sink in the next few years if nobody steps in to save it.

[via Daily Mail]

Report: Government Oversight Allowed Known Terrorists Onto US Flights

by Megan Fernandez on

Some “suspected or known terrorists” on the TSA’s No Fly list were able to board commercial flights in and over the United States for years, according to a new internal report from the Department of Justice.

The report, released this month and cited by Breaking Travel News, focused on the U.S. Marshals Service and another office’s handling of terrorists in the federal witness security program (WITSEC), commonly called the witness protection program. It concluded that those authorities were not communicating with “national security stakeholders,” such as the FBI, before admitting terrorists into the program and giving them a new identity. Part of the problem was that the new names didn’t make it onto the Terrorist Screening Center’s watch list or the TSA’s No Fly list, creating a serious and surprising loophole:

We found that WITSEC Program participants include individuals known or suspected by the government to be involved in terrorism. This includes individuals trained in areas such as aviation and explosives, involved in plotting bombing attacks, and guilty of serious offenses such as conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals.

We identified some WITSEC Program participants who were on the TSA’s No Fly list yet were allowed to fly on commercial flights with WITSEC Program officials’ knowledge and approval. Moreover, these individuals, on their own accord, could have flown without WITSEC Program officials’ knowledge and approval.

But that’s not even the worst revelation in the report. This is:

In addition, we found that the Department did not definitively know how many known or suspected terrorists were admitted into the WITSEC Program.

This alarming example of the potential problem isn’t much better:

In one instance, we noted that in a June 2009 field report a USMS Inspector reported his belief that a WITSEC participant was trying to gather intelligence on sensitive policies and procedures of the USMS WITSEC Program for militant Muslim groups. We found no evidence that this information was shared with the FBI when it was reported to USMS WITSEC headquarters personnel near the time the Inspector recorded this concern.

The DOJ issued 16 recommendations to address the situation. Since March, 15 of those have been implemented, and the final one is in the works.

It is unclear from the report whether participation in the witness protection program overrides the terrorist watch list, but the fact that the loophole sparked a lengthy DOJ investigation suggests that it does not. At the very least, the government was supposed to know if witness protection participants who also appear on the terrorist watch list were attempting to fly, and it didn’t.

Notably, the report acknowledges the value of allowing terrorists into the witness protection program:

These witnesses cooperated in major terrorism investigations and prosecutions that the Department described as integral to its primary counterterrorism mission, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the East Africa Embassy bombings, the “Blind Sheik” prosecutions, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building attack in Oklahoma City, the New York City subway suicide-bomb plot, and the plot to bomb John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Via Breaking Travel News

Passenger Surprised When TSA Finds Dagger Inside Cane

by Libby Zay on

Each week, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) details some of the items they uncovered during airport searches on their blog. This week the administration found not only a record 50 firearms (45 which were loaded), but also a curious cane that concealed a 2.5-inch knife (pictured).

According to the blog, even the woman carrying the cane was surprised to find the blade inside when she tried to pass through a security checkpoint at Washington Dulles International Airport.

“It’s important to examine your bags prior to traveling to ensure no prohibited items are inside,” said the TSA. “If a prohibited item is discovered in your bag, you could be cited and quite possibly arrested by local law enforcement.”

At airports this week, officials also found 10 stun guns, two inert grenades and a can of tear gas.

[via Business Insider]

Say Goodbye To Olive Oil Bottles In European Restaurants

by Sean McLachlan on

It’s an old tradition here in Europe: sit down for a meal and at the center of the table is a little bottle of olive oil for using on your bread and other food. In the finer restaurants you’ll often get a dipping bowl too.

Now the Guardian reports that the European Union has banned serving olive oil in anything but sealed, throwaway containers. The EU says this is to stop fraud, claiming some restaurants substitute cheaper olive oil than what they advertise, a bit like how some bars put cheaper brands into their top-shelf liquor bottles. In fact, few restaurants actually advertise which olive oil they’re serving.

The new move is also supposed to improve hygiene, although of course it will increase the amount of trash restaurants produce.

Several newspapers are lambasting the move, saying it’s pointless meddling by a bloated bureaucracy that should be tackling the economic meltdown. The move has already passed, however.

So the next time you go to Europe, your authentic local meal will be a little less authentic.