Harry Potter chair sold at auction in the US

The chair that Harry Potter author JK Rowling sat on while writing the first two books has sold in the US for around £280,000.

JK Rowling wrote the first two Harry Potter books in this chair.

She had picked up the chair for free in Edinburgh before the books were published, and then had hand-painted them.

The chair has messages written from JK Rowling, including: "O, you may not find me pretty but don't judge on what you see" and "I wrote Harry Potter while sitting on this chair".

The chair also comes with a letter written by the author, saying that the chair hurt her back.

It reads: "I was given four mismatched dining room chairs in 1995 and this was the comfiest one, which is why it ended up stationed permanently in front of my typewriter, supporting me while I typed out Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. My nostalgic side is quite sad to see it go, but my back isn't."

From CBBC Newsround/ Entertainment

A teenager gets to keep gold bar she found in a lake

Back in August a 16 year old girl found a gold bar while she was swimming in a lake in Germany and now she gets to keep it.

Lucky this girl!

The gold bar weighs half a kilogram

The teenager found the gold bar, worth over £13,500, two metres under water in Lake Koenigssee. Police said that as nobody had come forward in six months to claim the gold that the finder gets to keep it.

Lake Koenigssee

The gold was found in Lake Koenigssee in an area called Bavaria in south East Germany near the border with Austria.

At the time police divers checked the area for more gold but didn't find anything. Following an investigation, nothing else is known about where it came from.

The gold bar has distinctive markings which show the weight of the bar and how pure the gold is.This has helped experts work out that the gold bar is worth a whopping £11,500.

From CBBC Newsround

Barbie available in 'curvy, tall and petite' sizes

Barbie, the iconic plastic toy doll model, is getting three new body types this year.

The US company behind the famous toy, Mattel, is adding "tall, curvy and petite" body shapes to its line-up of the fashion dolls.

Several skin tones, eye colours and hair styles will also be added to the collection, the company said.

Barbie's figure has come under fire for years, with critics arguing it set an unrealistic body image for girls.

With the new body shapes, the toy makers say they are "offering girls choices that are more reflective of the world they see today".

Last year, the company introduced 23 new dolls to its so-called Fashionistas line with varied skin and hair colours, and a much touted flat foot - replacing Barbie's signature heels.

With this year's update, the Barbie Fashionistas line will feature:

• 33 new dolls
• 30 hair colours
• 24 hairstyles
• 22 eye colours
• 14 face shapes
• 7 skin tones
• 4 body shapes - original, plus tall, curvy and petite

"We are excited to literally be changing the face of the brand - these new dolls represent a line that is more reflective of the world girls see around them - the variety in body type, skin tones and style allows girls to find a doll that speaks to them," Mattel executive Evelyn Mazzocco said in a statement.

From BBC News

New emojis collection set for 2016

Thirty eight new emojis will be released next year, including clown face, wilted flower and "call me" hand.

Emojis, which are symbols that help described feelings or emotions, are used by millions of people around the world in texts, online chats and on social media.The new list of additions are expected to be available from the summer of 2016.It comes just a month after the unveiling of the Unicode 8 update which included additions of emojis with different skin tones and a taco.

Here are some more fun Emojis in the new list:

• Face with cowboy hat

• Clown face

• Nauseated face

• Rolling on the floor laughing

• Drooling face

• Lying face

• "Call me" hand

• Selfie

• Handshake

• Clown face

• Wilted flower

• Bacon (From CBBC Newsround)

Amazing chocolate clothes on catwalk

If you love chocolate check this out!

Models in Paris have taken to the catwalk dressed in clothes made entirely from chocolate.

The designs were made by stylists and famous chocolate makers called chocolatiers.

They were worried their creations might melt under the bright lights. So they had to think of ways to keep the models cool.

They said it was one of their biggest challenges.

'Biggest' Stonehenge site discovered

Archaeologists have found around 100 huge standing stones buried near Stonehenge.

Experts think the discovery could be the 'biggest' prehistoric monument ever built in Britain.

The stones were uncovered using special equipment that scans below the Earth's surface.

Researchers said finding the stones was "fantastically lucky".

Special radars were used to find the large stones at Durrington Walls

What is Stonehenge?

• It's a circle of massive stones, on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, in the south west of England.

• No-one knows exactly why it was built but there is a link to the sun's movements during the year and there are burial sites nearby.

• It's thought to have been built in prehistoric times, with the stones being put up about 2,500 BC.
• People go to the site at certain times of year, during the summer and winter solstices, when the sun lines up with gaps in the stones.

The stones could have measured up to 4.5m in height

The latest discovery was made about 1.8 miles (3km) from Stonehenge, on the edge of the Durrington Walls "henge", or bank.

It's an area which had not yet been studied by researchers and it's thought the stones may have originally measured up to 4.5m (14ft) in height.

Lead researcher, Vince Gaffney said the stones were "lost to archaeology" but found thanks to modern technology.

The row of stones were standing over the edge of the bank of the henge

The findings are being announced later on the first day of the British Science Festival being held at the University of Bradford.

From CBBC Newsround

The Battle of Waterloo recreated with Lego

One of the most famous battles in history has been recreated using Lego.

It's taken 20 people and more than a million bricks to construct.

It's all to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo - when the famous French general Napoleon took on an army led by England.

The bicentenary of the death of Napoleon is being celebrated in the Belgian town of Waterloo with an exhibition involving over a million bricks.

READ MORE

The new £1 coin designed by 15-year-old boy

The design of the new £1 coin has been revealed after a competition to design the "tails" side.

The winner was 15-year-old David from Walsall who made a design featuring the four plants associated with the four nations that make up the UK.

His design features the leek, thistle, shamrock and rose, coming out of a crown.

Chancellor George Osborne said the image will be "recognised by millions in the years ahead".

The new coin will be roughly the same size as the current one, but has 12 edges and is both gold and silver coloured, like a £2 coin.

David was declared the winner out of more than 6,000 entries.

The coin featuring his design will start appearing in shops and banks in 2017.

David said: "I was really excited to hear that I had won the competition to design the new £1 coin but hugely shocked as well."

The £1 coin is being replaced for the first time in more than 30 years because there are concerns it is too easy for criminals to copy.

The Royal Mint, which makes new coins, says the new £1 will be the most secure coin that exists in the UK.

A real-life treasure hunter finds thousands of coins

A man from Buckinghamshire has discovered thousands of ancient coins buried in the ground.

Using his trusty metal detector, Paul Coleman dug up an old bucket which was full of silver coins around a thousand years old.

In total Paul found around 5,200 of the old coins, which are worth over a million pounds in today's money.

Now, the coins are now going on display at the British Museum, and historians want to find out more about who hid them all those years ago.

Watch Jenny's report.

Read more

The Viking treasure hunter chats about his amazing discovery

From CBBC Newsround

Giant Christmas tree lights up Dortmund in Germany

Check out this enormous Christmas tree in the city of Dortmund, Germany.

The giant tree is 100 metres tall and is actually made of 1,700 smaller trees put together.

The branches are decorated by 48,000 lights!

The organisers of Dortmund's Christmas market say the tree is the largest "real" Christmas tree in the world.

From CBBC Newsround

Eiffel Tower gets glass floor in refurbishment project

A vertigo-inducing glass floor has been installed at the Eiffel Tower, France's most visited tourist attraction

For those scared of heights, the Eiffel Tower's new floor may be something of a challenge.

Visitors will be able to look down on Paris through a glass floor as part of a refurbishment of the tower.

Visitors to the Eiffel Tower in Paris will now be able to look down through a vertigo-inducing glass floor that forms part of a €30 million (£24m) refit of France’s most visited tourist attraction.

The transparent floor will be on the first level of the tower, at 57m, where operators hope that visitors will linger before heading to the highest viewing platform at 276 metres above the ground. Traditionally, tourists to the Eiffel Tower spend little time here before moving on to catch the better views from the two higher levels.

“We wanted people to realise how the building is anchored with its four pillars in the ground”, Alain Moatti, the architect in charge of the renovation, told le Journal du Dimanche, the French Sunday newspaper.

The refit of the half-hectare first floor, which began in May 2012 and was unveiled to the public today, also includes shops, restaurants and a museum telling the story of the 125-year-old construction. The tower’s eco-friendliness has also improved, with the installation of four solar panels that will provide about half of the tower’s hot water requirements. Some of the toilets will also be operated using rain water.

                                    A tourist captures the view (Photo: Reuters)

About seven million people visit the Eiffel Tower each year – 85 per cent of them foreigners – making it the world’s busiest paid-for tourist attraction. The tower’s management also hopes that the renovation will attract more Parisians to the “Dame en Fer” (The Iron Lady), as it is sometimes referred to in French.

The tower opened in 1889 and was named after Gustave Eiffel, whose company engineered the project. At 324m in height, it was the world’s tallest building for 41 years until the Chrysler building was built in New York in 1930.

From CBBC newsround and The Telegraph

'Big Ben' clock tower gets cleaned

Cleaners have been busy scrubbing the clock on the Elizabeth Tower at Westminster Palace.

Many people know the landmark as Big Ben - which is the nickname of the bell inside the clock tower.

The tower was named Elizabeth Tower in 2012 to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

The clock hands were frozen at 12:00 so the four cleaners could abseil in front of the clock face. (From CBBC newsround)

The tower holds the largest four-faced chiming clock in the world and is the third-tallest free-standing clock tower. The tower was completed in 1858 and had its 150th anniversary on 31 May 2009, during which celebratory events took place.The tower has become one of the most prominent symbols of the United Kingdom and is often in the establishing shot of films set in London.

The Elizabeth Tower (previously called the Clock Tower), named in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II in her Diamond Jubilee year,more popularly known as Big Ben,was raised as a part of Charles Barry's design for a new palace, after the old Palace of Westminster was largely destroyed by fire on the night of 16 October 1834. 

The new Parliament was built in a Neo-gothic style. Although Barry was the chief architect of the Palace, he turned to Augustus Pugin for the design of the clock tower, which resembles earlier Pugin designs, including one for Scarisbrick Hall. The design for the tower was Pugin's last design before his final descent into madness and death, and Pugin himself wrote, at the time of Barry's last visit to him to collect the drawings: "I never worked so hard in my life for Mr Barry for tomorrow I render all the designs for finishing his bell tower & it is beautiful."^[ The tower is designed in Pugin's celebrated Gothic Revival style, and is 315 feet (96.0 m) high (roughly 16 storeys).

The bottom 200 feet (61.0 m) of the tower's structure consists of brickwork with sand coloured Anston limestone cladding. The remainder of the tower's height is a framed spire of cast iron. The tower is founded on a 50 feet (15.2 m) square raft, made of 10 feet (3.0 m) thick concrete, at a depth of 13 feet (4.0 m) below ground level. The four clock dials are 180 feet (54.9 m) above ground. The interior volume of the tower is 164,200 cubic feet (4,650 cubic metres).

Despite being one of the world's most famous tourist attractions, the interior of the tower is not open to overseas visitors, though United Kingdom residents are able to arrange tours (well in advance) through their Member of Parliament.However, the tower has no lift, so those escorted must climb the 334 limestone stairs to the top.

Due to changes in ground conditions since construction, the tower leans slightly to the north-west, by roughly 230 millimetres (9.1 in) over 55 m height, giving an inclination of approximately 1/240. This includes a planned maximum of 22 mm increased tilt due to tunnelling for the Jubilee line extension. Due to thermal effects it oscillates annually by a few millimetres east and west.(in Wikipedia)

Boys unearth gold hair tress from 2,300 BC

A group of schoolboys has unearthed a rare 4,000-year-old ornament during a dig in Northumberland.

It is hoped the hair tress will be reunited with one found in 1935

The children from Cumbria were taking part in an excavation at Kirkhaugh when they saw a glint of gold in the soil.

The object, which was found in a burial mound, is believed to be a decorated hair tress from about 2,300 BC.

One of the boys, 7 year-old Joseph, said when he saw the gold in the ground he started "dancing with joy".

Rare discovery

The ornament, which is 33mm long and dates back to the Copper Age, was found alongside three flint arrowheads and a jet button.

The boys said they were "very happy" when they found out their find was gold

It is thought to have been worn by a metal worker who could have travelled to Britain from overseas in search of gold and copper.

The dig was arranged by the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty as part of an archaeology project.

From CBBC newsround

The 40 years of the Rubik's Cube

             Rubik's Cube is a 3-D combination puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the Magic Cube,the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toy Corp. in 1980 via German businessman Tibor Laczi and Seven Towns founder Tom Kremer, and won the German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that year. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes had been sold worldwide making it the world's top-selling puzzle game. It is widely considered to be the world's best-selling toy.

In a classic Rubik's Cube, each of the six faces is covered by nine stickers, each of one of six solid colours: white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow. In currently sold models, white is opposite yellow, blue is opposite green, and orange is opposite red, and the red, white and blue are arranged in that order in a clockwise arrangement. On early cubes, the position of the colours varied from cube to cube. An internal pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colours. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be returned to consisting of one colour. Similar puzzles have now been produced with various numbers of sides, dimensions, and stickers, not all of them by Rubik.

Although the Rubik's Cube reached its height of mainstream popularity in the 1980s, it is still widely known and used. Many speedcubers continue to practice it and other twisty puzzles and compete for the fastest times in various categories. Since 2003, The World Cube Association, the Rubik's Cube's international governing body, has organized competitions and kept the official world records.

There is only 1 correct answer and 43 quintillion wrong ones for Rubik's Cube. God's algorithm is the answer that solves the puzzle in the least number of moves. One eighth of the world's population has laid hands on 'The Cube', the most popular puzzle in history and the colorful brainchild of Erno Rubik.

From Wikipedia

Simpsons get a Lego makeover for a new episode

Cartoon family The Simpsons have had a Lego makeover.

Marge, Homer, Bart, Lisa and Maggie will all be Lego versions for a new episode.

An advert for the new look edition of the show has been released and it will be shown later in the year.

From CBBC newsround

Spain's famous Altamira caves open again for a day

Spain's famous Altamira caves have briefly opened to the public, for the first time in 12 years.

People chosen in a draw were amazed at the Ice Age paintings of bison, bulls and other animals.

The paintings are special because they are thought to be the oldest art in Europe.

And one piece of art - a faint red dot - is said to be more than 40,000 years old.

From CBBC Newsround

Altamira is a cave in Spain famous for its Upper Paleolithic cave paintings featuring drawings and polychrome rock paintings of wild mammals and human hands.

Its special relevance comes from the fact that it was the first cave in which prehistoric cave paintings had been discovered. When the discovery was first made public in 1880, it led to a bitter public controversy between experts which continued into the early 20th century, as many of them did not believe prehistoric man had the intellectual capacity to produce any kind of artistic expression. The acknowledgement of the authenticity of the paintings, which finally came in 1902, changed forever the perception of prehistoric human beings.

It is located near the town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain, 30 km west of the city of Santander. The cave with its paintings has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

    

The cave is approximately 300 meters long and consists of a series of twisting passages and chambers. The main passage varies from two to six meters in height. The cave was formed through collapses following early karstic phenomena in the calcerous rock of Mount Vispieres.

Archaeological excavations in the cave floor found rich deposits of artifacts from the Upper Solutrean (c. 18,500 years ago) and Lower Magdalenean (between c. 16,500 and 14,000 years ago). Both periods belong to the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. In the millennia between these two occupations, the cave was evidently inhabited only by wild animals. Human occupants of the site were well-positioned to take advantage of the rich wildlife that grazed in the valleys of the surrounding mountains as well as the marine life available in nearby coastal areas. Around 13,000 years ago a rockfall sealed the cave's entrance, preserving its contents until its eventual discovery, which occurred after a nearby tree fell and disturbed the fallen rocks.

Human occupation was limited to the cave mouth, although paintings were created throughout the length of the cave. The artists used charcoal andochre or haematite to create the images, often diluting these pigments to produce variations in intensity and creating an impression of chiaroscuro. They also exploited the natural contours in the cave walls to give their subjects a three-dimensional effect. The Polychrome Ceiling is the most impressive feature of the cave, depicting a herd of extinct steppe bison (Bison priscus) in different poses, two horses, a large doe, and possibly a wild boar.

Dated to the Magdelenean occupation, these paintings include abstract shapes in addition to animal subjects. Solutrean paintings include images of horses and goats, as well as handprints that were created when artists placed their hands on the cave wall and blew pigment over them to leave a negative image. Numerous other caves in northern Spain contain Paleolithic art, but none is as complex or well-populated as Altamira.

Text from Wikipedia

Super-rare Nintendo game on sale

An extremely rare Nintendo game is expected to sell for over £3,000 in an online auction.

The cartridge is called Nintendo World Championships and features short versions of three games - Super Mario, Tetris and Rad Racer.

The cartridge was never available in shops. Only 116 copies were ever made, for a gaming contest in 1990.

The game was designed for the NES console

A bid of £3,000 has already been made and experts say it's likely to fetch more.

Sadly the cartridge is in poor condition. The label has been ripped and somebody has written "Mario" on it.

In 2011 a copy of the same game sold at a charity auction for £6,600 - but it was in better condition.

FRom CBBC Newsround

Teddy bears invade an ice hockey game in Canada

Epic! 26 000 teddy bears "fly" and invade hockey arena in Canada

                                                    It's TEDDY TOSS

It was the annual Teddy Bear toss game between the Calgary Hitmen and the Medicine Hat Tigers.

Fans bring teddies to the game and throw them onto the ice when the Hitmen score their first goal.

26,000 of them were launched onto the rink!

All of them will now be donated to local charities. So it's all for a good cause.

From CBBC newsround

Most expensive diamond ever sold for £51million

This glamorous gemstone has become the most expensive ever after selling at auction for a whopping £51 million!

The Pink Star is described as a flawless oval-cut pink diamond set in a ring.

It went on sale in Switzerland on Wednesday and sold for a record breaking amount.

The winner of the auction said he had bought it on behalf of an anonymous buyer.

From CBBC Newsround

Famous 'Titanic' violin sold at auction for record price

A violin that sank with the Titanic over a hundred years ago has been sold at auction for a record price.

The rosewood instrument was played by the Titanic's bandleader Wallace Hartley when the famous ship sank in 1912.

It's been described as one of the most important objects ever discovered that sank with the ship.

It sold for £900,000!

It is the single most valuable piece of Titanic memorabilia, so far.

Other items that were sold included his sheet music and the bag he kept it in.

Wallace Hartley kept on playing while the Titanic was sinking in the icy ocean on 15th April 1912 and died in the sinking. 

Learn more about Wallace Hartley

Learn more about the sinking of the Titanic and then test your knowledge with our quiz.