Victorian sex toy made of Indian ivory tickles many

The Victorian era is known for its prudery about sex but things were a bit different for the elite, or so it seems – at least if one goes by a 19th century sex toy carefully carved from the tusk of an elephant shot in India that is going under the hammer in Ireland.

Of the hundreds of items being auctioned over the weekend in Oldcastle, the phallus-shaped piece of erotica has tickled the fancy of many, and the auctioneers hope bids will reach a climax way beyond the guide price set at 500 euros to 800 euros.

The item has been put up for auction by a well-known Angloirish family, auctioneer Damien Matthews told The Irish Times, a leading daily from Dublin. Its provenance is said to date to the mid-19th century.

Matthews said: “It is a beautiful piece…a family member found it in a drawer, and he put it in the auction for fun really. We believe the ivory dates back to the 1840s. This fellow, the original owner, was in India in the 1840s, where he shot himself an elephant, and brought the tusk home.”

The piece was later carved in China between 1899 and 1901, where the man went to fight in the Boxer Uprising, a violent anti foreign and anti Christian

China’s first cargo spacecraft docked successfully with the Tiangong-2 space lab on Saturday, Xinhua agency reported, marking a major step towards Beijing’s goal of establishing a permanently manned space station by 2022.

President Xi Jinping has prioritised advancing China’s space programme to strengthen national security.

The Tianzhou-1 cargo resupply spacecraft made the automated docking process with the orbiting space lab after it had taken off on Thursday evening from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Centre in the southern island province of Hainan.

The Tiangong 2 space labora was home to two astronauts for a month last October in China’s longest ever manned space mission.

The cargo spacecraft mission provides an “important technological basis” to build a Chinese space station, state media have said. It can reportedly carry 6 tonnes of goods, 2 tonnes of fuel and can fly unmanned for three months.

Despite the advances in China’s space programme for military, commercial and scientific purposes, China still lags behind the US and Russia.

In late 2013, China’s Jade Rabbit rover landed on the Moon to great national fanfare, but ran into severe technical difficul