Lincoln document sold
NEW YORK: A rare original copy of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation ordering the freeing of slaves has been sold at a New York auction for more than $2 million (R16.5m).
It’s the second-highest price ever paid for a Lincoln-signed proclamation, after one owned by the late senator Robert Kennedy that went for $3.8m two years ago.
The latest copy of the 1863 document, auctioned at the Robert Siegel Auction Galleries yesterday, went to David Rubenstein, managing director of The Carlyle Group investment firm. The American seller remained anonymous.
Lincoln signed the proclamation during the Civil War, freeing all slaves in states then in rebellion. Forty-eight copies were subsequently printed, with Lincoln signing all of them. – Sapa-AP BOSTON: He’s baaack! A male black bear captured on Cape Cod earlier this month, where it was tranquillised and moved to central Massachusetts, showed up again today.
State officials said they had captured the bear in a tree in the Chestnut Hill area of Brookline, just west of Boston, and confirmed it was the same bear that roamed the cape for two weeks before being captured and relocated on June 12. It was identified by a tag placed in its ear.
The Massachusetts bear population was last estimated at 3 000 in 2005. – Reuters