On Tue, 5 Sep 2006, Everett Wilkie wrote:
> The following brief article appeared in the Guardian. --ECW
>
> Associated Press in Vienna
> Tuesday September 5, 2006
> The Guardian
>
> A 16th-century book has been stolen from an exhibition in a castle in Upper
> Austria, but the crime went unnoticed for days because the thieves left
> behind another book, police said yesterday.
>
> The 1532 volume, Astronomicum Caesareum, by Petrus Apianus, disappeared from
> Peuerbach Castle between August 23 and 26, when a guide discovered it had
> gone. The book, worth about £20,000, was displayed in an exhibition case
> under an unsecured glass panel. Police suspect the theft happened while the
> exhibition was open to the public, but video surveillance so far has yielded
> no clues.
>
Note that there is something very fishy about this AP story. The
Astronomicum Caesareum was published in 1540 and is worth about £200,000.
Apianus' Cosmographia of 1533 is worth £20,000 by a stretch. I made a
special trip to Kremsmunster hoping to see a Copernicus once reported
there, but got a very chilly reception. Had I suspected there was an
Astronomicum Caesareum there, I would have collated it and thus had a
detailed description of the volume, if that is really what they had and
had loaned to the Peuerbach exhibition.
OWEN GINGERICH