The Crapper in the Rye

The BBC reports that a toilet described as once having belonged to US author JD Salinger has been put on sale on the online auction site eBay for $1m (£644,000).

The vendor says he obtained the "used toilet commode" from a couple who now own the former home of the Catcher in the Rye author. It comes "uncleaned and in its original condition", the ad for it states. "Who knows how many of [his] stories were thought up and written while Salinger sat on this throne!", it adds.

The toilet comes with a letter from Joan Littlefield, attesting that the toilet was removed during renovations to her and her husband's house in Cornish, New Hampshire, formerly owned by the reclusive author. She writes that they knew all the workmen who installed the toilet decades ago when Salinger had work done on the house.

The auction was still ongoing late lst night. Quite a few people had put in offers for the toilet. That said, I think I’ll pass on it and stay with the khazi we currently have...

Want to discover a new species? Try eBay

According to the BBC a scientist who bought a fossilised insect on the web auction site eBay for £20 has discovered that it belongs to a previously unknown species of aphid.

Dr Richard Harrington, vice-president of the UK's Royal Entomological Society, bought the fossil from an individual in Lithuania. He then sent it off to an aphid expert in Denmark, who confirmed the insect was a new species, now extinct. The bug has been named Mindarus harringtoni. "I looked at it with my team and we thought we could identify it down to the level of genus, but we had no idea what the species was." He said.Dr Harrington sent the specimen to Professor Ole Heie, a fossil aphid expert in Denmark. "He discovered that it was something that hadn't been described before,"

The insect itself is 3-4mm long and is encased in a 40-50 million-year-old piece of amber about the size of a small pill. "I had thought it would be rather nice to call it Mindarus ebayi, Unfortunately using flippant names to describe new species is rather frowned upon these days." said Dr Harrington

Well if eBay will sell people’s lives and virginities I suppose an undiscovered species is pretty mundane....