David Bowie painting bought for $4 to sell for vast sum
And other stories from the stranger side of life

A rare painting by David Bowie purchased for $4.09 (£2.94) at a thrift store in Ontario, Canada is expected to sell for tens of thousands of dollars at auction next week. Auction house Cowley Abbott said there was “cautious excitement” when it was first contacted about the 1997 work, as Bowie’s paintings are rarely sold at auction. Between 1995 and 1997, Bowie painted a series of 47 portraits.
‘Drowned woman’ turned out to be a sex doll
Rescuers called to fish a drowned woman out of the sea have discovered she was in fact a discarded sex doll. A team was scrambled to Hachinohe in northeastern Honshu, Japan, after reports of a “drowned woman” floating in the waters. However, the rescue turned out to be of a “Dutch Wife”, Japanese slang for a rubber sex doll. An onlooker said: “It’s funny for sure, but not fun for the emergency services.”
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Baby squid sent to space
Baby squid from Hawaii are being sent to space for study. The baby Hawaiian bobtail squid were blasted into space on a SpaceX resupply mission to the International Space Station. Researchers are exploring how spaceflight affects the squid in hopes of bolstering human health during long space missions. The squid will return to Earth in July.
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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.
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