It has long been believed the mentally ill Van Gogh cut off his own ear in 1888. An instance that the book is saying is false.

The book, which sounds pretty interesting actually, is supposedly based on the original police investigation into the matter.

German academics Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans reportedly spent a decade studying police records, witness accounts and letters sent by the two artists.

The authors ultimately concluded Gauguin was responsible for cutting off Van Gogh’s ear, which the injured artist apparently handed to a prostitute named Rachel. The painters then told the police Van Gogh cut it off himself to protect Gauguin from prosecution, the BBC quoted the authors as saying.

Interesting. Sound slike a decent book to read whether true, or not. Wonder how useful acne treatments would be for a guy with no ear. Probably isn’t really all that important at that point.

Although the stories of the book were covered in the Harry Potter books, the actual writings were not. After all the Potter books were finished, Rowling created seven copies of the Beedle the Bard, writing and illustrating the five stories. She gave six of the copies to friends and the last one to the Children’s High Level Group, a charity she helped create. The charity auctioned the book, which Amazon bought for $4 million.

Now we can all buy the book. It is being released this Christmas season to the general public to help raise even more money for the charity. In this version, Rowling tells us that the tales were translated from the Ancient Runes by Hermione. And adding a special flair, the stories are accompanied by notes from Dumbledore, expounding on their larger meaning. In her introduction, Rowling says the notes date to about 18 months before Dumbledore’s death. Definitely cool. Guess you need the actual book this time and not the audiobook to fully enjoy the tales.