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LYNGBY, Denmark (AP) — It was a wedding that captivated the world — in 1981, Lady Diana Spencer said “I will” to Prince Charles, becoming Princess of Wales and bringing youth and glamour to Britain’s royal family.
More than 40 years after the wedding and many years after the marriage fell apart, royal fans had the chance to buy a rare part of that historic day — or perhaps a sip of it — during an auction Thursday. But the exclusive magnum of Dom Pérignon Vintage 1961 champagne was ultimately not sold because the bids were not high enough.
The champagne, specially produced for the occasion, was expected to fetch up to 600,000 Danish kroner (around 81,000 euros or $93,000) when it went under the hammer Thursday at Bruun Rasmussen’s auction house in Lyngby, north of Copenhagen.
“The bids did not reach the desired minimum price, and therefore it was unfortunately not sold,” auction house spokesperson Kirstine Dam Frihed said in an email Thursday. “We had of course hoped that it would sell at the estimated value, especially considering the great public interest it received.”
Prince Charles, now King Charles III, married Lady Diana Spencer in London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral on July 29, 1981. The ceremony was followed by a lavish reception at Buckingham Palace.
Charles and Diana separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. A year later, she and companion Dodi Fayed died in a high-speed car crash in Paris.
The champagne was a limited-edition wedding release, created to celebrate the union.
A unique label reads: “Specially shipped to honor the marriage of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer. 29 July 1981.”
“It’s really, really rare and a bottle with that royal provenance,” Thomas Rosendahl, head of the auction house’s wine department, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press ahead of the auction.
Rosendahl said only 12 were made and were intended to be opened on the day. It’s not known what happened to the others, perhaps gifted to guests.
“It was a celebration from Dom Pérignon to the wedding,” Rosendahl said.
“They also got … normal bottles that were served at the wedding, but these bottles were just forgotten or kept away.”
Little was revealed about the seller. Rosendahl only said that it’s a Danish collector who previously purchased the bottle from a London wine merchant.
Rosendahl said that he’s been contacted by “a lot of wine collectors” asking about the magnum, its provenance, and how it was stored. And tests suggest it’s still drinkable.
Henrik Smidt, who is the fine wine manager at Danish wine merchant Kjaer and Sommerfeldt in Copenhagen, said beforehand that he expected the magnum to achieve a high price.
“You have the combination of one of the most famous weddings ever, Lady Diana and Prince Charles. A Dom Pérignon, one of the most famous brands in the world from a very rare vintage,” Smidt said. “All wine connoisseurs, all wine collectors would love to have Dom Pérignon in their cellar.”
“My guess is that it will not be a wine connoisseur who will buy this bottle of wine, more likely a collector of royal artifacts or even potentially a museum,” he said.
NEW YORK (AP) — Most U.S. stocks are rising on Thursday, but a sell-off for Oracle is weighing on Wall Street as investors question whether its big spending on artificial-intelligence technology will pay off.
The S&P 500 was mostly unchanged and hovering around its all-time high, which was set in October. Drops for AI-related stocks dragged the Nasdaq composite down 0.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was on track for a record with a gain of 625 points, or 1.3%, as of 1:05 p.m. Eastern time.
Oracle tumbled 13.4% and had briefly been on track for its worst day since 2001, when the dot-com bubble was still deflating. It reported 14% growth in revenue for the latest quarter, which came up just short of analysts’ expectations, even though its profit topped forecasts.
Doubts remain about whether all the spending that Oracle is doing on AI technology will produce the payoff of increased profits and productivity that proponents are promising. Analysts said they were surprised by how much Oracle may spend on AI investments this fiscal year, and questions continue about how the company will pay for it.
Such doubts are weighing on the AI industry broadly, even as many billions of dollars continue to flow in. Those questions had helped drag the broad U.S. stock market through some sharp and scary swings last month.
Nvidia, the chip company that’s become the poster child of the AI boom and is raking in close to $20 billion each month, fell 2.8% Thursday. It was the single heaviest weight on the S&P 500.
Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said it will continue to buy chips from Nvidia, but it’s now taking a policy of “chip neutrality,” where it will use “whatever chips our customers want to buy. There are going to be a lot of changes in AI technology over the next few years and we must remain agile in response to those changes.”
Even with the struggles for AI-related companies, most of the U.S. market rose Thursday, including three out of every four stocks in the S&P 500.
Eli Lilly helped lead the way and climbed 2.6% after announcing encouraging results from a clinical trial for adult patients who are obese or overweight and have knee osteoarthritis, without diabetes.
The Walt Disney Co. added 1.4% after OpenAI said the entertainment giant is investing $1 billion in it. It’s part of a three-year agreement that will also allow OpenAI to use more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters to generate short, user-prompted social videos.
Planet Labs PBC soared 36.7% after the provider of satellite images used by governments and businesses reported stronger results for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
On the losing end of Wall Street, Oxford Industries tumbled 20.8% after the company behind Tommy Bahama and Lilly Pulitzer pointed to how its customers have been seeking out deals and are “highly value-driven.” CEO Tom Chubb said the start of the holiday shopping season has been weaker than the company expected, and it cut its forecast for revenue for the full year.
Vera Bradley, meanwhile, dropped 22.3% after reporting a larger loss for the latest quarter than expected.
In the bond market, Treasury yields slipped after a report said the number of U.S. workers applying for unemployment benefits jumped last week by more than economists expected. That’s a potential indication of rising layoffs and could encourage the Federal Reserve to keep cutting interest rates to bolster the job market.
A day earlier, yields fell after the Fed cut its main interest rate for the third time this year and indicated another cut may be ahead in 2026. Wall Street loves lower interest rates because they can boost the economy and send prices for investments higher, even if they potentially make inflation worse.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.12% from 4.13% on Wednesday and from 4.18% on Tuesday.
In stock markets abroad, indexes ticked higher in Europe after falling in much of Asia.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index sank 0.9%, hurt by a sharp drop for SoftBank Group Corp., which is a major investor in AI.
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AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
Last week, I treated myself to a “Bill & Ted” movie marathon. The first two films are a delight, but the third… not so much. “Bill & Ted: Face the Music” picks up 30 years later, and undoes the satisfying conclusion of the previous movie to reset so that the series can continue.
But that’s not where the franchise ends. Well, it is, but not really. Alex Winters and Keanu Reeves, the titular Bill & Ted, currently star in “Waiting for Godot” on Broadway, and it scratches the itch that “Face the Music” failed to. Instead of arbitrarily continuing a story just because it’s valuable intellectual property, I got to see the actors inhabit a similar dynamic, but with a new tone and, well not new, but a different story. It reminded me that a sequel isn’t necessarily the answer to people’s demands for more. This is something Hollywood knew but forgot.
When “Sleepless In Seattle” was a huge hit, people wanted more. Smartly though, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan didn’t make a sequel. Instead, they made “You’ve Got Mail.” It was another rom com starring them, but they played new characters in a, well not new, but different story. It was an even bigger hit.
This wasn’t a play that originated with them, nor Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant who made four movies as romantic interests together, but back in the silent era when Harry Lloyd and Joblyna Ralston teamed up for five films together.
If we don’t want to talk about romantic pairings, let’s look at Paul Newman and Robert Redford. You couldn’t make a “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” sequel without a whole lot of idiocy, but we all loved seeing the duo together again in “The Sting”, and it won Best Picture. It’d be sacrilegious to make “Goodfellas 2,” but “Casino” and “The Irishman” draft off Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci’s history together to deliver the satisfaction of sequels without needing to be one.
As “Devil Wears Prada 2”, “Practical Magic 2”, and “Focker-in-law” march into theaters next year, ask yourself if you actually want to see those stories continue. I don’t, but I’d love to see Anne Hathaway go up against Meryl Streep in another movie.
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