WORLDS COSTLIEST RUG TO FETCH 20$MN

WORLDS COSTLIEST RUG TO FETCH 20$MNCalifornia, Mar 12: It is hard to believe that Bill Gates played a prank...but its true. Bill Gates played a neat prank on an elite audience at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) event at Long Beach, California this week. He released a swarm of mosquitoes into the audience saying that not only poor people should experience malaria. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation finds malaria

to be one of the greatest global challenges. Later people realised that the prank played was to sensitise about the scourge of malaria. Reporters later found out Doha, Mar 12: The world's most expensive rug is expected to fetch 20 million dollars when it goes under the hammer later this month, The Telegraph reports. The Pearl Carpet of Baroda was created using an estimated two million natural seed pearls farmed from the Arabian Gulf.

It has a starting price of five million dollars and will become a record breaker if it sells, beating the 4.45 million dollars paid for a silk Persian rug in New York, at Christies, in 2008.Sotheby's will handle the sale of the spectacular rug and the auction will be the first for their new offices in Doha in Saudi Arabia.Commissioned by the Maharaja of Baroda in India in the 18th century, the Pearl Carpet is also embossed with gold set diamonds, rubies and emeralds in their hundreds,

The centre piece of the exquisite rug are three large round rosettes put together using table cut diamonds set in silvered gold.Originally to be gifted to the tomb of the prophet Mohammed in Medina, the Baroda rug never made it to its intended destination as 'Gaekwar' Kande Rao, the Maharaja of Baroda, died before the rug could be delivered.Tags: baroda, the telegraph,new york, arabia, gulf, doha, prophet mohammed, medina, features. Read other articles published on March 12, 2009