Feb. 5 Photo Brief: Baltimore celebrates the Ravens, facial reconstruction of King Richard III and the world’s first bionic man
Baltimore celebrates the Ravens, facial reconstruction of King Richard III, the world’s first bionic man and more in today’s daily brief.
- Ray Lewis lifts the Lombardi Trophy as he greets the crowd at the Ravens Superbowl parade, which started at City Hall. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
- Fan gather on the field at M&T Bank Stadium in the hours before a celebration of the Baltimore Ravens Super Bowl win on Tuesday, February 5, 2013. (Doug Kapustin/Baltimore Sun)
- Hundreds of Waka Ama crew perform the haka on the beach to celebrate Waitangi Day on February 6, 2013 in Waitangi, New Zealand. The Waitangi Day national holiday celebrates the signing of the treaty of Waitangi on February 6, 1840 by Maori chiefs and the British Crown, that granted the Maori people the rights of British Citizens and ownership of their lands and other properties. (Photo by Sandra Mu/Getty Images)
- A picture shows “Rex”, the world’s first “bionic man”, during a photo call at the Science Museum in London on February 5, 2013. The 640,000 GBP (1 million US dollars) humanoid has a distinctly human shape and boasts prosthetic limbs, a functional artificial blood circulatory system complete with artificial blood, as well as an artificial pancreas, kidney, spleen and trachea. (Andrew Cowie/AFP/Getty Images)
- Taiwanese dancers perform in front of a large snow sculpture of Taipei’s Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall at the opening of the annual snow festival in Sapporo, on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido on February 5, 2013. (Takashi Noguchi/AFP/Getty Images)
- School children react to a diver (R) dressed as the God of Fortune in an aquarium at Underwater World Singapore on Sentosa’s Island resort on February 5, 2013. The Chinese celebrate the Lunar New Year of the snake on February 10. (Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images)
- A gold miner uses a bicycle to transport a sack of sandy soil from a small scale mine in Bugiri, 348 km (216 miles) east of Kampala, Uganda’s capital February 5, 2013. (Edward Echwalu/Reuters)
- A facial reconstruction of King Richard III is displayed at a news conference in central London February 5, 2013. The reconstruction is based on a CT scan of human remains found in a council car park in Leicester which are believed to belong to the last of the Plantagenet monarchs of Britain who was killed at the battle of Bosworth in 1485. (Andrew Winning /Reuters)
- Members of a carnival organisation look at a papier-mache figure of German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the Rose Monday carnival procession during a preview in Cologne February 5, 2013. (Ina Fassbender/Reuters)
- An employee stands near sculptures, one of them depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L), at a factory near Kfar Saba that manufactures floats for the annual Purim parade in Holon, February 3, 2013. The holiday of Purim is a celebration of the Jews’ salvation from genocide in ancient Persia, as recounted in the Book of Esther, and will be marked on February 24, 2013. (Nir Elias/Reuters)
- Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (L) shakes hands with Al-Azhar’s Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb during their meeting in Cairo February 5, 2013. Al-Tayeb, Egypt’s top Sunni Muslim scholar, told Ahmadinejad of Shi’ite Iran on Tuesday that his country must give full rights to Sunnis living in Iran and refrain from interfering in the affairs of Gulf Arab states.(Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters)
- An army medic checks a patient’s eyes at a medical outreach centre in Mogadishu, February 5, 2013. As part of the Tarehe Sita celebrations, which commemorates the takeover of power in 1986 by the NRM government in Uganda, the Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF) provided three days of medical outreach services in Mogadishu to act as a symbolic gesture of the relationship Uganda has with the people of Somalia. (Tobin Jones/Handout via Reuters)
- A devotee who is believed to be possessed by evil spirits lies in a state of trance on a sacred platform at Guru Deoji Maharaj temple during a ghost fair at Malajpur village in Betul district in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh January 27, 2013. (Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)
- Indian Hindu devotees walk through a dust storm at the Sangam after taking a holy dip at the confluence of the rivers Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati during the Maha Kumbh festival in Allahabad on February 5, 2013. (Sanjay Kanoji/AFP/Getty Images)
- A U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter flies above Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, February 5, 2013. (Andrew Burton/Reuters)
- Workers check on electricity pylon situated amid farmlands in Chuzhou, Anhui province, February 5, 2013. A leading think tank of China predicted that China’s GDP will grow in 2013 at a rate of 8.4 percent, up by 0.6 percentage points from that of 2012, Xinhua News Agency reported. (China Daily/Reuters)
- A French farmer drives a tractor as he ploughs a field in Niergnies, northern France January 14, 2013. European Union states will meet for the second time on February 7-8 to try and negotiate the nearly 1 trillion euro EU budget for 2014-2020. Previous talks collapsed in November and deep divisions remain over whether and how deeply the budget should be cut to reflect the euro debt crisis and harsh austerity measures being taken to address it. (Pascal Rossignol/Reuters)
- Malian soldiers escort prisoners, who are suspected al-Qaeda-allied fighters, in front of a military cell in Mopti February 4, 2013. Eight suspected Islamist fighters – six Malians, one Nigerian and one Algerian – arrived in Mopti on Monday, after Malian authorities brought them from Gao to be housed at the central Malian town’s prison. Picture taken February 4, 2013. (Alain Amontchi/Reuters)
- Fishermen tow nets in bad weather in Trenggalek coast in East Java province January 24, 2013. Indonesia saw the slowest growth in two years in the fourth quarter of 2012, with weak exports and a lack of government infrastructure spending casting a cloud over prospects for Southeast Asia’s largest economy this year. Picture taken January 24, 2013. (Sigit Pamungkas/Reuters)
Face of Richard III, England’s “king in the car park”, revealed
Michael Holden | Reuters
10:44 a.m. EST, February 5, 2013
LONDON (Reuters) – With a large chin, a prominent slightly arched nose and delicate lips, the “face” of England’s King Richard III was unveiled on Tuesday, a day after researchers confirmed his remains had finally been found after 500 years.
A team of university archaeologists and scientists announced on Monday that a skeleton discovered last September underneath a council parking lot in Leicester was indeed that of Richard, the last English king to die in battle, in 1485.
Devotees of Richard, who have long campaigned to restore his reputation, proudly revealed a 3D reconstruction of the long-lost monarch’s head on Tuesday, introducing him to reporters as “His Grace Richard Plantagenet, King of England and France, Lord of Ireland”.
They said the face appeared sympathetic and noble – not that of a man cast by William Shakespeare as a villainous, deformed monster who murdered his nephews, the “Princes in the Tower”.
“I hope you can see in this face what I see in this face and that’s a man who is three-dimensional in every sense,” said Philippa Langley of the Richard III Society, who led the four-year hunt to find the king’s remains.
“It doesn’t look like the face of a tyrant. If … you look into his eyes, it really is like he can start speaking to you,” Langley told reporters.
A 3D computer image of the face was first created based on a scan taken of Richard’s skeleton after it was found in a shallow grave in the remains of a friary church, now located under Leicester City Council’s social services department car park in central England. The image was then made into a plastic model.
“NO SLANTY EYES, MEAN MOUTHS”
The reconstruction is faithful to an anatomical assessment of the skull, and about 70 percent of the face’s surface should have less than 2 mm (0.08 inches) of error, according to the professor of craniofacial identification who created it.
No portraits of Richard were used for the main facial reconstruction, although the clothing, wig, and some features such as eyebrows, eye color and skin color were based on paintings of the dead king.
The final outcome does bear a strong resemblance to some portraits of Richard – but without some of the less flattering traits that appeared during the reign of Henry VII, his conqueror at the 1485 Battle of Bosworth Field, and the Tudor dynasty that followed.
Langley said it was a face without the Tudor caricatures: “No slanty eyes, no mean mouths, no clawed fingers beneath it.”
Wearing a black felt hat, with hair down to his shoulders, one of which was slightly higher than the other – in keeping with the discovery his skeleton had a dramatic spinal curvature – the reconstruction depicted Richard, 32 at his death, with delicate, almost feminine features.
His body is due to be re-interred at Leicester Cathedral next year while the bust reconstruction will take pride of place at a visitors’ center to be opened close to the site where the body lay in a small, irregular grave for more than five centuries.
“It was seeing this face which was actually the most important moment for me, the most extraordinary moment,” Langley said, explaining the project had two aims: to find the remains to ensure a dignified burial and to reveal the “real Richard”.
“For me when this was revealed and I was looking at his face … that was the biggest moment. Suddenly the aim of seeing the real Richard III, it came true, a miraculous dream really coming true.”
(Editing by Pravin Char)