The mystery behind the subject of a painting by a 16th century artist has finally been solved.
Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait, Hans of Antwerp, was first recorded in the Royal Collection in 1639 when the painting hung in Charles I’s Chair Room at Whitehall, but by then repairs to damage on the artwork already obscured the identity of the sitter. Now, after painstaking removal of overpaint and discoloured varnish, conservators have confirmed that the man in the painting is a German merchant.
It is one of 27 works by Holbein to go on display next month at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace.
Humans used to eat pandas
Humans used to eat pandas, according to findings made by a Chinese scientist.
Evidence that prehistoric man ate the bears has been found in Chongqing in south-west China.
Wei Guangbiao, the head of the Institute of Three Gorges Palaeoanthropology at a Chongqing Museum, said many excavated fossils “showed that pandas were once slashed to death by man”.
The Chongqing Morning Post quoted him as saying: “In primitive times, people wouldn’t kill animals that were useless to them,” and therefore the pandas must have been used as food.
Mr Wei added that wild pandas lived in Chongqing’s high mountains 10,000 to a million years ago.
Man ‘aroused by uniforms’
A ‘peeping Tom’ who used a pen-shaped camera to take an upskirt shot of a cabin attendant during a domestic flight in Japan has avoided charges as prosecutors failed to decide which prefecture the plane was flying over at the time.
The man was arrested and admitted what he had done, saying he was “aroused by uniforms”. He was on a Japan Airlines flight from Takamatsu Tokyo.
‘Peeping Tom’ offences require prosecutors to state exact locations of the crime. (AFP)
Cannibal rugby plane crash
A Uruguayan rugby team has played a match that was postponed for four decades after their plane crashed in the Andes, stranding some members for more than two months and forcing them to eat human flesh to stay alive.
The Old Christians Club squared off in Santiago against Chile’s Old Grangonian Club to mark the 40th anniversary of a crash made famous by a best-selling book and a Hollywood movie, Alive.
The team crashed in a mountain pass in October 1972 while en route from Montevideo to Santiago. Of the 45 passengers aboard, 16 survived by feeding on dead family members and friends. (AP)