The purported death mask of Napoleon on show in a Paris museum is not that of the emperor, a historian alleged on Saturday, with some reports suggesting it is that of his butler.
Bruno Rey-Henry claimed the real death mask had been auctioned in 2004 to an unidentified individual after being on display in London's Royal United Services Institute museum for some 25 years.
Rey-Henry said the mask in Paris' military museum, close to Napoleon's tomb in the Invalides, does not display a scar on the left cheek which figures in a portrait of the emperor after his surrender in 1815 by British artist Charles Lock Eastlake.
The scar was on the mask formerly in the London museum, he said, adding that the French example also did not match up to Napoleon's known appearance.
The French daily Liberation said on Saturday the Paris mask could be that of Napoleon's butler, Cipriani Franceschi, whose body conspiracy theorists claim was the one brought back to France for burial.
Conspiracy theorists allege the emperor was poisoned during his exile on the British island of Saint Helena and that Franceschi's body was used to cover up the deed.
"It would be better if the false mask which is portrayed ... as being the face of the emperor on his death-bed were removed from public view," Rey-Henry said.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS