Science
Jacobite Hero Bonnie Prince Charlie Gets a Fresh Face, Acne and All
![Jacobite Hero Bonnie Prince Charlie Gets a Fresh Face, Acne and All](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/08/23/multimedia/00xp-charlie/00xp-charlie-facebookJumbo.jpg)
He is one of the most romanticized figures in Scottish history: a charismatic young prince, born and raised in exile, who stirred a Jacobite uprising in the Scottish Highlands in a last-ditch attempt to restore his family to the British throne.
Though the 1745 uprising failed, the prince, Charles Edward Stuart, was immortalized in the popular imagination as a tragic hero, nicknamed Bonnie Prince Charlie for his good looks.
A new recreation of the prince’s face as it might have looked when he led the rebellion is now seeking to humanize the man behind the legend, pimples and all.
The recreation, made at the University of Dundee in Scotland, is a stark departure from how Prince Charles, as played by the actor Andrew Gower, has appeared on the hit television series “Outlander.” It is also a departure from traditional portraits that depicted him as a fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked young man.
Instead, the new recreation suggests Prince Charles, who was 24 when he led the uprising, had a plainer appearance, with thinner lips, sunken eyes and, yes, acne. It was produced by Barbora Veselá, a master’s student of forensic art and facial imaging, who said she aimed to create a realistic portrayal of the prince as a “regular person, without any sort of royal splendor.”
Ms. Veselá’s recreation is based on a 3-D model built from hundreds of detailed photographs of the prince’s death masks, which were cast after he died at 67 in 1788. She used digital sculpting software to reverse facial changes caused by aging, heavy drinking and the stroke that led to his death.
Unlike forensic facial reconstructions, historical reconstructions allow — and in some cases, require — researchers to take some creative liberties, Ms. Veselá said.
She based details that would not have been preserved in a death mask, such as the prince’s hair, on contemporaneous accounts and other likenesses believed to have been fairly faithful depictions. They include a bust made by the 18th-century French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, from which she took cues for her recreation’s chin-length curls.
Despite the prince’s reputation for being handsome and charismatic, Ms. Veselá said she had intentionally included blemishes that were noted in a few historical accounts in an effort to convey that he was not just a mythic hero, but also a “complex person, as we all are.”
“I don’t think he’s bad looking, I just think that beauty is very subjective, and we definitely have different beauty standards than they would have in the 18th century,” she said.
The facial shape and structure of the University of Dundee recreation are corroborated by many eyewitness accounts of the rebellion and are likely “quite realistic,” said Roderick Tulloch, a collector of Jacobite history who is working to establish a visitors’ center at the site of the Jacobites’ victory at the Battle of Falkirk Muir.
One account of the prince’s triumphant seizure of Edinburgh in September 1745, for example, said he had a high nose and long visage, and that “his chin was pointed and mouth small in proportion to his features.”
But Mr. Tulloch noted that the same account described the prince’s complexion as “ruddy,” in contrast with the sallow and blemished likeness produced by the University of Dundee. The prince is also shown with rosy cheeks in a portrait by the renowned Scottish artist Allan Ramsay that is regarded as one of the most accurate likenesses of him, especially compared with official portraits that may have embellished his features.
Even staunch opponents described the prince during this time as a good-looking man, Mr. Tulloch added. His charisma helped his cause — in a matter of months after arriving in Scotland, he rallied even skeptical Highland clans and assembled a force of thousands to fight the British army.
The romanticization of Prince Charles was also at least partly a response to the ruthlessness of the British forces, particularly at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, Mr. Tulloch said. An estimated 1,000 Jacobites were slaughtered at the battle, which lasted only about 40 minutes and marked the effective end of the rebellion.
The prince’s legend also grew from his subsequent dramatic escape from Scotland, which he managed with the help of a young local woman named Flora MacDonald, who disguised the fugitive prince as an Irish maid and smuggled him to safety by boat.
Considered a hero in her own right, MacDonald is seen bidding farewell to Prince Charles in a scene long memorialized on tins of shortbread sold by the Scottish brand Walker’s.
The story of the prince’s daring escape was also canonized in “The Skye Boat Song,” a folk tune that was adapted as the theme song for the “Outlander” television series.
The historical fantasy and romance series became a global phenomenon and has “done a huge amount to raise the profile of Scotland, Scottish history, and the Jacobites in particular,” Mr. Tulloch said.
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Science
LAX passenger arrested after running onto tarmac, police say
![LAX passenger arrested after running onto tarmac, police say](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e40dbe8/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5903x3099+0+418/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fb3%2F5c%2F01366e4248c68fba390c0dece486%2Flax-airport-terminal-29188.jpg)
A Los Angeles International Airport passenger was arrested early Saturday morning after he became irate and ran out of Terminal 4 onto the tarmac, according to airport police.
The passenger appeared to be experiencing a mental health crisis, said Capt. Karla Rodriguez. “Police responded and during their attempt in taking the suspect into custody, a use of force occurred,” she said.
The man, who was not identified, was arrested on suspicion of battery against a police officer and trespassing on airport property, she said. He was taken to a nearby hospital for a mental health evaluation.
A video obtained by CBS shows a shirtless man in black shorts running on the tarmac past an American Airlines jetliner with a police officer in pursuit. The officer soon tackles the man and pushes him down on the pavement.
Science
Video: How SpaceX Is Harming Delicate Ecosystems
![Video: How SpaceX Is Harming Delicate Ecosystems](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/28/autossell/EricLipton-Thumb-FINAL/EricLipton-Thumb-FINAL-facebookJumbo.jpg?video-overlay)
On at least 19 occasions since 2019, SpaceX’s operations have caused fires, leaks and explosions near its launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. These incidents reflect a broader debate over how to balance technological and economic progress against protections of delicate ecosystems and local communities. The New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton explains.
Science
Live poultry markets may be source of bird flu virus in San Francisco wastewater
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Federal officials suspect that live bird markets in San Francisco may be the source of bird flu virus in area wastewater samples.
Days after health monitors reported the discovery of suspected avian flu viral particles in wastewater treatment plants, federal officials announced that they were looking at poultry markets near the treatment facilities.
Last month, San Francisco Public Health Department officials reported that state investigators had detected H5N1 — the avian flu subtype making its way through U.S. cattle, domestic poultry and wild birds — in two chickens at a live market in May. They also noted they had discovered the virus in city wastewater samples collected during that period.
Two new “hits” of the virus were recorded from wastewater samples collected June 18 and June 26 by WastewaterSCAN, an infectious-disease monitoring network run by researchers at Stanford, Emory University and Verily, Alphabet Inc.’s life sciences organization.
Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that although the source of the virus in those samples has not been determined, live poultry markets were a potential culprit.
Hits of the virus were also discovered in wastewater samples from the Bay Area cities of Palo Alto and Richmond. It is unclear if those cities host live bird markets, stores where customers can take a live bird home or have it processed on-site for food.
Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture, said live bird markets undergo regular testing for avian influenza.
He said that aside from the May 9 detection in San Francisco, there have been no “other positives in Live Bird Markets throughout the state during this present outbreak of highly-pathogenic avian flu.”
San Francisco’s health department referred all questions to the state.
Even if the state or city had missed a few infected birds, John Korslund, a retired U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarian epidemiologist, seemed incredulous that a few birds could cause a positive hit in the city’s wastewater.
“Unless you’ve got huge amounts of infected birds — in which case you ought to have some dead birds, too — it’d take a lot of bird poop” to become detectable in a city’s wastewater system, he said.
“But the question still remains: Has anyone done sequencing?” he said. “It makes me want to tear my hair out.”
He said genetic sequencing would help health officials determine the origin of viral particles — whether they came from dairy milk, or from wild birds. Some epidemiologists have voiced concerns about the spread of H5N1 among dairy cows, because the animals could act as a vessel in which bird and human viruses could interact.
However, Alexandria Boehm, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and principal investigator and program director for WastewaterSCAN, said her organization is not yet “able to reliably sequence H5 influenza in wastewater. We are working on it, but the methods are not good enough for prime time yet.”
A review of businesses around San Francisco’s southeast wastewater treatment facility indicates a dairy processing plant as well as a warehouse store for a “member-supported community of people that feed raw or cooked fresh food diets to their pets.”
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