French magazine Closer just published some photos of Kate Middleton sunbathing topless while 'staying at the French chateau of the Queen's nephew, Lord Linley — making it now two royal nudie picture scandals in three weeks. Click though for some NSFW scans.
The photographer who shot them apparently tried to sell them in England, but no one in the British media — which tend to avoid embarrassing the royals for fear of having their access cut off — would bite. Closer did, and published the pics today:
Search from 60 top Poker Player pictures and royalty-free images from iStock. Find high-quality stock photos that you won't find anywhere else.
At the risk of being thrown in the Tower of London, British tabloid The Sun will publish the nude…
On the magazine's website, it says the pictures are of the couple 'like you have never seen them before. Gone are the fixed smiles and the demure dresses. On holiday Kate forgets everything.'
(You have to say it in a French accent to really get the full effect.)
According to the BBC, the couple, who learned about the photos while in Malaysia yesterday, is considering the possibility of bringing a lawsuit against the photographers or the magazine, and the British press is up in arms — The Telegraph calls the paparazzi 'grinning perverts.' All in all, though, isn't this the classy way to have your privacy invaded? Instead of, you know, being surreptitiously photographed by a fellow nude billiards player?
Prince Harry got drunk in Las Vegas and decided to play strip billiards, which is like strip poker…
Here are some scans from the magazine. Egotastic has the rest:
Update: Here's the statement from the Duke and Duchess, via a spokesperson:
'Their Royal Highnesses have been hugely saddened to learn that a French publication and a photographer have invaded their privacy in such a grotesque and totally unjustifiable manner. The incident is reminiscent of the worst excesses of the press and paparazzi during the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, and all the more upsetting to The Duke and Duchess for being so. Their Royal Highnesses had every expectation of privacy in the remote house. It is unthinkable that anyone should take such photographs, let alone publish them.'
[BBC, Egotastic; top left image via AP]
The makeup of poker's dead man's hand has varied through the years. Currently, it is described as a two-pairpoker hand consisting of the black aces and black eights. The pair of aces and eights, along with an unknown hole card, were reportedly held by Old Westfolk hero, lawman, and gunfighterWild Bill Hickok when he was murdered while playing a game. No contemporaneous source, however, records the exact cards he held when killed. Author Frank Wilstach's 1926 book, Wild Bill Hickok: The Prince of Pistoleers, led to the popular modern held conception of the poker hand's contents.
The expression 'dead man's hand' appears to have had some currency in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, although no one connected it to Hickok until the 1920s.[1][2] The earliest detailed reference to it was 1886, where it was described as a 'full house consisting of three jacks and a pair of tens.'[3] Jacks and sevens are called the dead man's hand in the 1903 Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences.[4] The 1907 edition of Hoyle's Games refers to the hand as Jacks and eights. [5]
What is currently considered the dead man's hand card combination received its notoriety from a legend that it was the five-card stud or five-card draw hand, held by James Butler Hickok (better known as 'Wild Bill' Hickok) when he was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall on August 2, 1876, in Nuttal & Mann's Saloon at Deadwood, Dakota Territory. Hickok's final hand purportedly included the aces and eights of both black suits.[6]
According to a book by Western historian Carl W. Breihan, the cards were retrieved from the floor by a man named Neil Christy, who then passed them on to his son. The son, in turn, told Mr. Breihan of the composition of the hand. 'Here is an exact identity of these cards as told to me by Christy's son: the ace of diamonds with a heel mark on it; the ace of clubs; the two black eights, clubs and spades, and the queen of hearts with a small drop of Hickok's blood on it,'[7] though nothing of the sort was reported at the time immediately following the shooting.
Hickok biographer Joseph Rosa wrote about the make-up of the hand: 'The accepted version is that the cards were the ace of spades, the ace of clubs, two black eights, and the queen of clubs as the 'kicker'.'[8] Rosa, however, said that no contemporaneous source can be found for this exact hand.[9] The solidification in gamers' parlance of the dead man's hand as two pairs, black aces and eights, did not come about until after the 1926 publication of Wilstach's book 50 years after Hickok's death.[1]
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Homicide Division, the Los Angeles Police Department CRASH squad, and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System all use some variation of the aces and eights dead man's hand in their insignia.[10][11]