Archive · Books · Mores · Ethnography

Fourteen old blini recipes with explanations of words no longer in use

Pancakes from Elena Molokhovets's Legendary Cookery Book "A Gift to Young Housewives" Fourteen key old recipes for pancakes: buckwheat blini, buckwheat blini made half and half with wheat flour, plain wheat blini, buckwheat blini with eggs, Lenten buckwheat blini, "amateur" blini, red blini, milk

NB! · Observations

As They Say, I Wish You All of It!

Archive · Cinema · Moscow · Observations · Society · Paris

Children wiping car windows at a Moscow intersection, as in 1990s films

Little Street Musicians of Montmartre, 1937. Remember how, in the films of the 1990s, children earning a living on city streets by washing car windscreens at junctions and selling chewing gum and flowers were a common sight? Then they vanished from view for a while, as the economic situation changed.

Screenshot of a news article: headline about the famous clock removed from the Obraztsov Theatre facade, the date 22 May 2023 circled in red, and a quote from director Elena Bulukova below.

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Clock on the Obraztsov Puppet Theatre facade sent for restoration in May 2023

NB! · Archive · Books · People

From the Memoirs of Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam

NB! · Archive · Art

A Battle Between the Russian and French Armies

A Battle Between the Russian and French Armies. Mid-nineteenth century, unknown artist

Archive · Monarchies · Museums

Sword of Francis I, taken after his capture in 1525 and returned to France in 1808

The sword of Francis I has a curious history: it was taken from him by an Italian colonel after his capture in Lombardy in 1525. In the reign of Philip II this sword, with its magnificent hilt, found its way into the Spanish royal armoury. The weapon returned to France

Observations · Education · Society · Humour

As They Used to Say at School: Now a Question to Catch You Out

By way of illustrating the fruits of the finest education in the world, after ten or twenty years of the nosediving standards of television and the media

NB! · Art

A Sketch for Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper"

NB! · Faith · Society · People · Rome

Pope Francis, 88, reported to be in critical condition in a Rome hospital

Science · Nature

The narwhal's horn is a modified male tooth and is not used to break ice

The narwhal's horn is in fact a modified tooth in the male. Males of this marine mammal have two teeth in all; the left one grows out spirally twisted and can reach two or three metres in length. In females these tusks do not erupt at all. Despite

NB! · Architecture · Art · Heritage

Alexandr Radayev