Geography · Observations · Mores · Society · Nature

Lobster in America went from food of the poor to a popular product thanks to the railways

Originally, lobsters in America were a very cheap and plentiful food, so much so that they were associated with poverty. They were used as animal feed, and workers campaigned for a limit on the amount of lobster in their weekly rations. The product owed its popularity to the arrival of

Faith · People · Rome

Pope Leo XIII wrote a prayer to Saint Michael after a vision in 1884

In 1884, at the close of Mass, Pope Leo XIII froze for several moments, his gaze fixed on something. Emerging from this unusual state, the pontiff hastily left the church. Half an hour later he summoned the secretary of the congregation and handed him a freshly written text of a

Colour cartoon: at the top, a group of dark-skinned people with French flags looks down at two light-skinned people with a mirror and cosmetics.

NB! · Archive · In the Press · Society · Paris

Kladderadatsch cartoon of 1932 depicting what France would look like in 100 years

An illustration from the German satirical magazine Kladderadatsch, 1932, foreseeing the image of France a hundred years on: "The last white Frenchmen, the chief attraction of the Paris Zoo". Eight years remain until 2032

Archive · Faith · Geography · Maps · Books

Excerpt from Yelena Shvarts's poem about the nun Lavinia and the abbess's lessons

The Abbess set me a task – To make her map of Paradise more precise. I told her – I am no Swedenborg. She said to me: be humbler and more meek. All night I toiled in vain and wilted, Until my Angel-Wolf flew in, He took pencils, paper, compasses And

NB! · Archaeology · Art · Monarchies · People

A reminder of what Cleopatra looked like, the last ruler of Ancient Egypt, a member of the Greco-Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty

Art · London · People

“I prefer to live in colour”

David Hockney turns 87!

Books · People

Nikolai Berdyaev on his rejection of family ties and kinship in the book “Self-Knowledge”

"I have never had any feeling of descent from a father and mother, I have never felt that I was born of parents. A dislike of everything ancestral is a characteristic trait of mine. I do not love the family and family life, and I am struck by the

An elderly man in a white cassock with a pectoral cross sits in an optician's shop beside a smiling man in a suit and two laughing women.

NB! · Faith · People · Rome · Humour

Pope Francis visits his favourite optician's shop and poses for a photo with customers

Pope Francis has once again been spotted beyond the confines of the Vatican: this time the pontiff decided to call in at his favourite optician's. As you can see, the Pope did not refuse a joint snap with the fortunate lady customers

NB! · Faith · Cinema · Pop Culture

A Cameo by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux in the 2002 "Spider-Man"

NB! · In the Press · Faith · Society

In 2015 National Geographic appeared with a cover naming the Virgin Mary the most influential woman in the world

Painting of the ruined colonnade of an ancient building, with a figure in a toga on the steps and a red sun in the sunset sky.

NB! · Observations

Sunset will soon come to every country in Europe

Sunset. Very soon, in every country of Europe

Faith · Observations

There are no times so bad that a good man cannot live in them

Saint Thomas Aquinas

Alexandr Radayev