The East · London · Museums · Society
British Museum Changes Captions Mentioning Palestine. On a panel about the Hyksos people of the 17th–16th centuries BC, the wording Palestinian descent has been replaced with Canaanite descent, and similar amendments have been made in the gallery of Egyptian sculpture. The changes followed a letter from the British lobby
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Aristocracy · The East · Monarchies · Mores · People
Who Was Olga, Queen of the Hellenes? The title "Queen of the Hellenes", rather than "Queen of Greece", is not diplomatic courtesy but a political declaration. Olga Konstantinovna Romanova was a granddaughter of Nicholas I and a daughter of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich. In 1867, at
Cinema · London · Society · Nature
There is a movement in England called Right to Roam, which concentrates on demanding that people be given back the ability to walk through a wood, a field or along a river without the risk of being accused of trespassing on private property. Hugh Thomson has made a documentary about
Archive · Cinema · Moscow · Society
Boy Scouts Cordoning Off the Burning Savvinskoye Compound in 1918. The fire was not in the building of the Savvinskoye Compound itself, but in the studio of Alexandr Khanzhonkov, the man who filmed "The Defence of Sevastopol" and "The Beautiful Lukanida". The studio stood in the
Science · Society · People
The US Office of Research Integrity has officially announced a 15-year ban on federal funding for the chemist Ariel Fernandez, a former professor at Rice University. The investigation, begun in 2009 on a tip from his own graduate student, lasted 17 years. Fernandez stands accused of fabricating data in
Listings · Moscow · Coming Up · Art · Books · Museums
“Oh, how I feel the accumulated burden of poisoned nights and bitter-sweet days!” wrote Annensky in “The Longing to Return” in 1909, and ever since the burden has gone on accumulating, though the vessels in which it is customarily kept keep changing. This week our rubric on where to
Observations · Science · Nature
I have two pieces of news for you. The first. The age of sharks is determined by the annual rings on their vertebrae. Sharks have a cartilaginous skeleton, but the vertebrae are mineralised with enough calcium to lay down visible annual layers. In a cross-section of a vertebra, concentric
Archaeology · Heritage · Society · Nature · Ethnography
Construction crews building Trump's border wall have damaged part of a Native American archaeological complex in Arizona at least a thousand years old. The Las Playas Intaglio is a sacred geoglyph in the shape of a fish, laid out on the desert surface in the Cabeza Prieta National
Art · Monarchies · Moscow · Museums
Frederick William III, King of Prussia, with his sons thanks Moscow for the salvation of his state. Nikolay Matveyev, 1896, Tretyakov Gallery. The thanks are for the War of the Sixth Coalition of 1813-1814, and specifically for the fact that Russia did not stop after driving Napoleon from its
NB! · Observations · Humour
Archaeology · Faith · The East · Museums · Heritage
In 1625, in the environs of Xi'an, the ancient capital of Tang China, Jesuit monks discovered beneath creepers and a layer of earth a stone stele almost three metres high, bearing a text in Chinese with Syriac insertions. The stele is dated to 781. The inscription described the