Museums · Science · People
On 12 June 1817 the German inventor Baron Karl von Drais created the first bicycle, or rather a self-propelled two-wheeled carriage. It looked almost exactly like this specimen of 1820, made of cherry and walnut, from the Kurpfalz Museum in Heidelberg, and weighed about 20 kg. Yes, the
Monarchies · Observations · People
Elizabeth II is quite an incredible woman. At the age of 95 she stands at the centre of a gathering of the heads of the world's leading states, full of vigour, brisk, cheerful and looking splendid, carrying herself erect, smiling and representing her country with dignity, despite the
Coming Up · Geography · Museums · Society
There are flat-museums, open-air museums, museums that are natural sites, tiny little museums and, for instance, museums on wheels. One such train has set off from Russia for Belarus. It is planned to travel around the country from 11 to 28 June, and the number of potential visitors
Coming Up · Art · Moscow · Museums
Vasily Polenov, Ilya Repin, Isaac Levitan, Kazimir Malevich, Valentin Serov, Mikhail Vrubel, Leon Bakst and Konstantin Somov, all fitting into a matchbox or a school pencil case? The Jewish Museum is showing miniature art, so rarely exhibited in the "big" museums: from sketches and studies to independent tiny
Cinema · Humour
Which is scarier: a giant spider threatening an entire city, or an ordinary spider attacking a man shrunk to the size of a thimble? The proper person to ask would be the director Jack Arnold (1916-1992), who, after all, had to conjure up both of these afflictions. It must
NB! · Monarchies · People
Science · Society · Nature
In the 1940s, Finnish botanists began recording plants in Finland that had never grown in those habitats, and, curiously enough, they were found at the sites where units of a foreign army had been stationed. For such plants, introduced into an ecosystem as a result of military action, a term
Architecture · Observations · Paris · Pop Culture
Louis Vuitton, as ever, on an unattainable height. I do not know how I contrived to miss this news in January, when Virgil Abloh presented at the Louis Vuitton show during Paris Fashion Week two three-dimensional capes bearing architectural monuments, as part of the autumn-winter menswear collection. One
NB! · Archaeology · Architecture · The East · Observations
Archaeologists beside an imposing 20-tonne Corinthian capital at the excavation site in Cyzicus, in the west of modern Turkey. If the capital crowning the column is 2.5 metres high and 1.9 metres in diameter, can you imagine how large the column itself must have been?
Faith · People · Nature
9 June is the feast day of Saint Columba, one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, who lived in the 6th century. By and large, the most important thing you need to know about this much venerated Irish and Scottish saint is this: there exists a written mention of his
Books · Monarchies
A feeble and a crafty ruler, A balding dandy, foe of toil, By chance caressed by glory's favour, Who over us held sway of old. Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. On Alexander I, in case anyone was wondering
Architecture · Moscow · Pop Culture · Society Pages
At the Old Stock Greenhouse in the Botanical Garden of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the presentation of Roma Uvarov's new upcycled collection. The building is phenomenal, dating from the late 1940s, the core of its plant collection came from the Potsdam greenhouse, received in 1947, and the