Archaeology · Geography · Maps · Observations
I have found a wildly cool website that will be useful to anyone working on maritime history and naval battles: it is the largest shipwreck database in the world. Here you will find maps, a calendar of accidents at sea, the finds of underwater archaeologists, data on shipowners and shipbuilders,
NB! · Art · Museums · Nature · Humour
The cheetah's escape was captured by George Stubbs. True, the landscape does not look much like Berkshire, but the predator really did go about in a red cap and girdle. In 1970 the painting was bought at Sotheby's by the Manchester gallery
The East · London · Mores · Nature
In 1764 cheetahs were brought to England from India; they miraculously survived the long voyage and became part of the collection of foreign curiosities of George Pigot, the former Governor of Madras, who had returned to the island. On the way to London the predators stopped as guests of the
NB! · Art · Observations
Victorian Little Red Riding Hood, George Frederic Watts, 1890. Such a darling: how could anyone have sent her into the forest alone?
NB! · Observations · Heritage · Paris
In the Luxembourg Palace they lovingly preserve this mirror, struck by a bullet during the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944. I should very much like to show them photographs of Peterhof razed to the ground, for example
NB! · Aristocracy · Monarchies · Observations · Humour
NB! · Art · Monarchies · Mores · Humour
Do you know why the little spaniel wears pearl earrings? Because he belongs to little Mademoiselle de Blois, the legitimised daughter of Louis XIV by the Marquise de Montespan. But in his eyes there is still a "dog's life"
NB! · Science · Education · Society · People
Professor Roald Fyodorovich Matveyev, the country's first Doctor of Political Science and an eminent scholar, has died at the age of 89. He was a remarkable teacher and a remarkable man. May his memory be blessed
NB! · Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations · Humour
They say that when Chagall was in Moscow, he was so struck by the beauty of Levitan's canvases that he asked the Tretyakov Gallery to give him one landscape in exchange for all his own paintings. Fools, they should have agreed!
NB! · Museums · Science · Humour
The sword-swallower of the healthy man. German Hygiene Museum in Dresden, a medical model by Rudolf Pohl showing what it means to 'go too far', 1900
NB! · Archive · Books · Observations · Mores · Humour
My new hobby is Jewish cuisine of many lands. At the back of the 1907 volume 'Choice Dinners and Dishes for the Jewish Family' I found an advertisement for a book for young Orthodox housekeepers. I want it, I cannot have it 💔
Archaeology · Ethnography
A burial of an infant of the 2nd century AD has been found in the Kyz-Aul necropolis in Crimea. What makes it unusual is that, in keeping with a barbarian tradition, the skull of the deceased had been severely deformed. The burial was at once dubbed the “alien'