Art · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour
Delighted to Meet You, Caravaggio
Conversing with strangers on the internet reaches a new level
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NB! · Archive · Society · Humour
Cholera Stays Away from France for Fear of Catching the Flu
NB! · Faith · The East · People
General Allenby entered Jerusalem on foot through the Jaffa Gate in December 1917
When the British General Allenby accepted the surrender of Jerusalem in December 1917, he entered the city on foot through the Jaffa Gate, saying that he would not ride his horse into a city into which the Lord had ridden on a donkey. Allenby was the first Christian to capture
Art · Observations · Society
The chief thing that the "ugliest fountain in Europe", unveiled for the 150th anniversary of Vienna's water supply, this little "masterpiece" by the art group Gelatin costing 2 million euros, makes one ponder is why one part of society admires it, surely…
Yet what, if not such provocative, even nauseating art, can compel us to reflect? The question is not a new one, but ought art, after all, to be beautiful? What function do such works serve? Beauty awakens feelings familiar to everyone: at the sight of a butterfly fluttering over a
Museums · Saint Petersburg · Ethnography · Humour
Our museum deals with the culture and way of life of the peoples of the world, and therefore does NOT display the freaks, dwarfs, giants and other monsters who amused the grandees of the eighteenth century
The essence of Peter's cabinet of curiosities, in a few sentences on the doors of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera), where the notice hung at least into the 1980s. The museum administration's message is clear enough, but one could still
Aristocracy · Monarchies · Mores · People
Napoleon's mother explained her thriftiness by the prospect of having to support kings
Napoleon's mother once flatly refused to live at the Trianon; court life held no interest for her, and she kept fairly much to herself, even declining to attend her son's coronation. Of all her many original traits of character, what most bewildered the courtiers was the
NB! · Observations · Humour
Does It Remind You of Anything?
London · Humour
A passenger and a taxi driver on Waterloo, the station and the battle
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, hero of the Second World War, having got into a taxi in London, said to the driver:. "Waterloo, please." "The railway station?" "I'm afraid it's rather late for the battle."
NB! · Education · Humour
Dreadful Academic Dreams
NB! · Humour
Not a Bad Misprint
Aristocracy · Monarchies · Mores · Saint Petersburg
"It is remarkable that in a country where white lead and rouge were in universal use among ladies, where a woman will not approach a window to beg alms without rouge, where in the very language the word red is an expression of outstanding beauty and where
Mademoiselle Vorontsova, known in marriage as Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, was the closest friend of Catherine the Great, director of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences and one of the best-educated women of her time. Among the unofficial recollections of Dashkova there is an episode about her marriage that
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