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In 1830 American James Barron patented a mechanical fan with a hanging weight
In 1830 the American inventor James Barron patented a mechanical fan with this witty drawing, in which a man reclining on a sofa smokes at his ease and only an open sheet of the Hard Working Men Journal reminds us of the burdens of labour. The fan, driven by clockwork
Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Society
The concert hall of the Kaliningrad Regional Philharmonic will sound anew: the building is to be renovated and given a new multifunctional, as is now the fashion, cultural space with new lightsoundvideo equipment and venues for…
The concert hall of the Kaliningrad Regional Philharmonic will sound anew: the building is to be renovated and given a new multifunctional, as is now the fashion, cultural space with new lightsoundvideo equipment and venues for lectures, masterclasses and other activities. Curiously, the reorientation of the Philharmonic's premises
Education · Society · Paris
French debate over the Marseillaise lyrics in schools after the 2019 education bill
"Let their impure blood water our furrows": shall it flood our fields and orchards in an instant? Some years ago a public debate flared up in France over the words of the republic's national symbol, the Marseillaise. Should children hear and sing words that preach cruelty,
Art · Observations
Czech painter Ludvík Vacatko and his canvases of horses and nude youths
A naked youth and two horses. I am not sure that such horses exist at all, but the canvases of the Czech painter Ludvík Vacátko are full of horses of every description and naked youths of every description. The peak of this Czech's career fell in the 1930s,
NB! · Observations · Humour
it seems my chances of meeting Viktoria Shelyagova are improving
Coming Up · Moscow · Education
The Lyubimovka young playwrights' festival opens an educational programme: you will be able to meet screenwriters and directors, and if you have never heard of Lyubimovka, the names of the guests, such as Kirill Serebrennikov and Mikhail Durnenkov…
The organisers have announced that this year authors submitted 815 plays to the competition. The plays that passed the selection will be presented from 5 to 12 September in the form of directors' staged readings, followed by wide-ranging discussion, at the 8/3 venue in Moscow.
Geography · Maps
Map of the Roman provinces and the location of European and Asian Sarmatia
A useful and simple thing: a map of the Roman provinces. Should it happen that school never quite made it clear that Mesopotamia lies just between Armenia and Syria, a little south-east of Cappadocia, while Mauretania is on the opposite side from Rome. As for Sarmatia, marked north-west
Art · People
French critic Étienne Thoré rediscovered Vermeer for the public in the 1860s
Pushkin did not know Vermeer. Nor did Gogol. Nor Lermontov. Not even Dostoevsky! For it was only in the 1860s that Vermeer's paintings were rediscovered for the public, by a French critic of socialist convictions, Étienne Joseph Théophile Thoré, who wrote under the pseudonym Willem Bürger (or, in
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Demolition of a brick building: excavator amid the rubble
Architecture · Moscow · Heritage · Society
Demolition of the Chernikov apartment house of 1914 on 2nd Neopalimovsky Lane in Moscow
This is how Chernikov's house on 2nd Neopalimovsky Lane looks now, although formally the demolition, the result of fraudulent dealings by a band of black-market developers, was not due to begin until the second half of September. The comrade swindlers are in a hurry to destroy an
NB! · Art · Observations · Humour
Govert Flinck, Girl with a Child's Chair
Govert Flinck, Girl with a Child's Chair. Mid-1600s. But I would say, a girl with a golden beer bottle opener (actually, no!), forgive me. Incidentally, the little one is three years old. And, incidentally, the basket-style handbag is fire too, sending a proper hello to Ulyana