Observations · Education · Society
I came across an interesting lecture on the university liberties of the Middle Ages on Theories and Practices. Just what privileges did students and teachers enjoy? By the standards of the time, very weighty ones: for example, the right to be absent from their parish, since most students and teachers
Observations · Pop Culture · Humour
Written in just 8 hours, Aram Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance" was once acknowledged as the most performed and popular piece of music in the world. I even had it as the text-message tone on my Nokia 6630
Observations · Mores · Ethnography · Humour
If, like the rest of us, you believe in everything under the sun, do take note of the instructions of a jocular English superstition on the colour of wedding dresses, which by various threats and manipulations compels the choice of white, and white alone. To marry in yellow is to
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Architecture · Moscow · Observations
To all who categorically despise the so-called Luzhkov architecture, I want to show this house at 3 Znamenka, built in 2002. There was a separate story there, about how a certain artist, A. Shilov, was granted two plots at once in the very heart of the city, and two
NB! · Observations · Humour
NB! · Museums · Observations · Paris
Time to freeze. A guillotine blade used during the years of the Revolutionary Terror in France. From the Museum of the Paris Police Prefecture in the Latin Quarter, which is unfashionable, but quite large and rich.
NB! · Museums · Society
Archive · Mores · People
Arriving at two in the morning, Dr Schwörer offered the dying Chekhov a cylinder of oxygen. Anton Pavlovich declined: "By the time they bring the oxygen, I shall be dead." He had only minutes left. Chekhov preferred to drink champagne. He took the glass with the words "
NB! · Archaeology · Monarchies · Heritage
That famous flag of Napoleon on Elba, with its three golden bees. The bees may well have been the oldest symbol of the rulers of France. In 1653 an image of bees was discovered in the tomb of Childeric, father of Clovis I, founder of the Merovingian dynasty, who lived
Archive · Observations · Society
Strange as it may seem, the face of our own day is reflected not only in the writings of Lenin, but in those of Stalin too. Take, for example, the following report: the Political Report of the Central Committee to the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Archive · Observations · Society · Saint Petersburg
Revolutionary intelligentsia and class-conscious proletarians, who would most probably have armed themselves, could not but shun the Zubatov movement, could not but keep away from it. The government thus had an especially free hand and was playing a game it could not lose: THE MOST PEACEFUL, THE LEAST ORGANISED,