Archive · Books · Mores · People
Turgenev described in some detail the madness of Pauline Viardot's eldest daughter Louise Héritte, who, instead of marrying the Frenchman with whom she was involved, married, against all persuasion, a certain Héritte and very soon came to hate him. Allegedly for his narrowness of mind. She bore a
NB! · Museums · Palaeontology · Paris · Nature
The giant deer, or Irish elk. It became extinct about 20,000 years ago. The antlers of the animal spanned as much as 5 metres. This skeleton is kept in the Palaeontological Museum in Paris
Architecture · Faith · Observations · Heritage · Paris
Found the famous Parisian church of Saint-Roch in a sorry state. A church founded in the sixteenth century and rebuilt in the seventeenth under royal patronage. Anne of Austria herself appeared with the infant Louis XIV at the laying of the foundation stone of the new building. Here, in
NB! · Faith · The East · Mores · Ethnography
Monarchies · Observations · Society · Saint Petersburg
In June 1831, popular riots broke out in Saint Petersburg. Terrified by the cholera epidemic, people supposed that the physicians were sprinkling some poison into the water and the wells, and that this was what made the disease spread. Nicholas I himself undertook to quell the riot, addressing the crowd
NB! · Archive · Society
A 5% bond for 960 roubles dated 1 March 1822, issued to Nathan Rothschild, whose signature appears in the upper right corner of the document. In all, bonds of this kind were issued to the Rothschilds to the value of £3.5 million sterling
NB! · Art · Society
The State Porcelain Factory Named After the Newspaper Pravda! 1937, the "Constitution" vase. Peasant women with loaves and peasant men with pipes beneath golden sheaves of wheat. So this is what you look like, Stalin's constitution.
NB! · Observations · Humour
Architecture · London · Heritage · Mores
In 1841-53 London's Percy Circus was laid out on the circus plan: 27 curved houses were built wall to wall around the square. The residential complex was conceived as good property for the lower stratum of the middle class, and local history records show that it housed
NB! · Art · Museums · Society · Humour
Porcelain revolutionary chess set, 1933. Reds against Whites. The Red pawns are peasants; the White pawns are shackled by the bourgeoisie. As for the Red king and queen, they are, of course, the worker and the collective-farm woman
NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Moscow · Mores
Emperor Alexander Pavlovich, having accepted the hospitality of P.A. and P.Yu. Kologrivov, deigned in their house to take tea from this cup, on the 21st day of January 1818, in Moscow
NB! · Aristocracy · Architecture · Heritage · Nature
Monument to the dog Sultan, one of the first Rottweilers in Russia and the companion of Countess Sofia Vladimirovna Panina, an outstanding woman of her time. The sculpture stands in the park of her country estate of Marfino, near Moscow