Archive · Geography · Science · Humour

The Holtermann Nugget, found in Australia in 1872, and its photomontage

When you are the largest gold nugget in the world and your only virtue is to shine. ps The so-called Holtermann Nugget was found in Australia in 1872. The 285-kilogram behemoth contained 83 kg of pure gold, which is to say that it was still 70% slag. The

NB! · Archive · Cinema · Pop Culture

Tatyana Samoylova and Jayne Mansfield at Cannes in 1958

Archive · Society

Five-pointed star with plough and hammer as the emblem of the Red Army in 1918

Originally the emblem of the Red Army was a star with a plough and hammer; the combination of sickle and hammer was approved only in July 1918. In an order of the Military Commissariat of Moscow Province of 8 May 1918, the emblem is called a "Martian star with

Archive · Architecture · Moscow · Education · Humour

Nikolskaya Street in Moscow from its renaming to pedestrianisation in 2013

The Historical and Archival Institute. A photograph from the late 1990s: 25 October Street has only recently become Nikolskaya Street again, but has not yet become the pedestrian one we know today 1995: not yet 2000: still no 2005: no, not yet 2010: not for the moment 2013: hurrah! Nikolskaya

NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Paris · People

Twenty-four years ago, Arthur Edwards, who had photographed Princess Diana for seventeen years, took this picture of her coffin leaving the ancient Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris

NB! · Archive · In the Press · New York · Pop Culture

A Very Peculiar Choice of Photograph for the Cover of the Daily News Announcing the Death of Marilyn Monroe

Antique sepia photograph of a girl with long curly hair on all fours, looking at the camera.

NB! · Archive · Mores · People

Ella Harper, known as the Camel Girl, a circus and amusement show entrepreneur in the US

But jokes aside, the photograph shows Ella Harper (1870-1921), known from childhood as the Camel Girl, an impresaria of amusement and circus shows in the USA. She drew the public's curiosity by her manner of getting about, on all fours, which was owing to the peculiar structure

Colour illustration: a small computer with an L-shaped desk above, and a man at a console in a hall with tape drives below.

Archive · Science

Business computers in a 1971 illustration resembling IBM System/3 and System/360

1971. A small computer, built for the businessman. The upper machine resembles the IBM System/3, the lower one the IBM System/360.

Archive · Mores · Society · People

Were such photographs not captioned, there would simply be no way of telling who is who, even for the most seasoned archivists

One might suppose that the frame is an ideological statement, yet we could just as easily take the picture for a prank. If you have ever looked through a good collection of photographs of that era, the chances are that it contained something of the kind: men larking about in

Black-and-white photograph of a two-storey building with a pediment on a snowy square, with two passers-by near the fence.

Archive · Architecture · Moscow · Heritage

Yury Pankratov on the demolition of the historic Sobachya Ploshchadka buildings during the construction of Kalinin Avenue in the 1960s

Sweeping away the mouldy vulgarity of Houses that huddle hunchbacked, Work proceeds at full throttle In the district of the Arbat... Yury Pankratov on the demolition of the old buildings of the historic Sobachya Ploshchadka complex in the 1960s, when Kalinin Avenue, now Novy Arbat, was driven through

NB! · Archive · Moscow · Observations · People

When I want to think of something pleasant, I remember pancakes, or photographs of Sophia Loren in Moscow

Archive · Moscow · Mores · Society · People

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya on childhood in the Second House of Soviets and the Veger family's fate

“I am an old Muscovite and from birth I lived in the Metropol. In the Second House of Soviets. Where lived those members of the Comintern who had fled arrest in their own countries, and who by the time of my birth had already been shot or were serving their