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The Danish King's Embassy at Ivan the Terrible's Feast, Where Guests Rose 65 Times
To be invited to a feast with Ivan the Terrible is, of course, a sign of particular favour. That said, the Tsar invited the long-awaited embassy from the King of Denmark only after asking for the list of gifts and satisfying himself that they sufficed. The Tsar's
Aristocracy · Archive · Monarchies · Mores · People
Jacob Ulfeldt on Russian court etiquette and the orb in the hands of Ivan the Terrible
Jacob Ulfeldt described Russian court etiquette with great astonishment and displeasure. Ivan the Terrible he portrays as an arrogant, pompous, vain and abrupt man, surrounded by dull-witted boyars and streltsy. The prince, moreover, was wholly inattentive and simply did not listen to the reading of the embassy's
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Danish embassy at the court of Ivan the Terrible after the seizure of Livonian fortresses
Ivan the Terrible receives the Danish ambassadors together with his eldest son. Before the audience, the court officials (pristavs) strictly forbade the ambassadors to recite the titles of their king before those of the Prince of Moscow, reminding them that envoys who had once broken this rule had been expelled
Aristocracy · Archive · People
The father of the White émigré spy Anna Volkova, Nikolai Alexandrovich, belonged to that very Volkov-Muromtsev family, tied to the Griboyedovs by bonds of both marriage and property
The father of the White émigré spy Anna Volkova, Nikolai Alexandrovich, belonged to that very Volkov-Muromtsev family, tied to the Griboyedovs by bonds of both marriage and property. Nikolai's own brother Vladimir Volkov-Muromtsev, disinherited by their father, by an irony of fate became in 1895 the
Archive · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour
Hat with cats by milliner Benjamin Green-Field in Life magazine, 16 July 1945
A hat with cats. IT. IS. GENIUS. An illustration from Life magazine of 16 July 1945. How I long for forty cats on the head to come back into fashion! Preferably with a ball of wool 🌝 The model is by the celebrated milliner Benjamin Green-Field, creator of the Bes-
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Anastasia Romanova and the Selfie
Anastasia Romanova and a selfie. The figure in the background is not a ghost, but one of the household, caught moving through the long exposure
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How Napoleon's signature changed from Captain Bonaparte to Saint Helena
It is interesting to watch how Napoleon's signature changed: from a plain Bonaparte, when he was still an artillery captain in 1792, to a plain Napoleon with a sharp flourish in the 1800s, when he was already Emperor. As late as 1798, in Egypt, Napoleon still signed himself
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Edward Bright of Maldon and his coat that seven townspeople could fit into
How can the suit of a very fat man serve the public? When in 1750 the 29-year-old Edward Bright, a stout fellow of Maldon in England, famed for nothing but his remarkable weight, departed this life, the townsfolk acquired a diverting attraction: to squeeze seven persons into Bright&
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A 19th-century pamphlet against masturbation as an example of control over sexual behaviour
Look at what this charming fifteen-year-old girl became in a mere year, after making the acquaintance of the dreadful sin of masturbation! Yet another nineteenth-century pamphlet against self-gratification is a rather typical example of how the state and society, through the institutions of morality, propriety and
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National Library of Israel and Google to digitise and upload 120,000 books in Hebrew, Yiddish, Latin, French and Russian
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