Archive · Books · Mores · People

Leo Tolstoy’s 1851 diary on falling in love, an unneeded horse and rules for himself

25 January. Fell in love, or imagined that I had, was at a party and lost my head. Bought a horse that I have no need of whatsoever. Rules. Never offer any price for a thing one does not need. On entering a ball, at once ask someone to dance

NB! · Archive · Cinema · Moscow

Poster for Sergei Bondarchuk's "War and Peace" with Vyacheslav Tikhonov as Prince Andrei, Pushkin Square, 1966

Archive · Books · Mores · People

The marriage of Maurice Goudeket and Colette, his 1941 arrest and his memoir

Colette with her third husband, the Jewish businessman Maurice Goudeket, in 1950, four years before her death. Maurice Goudeket entered the life of the French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette in the early 1930s, when she was already a national celebrity. They met through mutual acquaintances from literary circles. At first

NB! · Archive · People

Emilios Veakis as King Lear, 1938, National Theatre of Greece

Black-and-white photograph of a woman in a light blouse and long skirt, arms outstretched before a circus tent wall, swallowing a sword.

Archive · Art · People

Diane Arbus photographed a sword swallower in Maryland, USA, in 1970

A sword swallower. Maryland, USA, 1970 Photograph by Diane Arbus

NB! · Archive · Faith · Books · Humour

Someone used a thirteenth-century Bible as a copybook

NB! · Archive · Geography · Science · People · Nature

The Meteorologist-Geophysicist Yevgeny Fyodorov Builds a Snow Pavilion for Magnetic Measurements on a Drifting Ice Floe in the Arctic

Archive · Heritage · People

Greece’s National Theatre under Fotos Politis and the 1934 production of “The Persians”

Aeschylus's "The Persians" at the National Greek Theatre in 1934. One of the last works of the director Fotos Politis (1890–1934). On stage: Ioannis Avlonitis, Georgios Glinos, Tsavalas Karousos. The founding of the National Theatre in the spring of 1930 was of great significance for

NB! · Archive · New York · People · Pop Culture

Katharine Hepburn, aged 80, clearing snow from the roof of her New York townhouse, 1988

Archaeology · Archive · Architecture · Books · Rome

Montaigne on the ruins of ancient Rome beneath the foundations of new buildings

The ancient Roman would not have recognised the layout of his own city, were he to behold it. It has often happened that, on digging deep into the earth, men have struck the top of a very tall column which "still stood at its full height below." For

Archive · Moscow · Observations · Science

The Screen Around Us

The screen around us. A robot converses with visitors at the "Electrification of the USSR" pavilion. Do you know what year it was? 1959. It looks like the future, yet it was sixty years ago. So what is it that surprises us all so much now? Photo from

Archive · Moscow · Nature

Gaspard, but Not Noé

In the Moscow Zoo of the 1930s, as a matter of fact, there was a pair of hippopotamuses, a male, Peter, and a female, Greta, and in 1943 they had a calf, August. Peter and Greta lived on into the 1980s. And now we know that besides them there was