NB! · Archive · Faith · Books · Society · People

Of the 80,200 roubles required in 1898-1899 to resettle 7,300 Doukhobor peasants in Canada, Leo Tolstoy contributed 34,200 roubles, taken from the publication of his novel "Resurrection"

NB! · Archive · Society · Humour

As a history graduate, Mark Rutte could not simply walk past a stack of documents left lying about in a White House corridor

Archive · Cinema · Monarchies · Society · People

Nadine Bulycheva freed enslaved women on stage at a Rio de Janeiro theatre in 1886

The name of the Italian opera singer of Russian origin Nadezhda Vasilyevna Bulycheva (1858-1921) is inscribed for ever in letters of gold in the history of the worldwide struggle to abolish slavery. On 10 August 1886 the Russian prima donna Nadine Bulycheva sang the part of the Ethiopian slave

Archive · Art · Monarchies · Moscow · Museums

"The Handshake of Abraham Lincoln and Alexander II": a sculpture installed in the park before the Burganov House Museum on Sivtsev Vrazhek

Although this meeting never took place in reality, many note the similarity between these two rulers, and the former US Congressman James Symington called them "friends who were never destined to meet, but who were kindred spirits." The monument was created in 2011 and first shown at the

Archive · Society · Paris · People

Jacques Chirac in photographs from 1968 and the 2000s

Our House Is on Fire, and We Are Looking the Other Way. Jacques Chirac. In the photograph: Chirac in the 2000s and in 1968

Coming Up · Archive · Art · Saint Petersburg

Béton visual culture centre announces “Masterpieces of Early Photography” opening on 29 August

The Béton Centre for Visual Culture has announced a new project, "Masterpieces of Early Photography". The exhibition, which opens on 29 August, will present unique works by outstanding nineteenth-century photographers: David Hill and Robert Adamson, Édouard Baldus, Henri Le Secq, Gustave Le Gray and other masters whose

Archive · Art · Observations · Society

British leaflet of the 1790s contrasts British Liberty with the French Medusa

In the 1790s, campaigns against influences from France appear in England, frightened by the backdrop of bloody reprisals and the overthrow of the monarchy. A propaganda broadsheet compares two allegories of Liberty: Britannia with the scales of justice, Magna Carta under the protection of the imperial lion, and a staff

NB! · Archive · Cinema · Mores

The actor Vasily Kachalov and the writer Alexei Tolstoy at a resort, 1930s

NB! · Archive · Art

Sophocles' Ajax Staged in Sicily in 1939

Sophocles' *Ajax* staged in Sicily in 1939. The scene before the funeral of Ajax

Archive · Faith · Mores · Education

Curious Details of Bishop Tikhon's Struggle Against Seminarians Who Were Vagrants, Pranksters and Prone to the Intemperance of a Vile, Suspicious and Drunken Passion in the 1770s

For example, it was devised to select the most honest pupils as fiscals, that is, overseers and informers, who would watch which of their schoolfellows frequented the drinking shops: «Let there be appointed from among the most honest pupils fiscals, that they might watch and report faithfully to the teachers

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Salvador Dalí's statement after Franco had five people executed in 1975

"Personally, I am against freedom; I am for the Holy Inquisition" Salvador Dalí Context: Dalí made this remark after Franco, in 1975, had executed three members of the Anti-Fascist Patriotic Revolutionary Front and two members of the organisation Free Basque Country, all of them branded terrorists. Protests

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