Geography · Science · Palaeontology · People

Palaeontologist Andrey Spiridonov on the Baltic as the ancient core of Europe

Palaeontologist Andrey Spiridonov puts forward a very interesting idea of Baltica as one of the most ancient continental blocks of the Earth. He calls Baltica a palaeocontinent of the Palaeozoic era and, in effect, the ancient core of Europe, around which smaller continents have accreted over the past 450 million

Geography · Cinema

Built in 1939 by a British shipyard for a Polish-Danish company, the motor ship Sobieski was bought by the USSR in 1950 for the Black Sea Shipping Company and renamed Gruziya

Built in 1939 by a British shipyard for a Polish-Danish company, the motor ship Sobieski was bought by the USSR in 1950 for the Black Sea Shipping Company and renamed Gruziya (“Georgia”). In the film The Diamond Arm, the motor ship Gruziya appears under the name Mikhail Svetlov. In

Archaeology · Faith · Geography · Books · Science

The Pythia, seated upon a tripod over a cleft from which fragrant vapours rose, inhaled them, and thereby her spirit was kindled with divine inspiration

Plutarch, On the Pythian Oracles Yet neither Plutarch nor Herodotus speaks of these "divine vapours" at Delphi unambiguously. The haze from the rock is rather taken as a metaphor for otherworldly revelations. At least, such is the pragmatic reading of the legend. All the more so since the

NB! · Geography · Science

A sailing chariot, invented in the early seventeenth century by the mathematician Simon Stevin for Prince Maurice of Nassau, allowed swift travel, by the standards of the day, along the shores of the North Sea

Coming Up · Geography · Science

Replica of the locomotive Locomotion No. 1 to run again between Stockton and Darlington

In September, the World's First Public Railway Turns 200. On 27 September 1825, the locomotive Locomotion No. 1, designed by George Stephenson, drew a train along the Stockton and Darlington line in the north-east of England. The name Locomotion soon became a common noun: the word "

NB! · Geography · Observations · Nature

Who would have thought Lake Titicaca was quite so high!

Who would have thought Lake Titicaca was quite so high! It turns out to stand at 3,812 metres above sea level. Baikal lies at an altitude of 455 metres. Lake Superior, of the American Great Lakes system, lies at 183 metres

NB! · Geography · Maps

A map of the West Indies and North America, 1741, drawn by Henry Overton, bearing in mind that most of the continent remained unexplored at the time: it is labelled simply “unknown parts”

Geography · Observations · Society

Russian towns named after Communist figures, including Togliatti

Doesn't it strike you as strange that in a country which has renamed the cities named after Lenin and Stalin there still remains a city named after Togliatti, a third-rate historical figure from the Communist Party of Italy? True, not every settlement named after a Communist functionary

Black and white photograph of a huge board with the Moscow Metro map above a street, with a tram passing and pedestrians in front.

NB! · Archive · Geography · Maps · Moscow

Giant model of the Moscow Metro map installed on Okhotny Ryad in the 1930s

The Moscow Metro map as an octopus. The installation is a gigantic model of the metropolitan railway. It was set up in the 1930s in Okhotny Ryad

NB! · The East · Geography · Observations · Science

The Spread of the Sanskrit Word शर्करा śarkarā, or Sugar, Around the World

NB! · Geography · Observations

Let us choose the ocean with the most epic relief

NB! · Geography · Nature