Comic panel: Donald Duck with outstretched arms faces two ducks in green and pink dresses, chained at the ankles.

NB! · The East · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour

Donald Duck and a New Shipment of Slave Girls from Chaldea in a Comic Panel

Donald Duck and the beautiful slave girls of Chaldea. These days he would already be sitting through a hearing in the Senate

Newspaper engraving of a man pedalling an exercise velocipede under a shower inside a round basin.

Archive · Observations · Humour

Velocipede shower bath of 1897 combining exercise with morning ablutions

Look what they've done to the poor fellow! 1897: the very latest invention, combining physical exercise with the morning toilette. Rather poor apparatus you have in your gymnasium, sir.

Aristocracy · Monarchies · Humour

There is an anecdote about the parentage of Paul I

When Tsar Alexander III learned that the true father of Paul I had been the chamberlain Sergey Saltykov, he exclaimed: "Thank God, we are Russian!" When Alexander III was at last persuaded that the father of Paul I was Peter III, the Emperor crossed himself in relief: "

Monarchies · Observations · Society · Humour

Catherine borrowed 100,000 roubles from the merchant Felten for agitation among the Guards

Political technologies, tried and tested over the centuries:. ..managed to stir up the guards' indignation against Peter Fyodorovich and to rouse sympathy for Catherine; and so that there should be no doubt as to the latter's kindness towards the guards, the conspirators warmed the mood of the

Archive · Books · Mores · People · Humour

Nekrasov and his friends mock Dostoevsky's vanity in a poem of 1846

Knight of the Rueful Countenance, Dostoevsky, dear little puffball, on the nose of literature you glow like a fresh new pimple. Among Nekrasov's verses there is one entitled "Belinsky's Epistle to Dostoevsky", written in January 1846. It is sometimes described as "collective"