Archive · Books · Mores · Education · Saint Petersburg · Humour
Gymnastics for Young Ladies, Adapted to Their Various Ages, for Public and Domestic Education. Adopted as a guide in the Saint Petersburg institutes under the Department of the Institutions of Empress Maria. The author, a doctor of medicine and surgery, described exercises intended specifically for women. The doctor held that
NB! · Art · Mores · Paris · Humour
Faith · Art · Museums · Science · Mores
Oldest Tattoo in Dutch Painting Discovered. Conservators have discovered the image of a tattoo while examining a seventeenth-century group portrait that had returned from an exhibition. Specialists at the Amsterdam Museum believe the tattoo, found on the wrist of the presumably wealthy merchant Wessel Smits, to be the oldest
Archive · Books · Mores · Society · People
By nationality I am Russian, by origin a native proletarian, a hereditary metalworker. That is all that is known of my ancestry In the memoirs of Leonid Brezhnev, which are believed to have been written from his words by several prominent journalists and editors of the day and merely edited
NB! · Aristocracy · Archive · Mores
Books · Mores · People
In his youth, Napoleon often skipped meals to save money for books. Napoleonic frugality looked like this: nothing in his room but a bed, an armchair and a mountain of books. The proprietress of the café where he took his meals, seeing his want, often treated the young man to
NB! · Observations · Mores · Humour
A Victorian funeral parlour for dolls, the indispensable addition to any dolls' town. Now that is a hobby!
Faith · Cinema · Mores · Rome
Stills from the 1932 American historical film "The Sign of the Cross", on ancient Rome and Nero's persecution of the Christians. The execution scene involving a gorilla or chimpanzee belongs to a very late myth about Roman mores. There is no confirmation that such a practice
Mores · Society
In November 1793 the Convention issued an unalterable decree in France that all Frenchmen must eat "one and the same bread". Under pain of imprisonment, all bakers were obliged to bake only one kind of loaf, known as the bread of equality. The bread of equality was baked
The East · Books · Observations · Mores · Humour
There is an old, forgotten Russian word, kolbyag, used in Ancient Rus' to denote foreigners. Which foreigners exactly is not entirely clear: according to one version, the kolbyagi were predominantly of eastern origin. Such too are the foreigners named in the Russkaya Pravda "Varangians" (Western Europeans) and
Mores · Pop Culture · Humour
Photo: Alex Manchev
Art · Museums · Observations · Mores
In the painting by Vasily Maximov (1844-1911) from the collection of the Irkutsk Regional Art Museum, we see a boy secretly drinking wine, unbeknown to his parents. The painting is called "Following the Example of Their Elders". Our youth love luxury, they are badly brought up, they