Art · Nature

Edvard Munch painted “Summer Night on the Beach” in 1902 at Åsgårdstrand

Edvard Munch's painting Summer Night on the Beach, executed in 1902, is a profound immersion in the atmosphere of Scandinavian melancholy. The canvas shows a deserted shore at Åsgårdstrand, the place where the artist spent his summer months and found inspiration for his most emotional works. Instead of

Oil painting of a chestnut horse in a halter standing in three-quarter view against a dark brown background, with thick, loose brushstrokes.

NB! · Art · Museums · Paris · Nature

New exhibition on animals in the work of the artist opens at the Eugène Delacroix Museum

The Eugène Delacroix Museum has unveiled a new small-scale thematic display devoted to animals in his work

Faith · New York · Society · Mores · Nature

Blessing of Animals on 4 October, the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi

On 4 October, the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, who is regarded as the patron of animals and of nature, animals are blessed in churches all over the world. Stories of his sermon to the birds and of the wolf of Gubbio are associated with the name of Francis,

Faith · Mores · New York · Nature

Blessing of animals on the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi in New York and other communities

The blessing of the animals at the Episcopal Church of Saint John in New York on 4 October, the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi, who is regarded as the patron saint of animals and nature. Francis is associated with the tale of his sermon to the birds and

The East · Geography · Science · Society · Nature

The 2026 Himalayan flood and proposals for sharing flood warnings between countries

Analyst Arvind Kumar and Him Lal Gautam, Chief Surveyor of Nepal's Department of Survey, have published an article on the Himalayan flood of 26 August 2026. A rock-and-ice avalanche broke away that day from the northern slope of Langtang Lirung and turned into a debris flow,

Art · People · Nature

Caricaturist Heine, a co-founder of Simplicissimus, left Germany in 1933

A Little Pug in an Enormous Red Armchair, Thomas Theodor Heine, 1902. A tiny, touching pug puppy is literally drowning in a sumptuous velvet armchair of a rich scarlet. Heine was a master of German Jugendstil and one of the founders of the legendary satirical magazine Simplicissimus; he was born

Archive · Moscow · Pop Culture · Nature

Lyudmila Gurchenko with a falcon in one of Moscow's apple orchards, 1991

Photo by Igor Gnevashev

Archaeology · Science · Nature

Bone strength in Little Foot and Homo from Dmanisi points to when human ancestors left the trees

Researchers have compared the strength of the arm and leg bones in two fossil human ancestors and suggest that it is possible to determine when our ancestors ceased to travel regularly through the trees. The first skeleton belongs to an individual australopithecine known as Little Foot. Australopithecines are a genus

Archaeology · Science · Nature

DNA analysis of seeds shows cultivated grapes reached Spain with the Phoenicians

A group of scholars from Spanish universities has studied the origins of Iberian viticulture through DNA from archaeological seeds and suggests that it appeared long before the arrival of the Romans. For a long time it was believed that the wine industry of Spain traces its descent to the Roman

Archaeology · Science · Nature

Ancient DNA reveals plague in 18 of 46 hunter-gatherers of the Baikal region

Continuing our reading on plague among the hunter-gatherers of the Baikal region 5,500 years ago. An international team has studied ancient DNA from human remains at four burial grounds in the Lake Baikal area and, by sequencing genetic material preserved in teeth, has reconstructed bacterial genomes and identified

Science · Palaeontology · Nature

First known feathers of hesperornithiform birds found in a coprolite from Montana

A Feather Found in the Fossilised Dung of a Large Dinosaur Dating from 66 Million Years Ago. David DeMar of the Burke Museum at the University of Washington found the specimen in 2016 in north-eastern Montana, while collecting fossil fish. He picked up a dark reddish-brown nodule about

Archaeology · Geography · Science · Nature

DNA from Song-era melon seeds in a flooded port at Wenzhou points to a South Asian origin

This melon seed is more than 1,000 years old, and its DNA proves that melons reached China from South Asia. Melon seeds found during the 2024 excavations at the submerged medieval port of Shomen Gugan, in the present-day city of Wenzhou in south-eastern China, have preserved their