Art · Nature · Humour

The singerie genre and the fashion for monkeys in human dress in Flanders and France

The depiction of monkeys in human guise in various comic situations became a distinct genre in the 16th and 17th centuries. This parodic genre was called singerie, from the French for "monkey business". Monkeys in human attire first appeared in Flemish painting; it is enough to name Pieter

Observations · Nature

I Dream of Visiting This Field

Photo: Space Cowboy

Architecture · Geography · Science · Nature

The German medieval town of Nördlingen is built in the crater of a meteorite that fell 15 million years ago and left a mark 25 km in diameter

The German medieval town of Nördlingen is built in the crater of a meteorite that fell 15 million years ago and left a mark 25 km in diameter. The walls of all the town's buildings are filled with micro-diamonds: the rock from which the local terrain is

Books · Observations · Science · Nature · Humour

Poem “The Struggle for Existence”, dedicated to Darwin, about a summer on the Istra

I read Yegor Kholmogorov's thorough rebuke of believers in Darwinism, and recalled a poem by the satirist Pyotr Shumakher (1817-1891), dedicated to Darwin himself. The Struggle for Existence (Dedicated to Darwin) I was on the Istra this summer, In a remote, forgotten corner; I lived as a

A woman in a work apron in a workshop tends the hair on a model of an elephant calf with a raised trunk, standing on a wooden pallet.

NB! · Museums · New York · Palaeontology · Nature · Humour

Model of a calf of an extinct pygmy elephant at the American Museum of Natural History

The enchanting model of a dwarf elephant calf at the American Museum of Natural History is one of the sweetest things ever made by the exhibition department of any museum whatsoever. The calf is no larger than a pet dog, while the adult of this extinct species stood a mere

NB! · Art · Nature

The Park, Gustav Klimt, 1910

View from space of the Volga Delta: branching river channels across a brown plain, a greenish sea above and clouds below.

NB! · Geography · Nature

The Volga Delta, the Largest in Europe, in a Photograph by Cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky

The largest river delta in Europe, the Volga Delta, seen from space. Photo by our cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky

NB! · Monarchies · Nature · Humour

During his visit to Saint Helena, Prince Edward conversed with Jonathan, a 191-year-old tortoise who was acquainted with King George IV and Elizabeth II and has lived on the island since the 1880s

Geography · Science · Nature

Melting of Kilimanjaro's glaciers, deforestation and glacial recession since the 1850s

The rapid melting of the glaciers on the "shining mountain" of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is nowadays linked to the ruthless felling of the rainforests on its slopes. It is believed that, with the disappearance of the forest, the slopes have ceased to store the moisture which they once

Detail of an oil painting with a cracked paint surface: a fluffy white cat looks upward against a dark background.

NB! · Art · Nature

Jean-Jacques Bachelier painted “The Cat and the Butterfly” in 1761

The Cat and the Butterfly. Jean-Jacques Bachelier, 1761

Faith · The East · Monarchies · Nature · Ethnography

When a giraffe was presented to Zhu Di (1360-1424), the third emperor of the Ming dynasty, during the voyages of his subject Zheng He around the world, the court was delighted, for everyone took the animal for a qilin or kirin, the mythical beast, one of…

Old engraving of festivities, booths and carriages on the ice of the Thames, with a title cartouche about the frost of 1683 and a lettered key below.

NB! · Archive · London · Mores · Nature

Frost fair on the frozen River Thames in London during the severe frost of 1683

Public festivities on the ice of the River Thames in London in 1683, with entertainments, refreshments and booths. Evidently the townsfolk understood that such a fair comes only once, and everyone who could attended the spectacle