Mores · Nature · Ethnography

The English custom of telling bees family news and draping hives in mourning

The English have a remarkable custom of telling the bees the family news. Not only the beekeeper but his whole household must converse with the hives and relate the most important of what has happened, and it is especially vital for the bees to learn of a recent death. In

Geography · People · Nature

Incidentally, today is considered the day of the discovery of Florida by the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León, who in 1513 led an expedition in search of either new lands for Ferdinand I, or the fountain of eternal youth, which…

Incidentally, today is considered the day of the discovery of Florida by the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León, who in 1513 led an expedition in search of either new lands for Ferdinand I, or the fountain of eternal youth, which is mentioned in an ancient legend that places it

NB! · Architecture · Faith · Paris · Nature

The holy-water stoup in the Baroque church of Saint-Sulpice, made from a giant tridacna shell: the largest mollusc of its kind weighed 333 kilograms and measured more than a metre in length

NB! · Art · Nature

Wenzel Jamnitzer's Daphne stands on the earth, at once showing her kinship with nature and paying tribute to the earthly metamorphoses that people turn into art

Wenzel Jamnitzer's Daphne stands on the earth, at once showing her kinship with nature and paying tribute to the earthly metamorphoses that people turn into art. A most interesting find: the clods of earth are made of uncut quartz crystals and are almost indistinguishable from the real substrate.

Science · Society · Nature

The 1900 bubonic plague outbreak in Glasgow and a new inquiry into the role of rats

The Plague of the Twentieth Century. The Third Pandemic flared up in Asia in 1855 and claimed millions of lives; several decades later it found an echo in Europe: in 1900, in Glasgow, 48 recorded cases of bubonic plague led to at least 16 deaths. Only a couple of years

NB! · Monarchies · Museums · Nature · Humour

The lion presented to King Frederick I by the governor of Algiers was, after its death, handed over to a taxidermist who, it is true, had never seen a living lion and, receiving the bones and the skin separately, produced this

NB! · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Nature

The Swedish Lion, or the Lion of Gripsholm Castle, was once a favourite of King Frederick I, and is today one of the emblems of the royal residence, alongside its portrait gallery, its theatre and its 18th-century interiors

Archaeology · Palaeontology · Nature

Fisherman Raymond McElroy hauls giant deer skull from Lough Neagh in his net

A simple Irish fisherman, Raymond McElroy, has found the skull of a giant deer (otherwise known as the great-horned or Irish deer). The find landed in a fishing net in the largest lake in Great Britain, Lough Neagh (in Northern Ireland, not far from Belfast). This is the second

NB! · Science · Palaeontology · Nature

A Skull Found by a Fisherman in an Irish Lough Lay Underwater for More Than Ten Thousand Years and Belongs to the Vanished Giant Deer

A hand touches the flipper bones of a whale skeleton displayed in a museum hall, with other skeletons visible behind.

NB! · Observations · Nature · Humour

Blue whale flipper in a museum display and its resemblance to a human hand

The flipper of a blue whale. Isn't it practically a hand?

NB! · Museums · Palaeontology · Paris · Nature

The Giant Deer, or Irish Elk

The giant deer, or Irish elk. It became extinct about 20,000 years ago. The antlers of the animal spanned as much as 5 metres. This skeleton is kept in the Palaeontological Museum in Paris

Bronze sculpture of a seated Rottweiler on a white pedestal with a plaque reading “To Sultan, beloved dog of Countess Panina”, with trees and water behind.

NB! · Aristocracy · Architecture · Heritage · Nature

Monument to Sultan, Countess Sofia Panina's Rottweiler, in the Marfino Estate Park

Monument to the dog Sultan, one of the first Rottweilers in Russia and the companion of Countess Sofia Vladimirovna Panina, an outstanding woman of her time. The sculpture stands in the park of her country estate of Marfino, near Moscow