NB! · Archive · Heritage · Nature

Many parks and groves were destroyed completely, ancient trees splintered to matchwood or were torn up by the roots

NB! · Archive · Moscow · Nature

Several villages were destroyed entirely by the Moscow tornado of 1904; in several others only a couple of houses were left standing

Archive · Geography · Moscow · Nature

The Moscow tornado of 16 June 1904, over 100 dead and Gilyarovsky's description

On 16 June 1904 a tornado struck Moscow; the force of the wind that day is estimated at 25 m/s, that is 9 on the 12-point Beaufort scale (or a storm). More than 100 people were killed that day and more than 800 were injured. Gilyarovsky described the

NB! · Archive · Science · People · Nature

It Was Darwin Who Drew the Tortoise

Manuscript miniature in a green frame, a man lights a fire on the back of a huge sea creature while a second man sits nearby in a sailing boat.

NB! · Observations · Nature · Humour

The sea giant Jasconius in a medieval miniature, travellers light a fire on its back

One depiction of the sea-giant Jasconius, whose back weary travellers mistook for the long-awaited land, only for him to sink beneath the waves when they lit a fire. Something about renovation came to mind

Archive · Books · Observations · Nature

Horse censuses of 1882 and 1888 on the number and quality of horses in Russia

I would like to share a curious article on horse-breeding in the nineteenth century from the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopaedic Dictionary:. Of the approximately 60,456,000 horses in the world, namely 32,253,400 in Europe, 4,125,400 in Asia, 656,000 in Africa, 20,909,000

NB! · Palaeontology · Nature · Ethnography

The shells of the bivalve mollusc Gryphaea are known as devil's toenails, and it is the toenails that are meant; in antiquity these valves were a common amulet and were used as a remedy for the joints

NB! · Pop Culture · Nature · Ethnography

The root of the mandrake really does resemble a human body, which may be why it was credited with magical properties (think of Harry Potter); there are also mentions that it helps against female infertility

NB! · Archive · Books · Science · Nature

Mandrake

Mandrake. Drawing from the Greek treatise "On Medicinal Substances". This copy dates from the 10th century, although the original was written by Pedanius Dioscorides in the 1st century AD and was copied for 1,500 years

The East · Books · Nature · Humour

The word “strafokamil” in the Egyptian travel account of Hierodeacon Jonah

Strafokamil: strafo (bird) + kamil (camel) = strangely enough, an ostrich. The word was introduced by the hierodeacon Iona, who travelled through Egypt in the seventeenth century: "The bird is like a camel and very large, its hoof has two toes."

NB! · Science · Palaeontology · Nature

The fossilised trunk of an ancient giant clubmoss, Lepidodendron, at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh; these trees reached 35 metres in height and a metre in girth

NB! · Nature · Humour