NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Mores · People

The table is laid for ten: George Sand receives her guests

The table is laid for ten: George Sand receives her guests. In this photograph you can make out that the head of the table is reserved for a certain Prince. Know, then, that the place card reads 'Le Prince Jérôme Napoléon'

NB! · Architecture · Faith

The Immaculate Vestibule of St Augustine's Church in Mainz

NB! · Monarchies · Observations · Humour

No sooner had I got rid of my collection of porcelain with monarchical symbols than I began eyeing plates with Masonic ones

No sooner had I got rid of my collection of porcelain with monarchical symbols than I began eyeing plates with Masonic ones. Somebody hold me back

NB! · Observations · Nature

The baby pangolin is an endangered species: the Chinks are actively wiping it out, believing that either the flesh or the scales of the pangolin have curative powers

The baby pangolin is an endangered species: the Chinks are actively wiping it out, believing that either the flesh or the scales of the pangolin have curative powers. What a pity that defenceless animals suffer so much at the hands of man

Eighteenth-century painting of a dark rhinoceros in a pen, with spectators in Venetian masks and tricorn hats behind a wooden barrier.

NB! · Art · Mores · Nature · Humour

The Rhinoceros Clara in a Painting by Pietro Longhi, Venice, 1751

Clara is 13, weighs 3 tons, has been touring all over Europe since the age of 3 in a coach drawn by 8 horses, and her urine is sold as medicine. The year is 1751. The Grimani Family and the Rhinoceros (and a heap of dung), Pietro Longhi, Venice

NB! · Architecture · Observations · Mores · Paris

Found on Google Street View the Deer Park I wrote about yesterday

Found on Google Street View the Deer Park I wrote about yesterday. It is hard to imagine that in the eighteenth century this place was such a den of iniquity. A couple of years ago the building was on sale for 6.5 million euros

The mummy of the Ukok Princess with light hair, visible teeth and dark tattoos on the shoulder and arm.

NB! · Archaeology · Museums · Heritage · Society · Ethnography

Altai people demand the return of the Ukok Princess from a Gorno-Altaysk museum for burial

For years now the Altaians have been demanding that the Ukok Princess be returned home and committed to the earth. Though she is, in any case, kept in a museum in Gorno-Altaysk, she belongs to the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Altaian elders, alas,

NB! · Archive · The East · Science

The Constellation of Aquila from an Eleventh-Century Astronomical Handbook, in Honour of Galileo's Birthday, 453 Years Ago

NB! · Art · Books · Humour

Love is tending a beautiful unicorn and dressing him in a caparison of royal colours

Love is tending a beautiful unicorn and dressing him in a caparison of royal colours. At any rate, the Book of Hours of Engelbert of Nassau of 1470 says nothing of relations with a monkey

Gold headdress with a relief female bust at the centre and pendants of fine chains, displayed in a museum case.

NB! · Archaeology · Art · Museums

Gold Woman's Headdress of the 3rd Century BC in the Archaeological Museum in Athens

A woman's headdress of gold, Greece, 3rd century BC. Held in the Archaeological Museum in Athens

NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Heritage

A twelfth-century genealogical chart traces the Anglo-Saxon kings of Mercia, one of the seven kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy, which fell under the sway of Wessex at the close of the first millennium, back to the god Odin (Woden)

NB! · Observations