Collage: left, a polychrome statue of a winged warrior in gilded armour and helmet; right, a broken figure on the floor beside a white plinth. Caption: 400-year-old statue destroyed by touri

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News screenshot of a destroyed statue: the intact winged figure and fragments on a museum floor

Skulls of horned dinosaurs with frills and horns are mounted on a museum wall, joined by white lines. A visitor at the railing is taking a photograph.

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Horned dinosaur skulls on a museum wall with lines of relationship

Assembled thylacine skeleton with skull, ribs, long tail and limbs on a black background, with a tag and a colour scale nearby.

NB! · Science · Palaeontology · Nature

Skeleton of the thylacine, extinct since the early 20th century, and the reward for a living one

The skeleton of a thylacine, or Tasmanian wolf, extinct since the early twentieth century. There is a view that somewhere in the remote forests of Tasmania it may still be living to this day, and whoever catches a live thylacine is promised more than a million dollars

Three flint knives with faces, shell eyes and teeth, on a dark background, on a book page with a caption.

NB! · Archaeology · Museums · Ethnography

Aztec sacrificial knives with shell eyes and teeth found at the Templo Mayor

Aztec sacrificial knives. It is curious that the form and method of manufacture of these flint and obsidian blades barely changed in over ten thousand years, the decoration alone excepted

NB! · Art · Museums · Science · People

The Death Mask of Isaac Newton

Old sepia photograph of a dolmen with a massive slab on upright supports between bare trees, one man standing beneath and another seated at left.

NB! · Archaeology · Heritage

Fairy Dolmen near Draguignan in Provence, a megalith of 60 tonnes

The best-known megalith in France: the 60-tonne Fairy Dolmen near the Provençal town of Draguignan. The limestone slab rests on three pillars; how it was raised into place (around 3,000 BC) is, of course, unknown

NB! · Monarchies · People

Today Is Marie Antoinette's Birthday

NB! · Observations

Let us not imagine what they are thinking

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The Great Bear

NB! · Geography · Maps · Books · Science

A page from the "Uranometria", the first atlas of the starry heavens (1603), by the German lawyer Johann Bayer and the cartographer Alexander Mair

Bronze figurine of the winged demon Pazuzu with a snarling face, a raised hand and a suspension loop above the head.

NB! · Archaeology · Faith · The East · Cinema · Museums

Assyrian demon Pazuzu, lord of the winds, and his role as a protective amulet

The Assyrian demon Pazuzu, lord of the parching winds. It seems to have been he who took possession of the girl in 'The Exorcist'. Curiously enough, his image was used as an amulet against more malevolent powers

NB! · Observations · Humour