Art · Monarchies · Observations · People

How Napoleon's Appearance Changes in Antoine-Jean Gros Portraits Before and During the Empire

Have you noticed that Napoleon, in his portraits from before the imperial period, looks like a completely different man? Take, for example, the portraits by Antoine-Jean Gros, Napoleon's official painter: "Napoleon on the Bridge at Arcole" of 1796 and "Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul"

NB! · Observations

Who Has Not Dreamed of Such a Secret Door?

NB! · Faith · Observations · People

Pope Francis is now getting about in a wheelchair 😔

Art · Monarchies · Observations · Paris · Humour

Vincenzo Vela's Sculpture of Napoleon's Death at the 1867 Exhibition

At the slightest indisposition I feel like Napoleon on Saint Helena in Vincenzo Vela's sculpture The Last Moments of Napoleon I. This sculptural portrait of the dying Bonaparte was a great success at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867, and the statue was eventually acquired by Emperor

Two street urinals with canopies on cobblestones, a black one for men and a red one for women, with French inscriptions.

NB! · Observations · Society · Paris

Male and female street urinals in Paris and criticism of Mayor Anne Hidalgo

Municipal improvement of the kind Paris enjoys I would not wish upon any city in the world. And the local mayor, the inept Anne Hidalgo, was still opening her little beak for a presidential mandate

NB! · Art · Observations · Humour

Arnold Böcklin's Sleeping Forest, 1885

Arnold Böcklin's Sleeping Forest, 1885. And the unicorn is not as handsome as they say

Still life with red berries and a white flower on a stone ledge against a dark background.

NB! · Art · Observations · Nature · Humour

Dutch seventeenth-century painter Adriaen Coorte and his still life with berries

Bought strawberries at the market for 150 roubles a kilo; they say they are from Greece, though the price tag says "Azerbaijan". Tasteless, so clearly Greece: all the fruit there is plastic, nothing but the smell. Anyway, until our own strawberries ripen, let us look at the seventeenth-

NB! · Aristocracy · Observations · Pop Culture

Heraldic Costumes as Proof of the Impotence of Modern Fashion

NB! · Art · Observations

The Housing-Office Art One Would Like to See

Cinema · Books · Observations · Humour

Books Issued: from 3 to 18 Hours

Judging by this still from the novella "Obsession", Shurik, standing in for the old watchwoman in "Operation Y", really could have told the burglars which library they might stroll into at 3 a.m. Such are the recurring details in the plot of Leonid Gaidai'

Screenshot of question 10 of 24 from Life in the UK Test 3 asking what language Iron Age people spoke, with four answer options.

Observations · Education · Society · Humour

Question on the language of Iron Age Britons in the British citizenship test

I'd heard that getting British citizenship was hard, but THIS hard! The test that forms a compulsory part of the application for British citizenship asks which language was spoken by the inhabitants of Iron Age Britain. Do you still think that history will never come in useful in

NB! · Observations · Humour