Archive · Geography · Society · People
A Secret History. Margaret Thatcher, aged 57, Prime Minister of Great Britain, pirate, witch and murderess. Guilty! Margaret Thatcher as a pirate in the Argentine press after Britain's invasion of the Malvinas, or Falkland Islands, in 1982. The islands remain a disputed territory: Argentina regards them as occupied
NB! · Art · People
NB! · Archive · Science · People
Archive · Books · People
The fairy-tale hero Pinocchio had a real-life prototype, as emerged from a letter by the author, Carlo Collodi, who reported that he wished to immortalise the story of a man he had seen in childhood, one Pinocco Sanchez, with wooden prosthetic legs and a wooden patch in place
Faith · Museums · People
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Archive · Faith · Museums · People
A six-winged seraph on the klobuk of Patriarch Nikon. Collection of the New Jerusalem Museum. When Patriarch Nikon was asked at his trial why he wore a black klobuk with a cherub and two panagias, Nikon replied thus: "Black klobuks are worn by the Greek patriarchs, and I
Archive · Mores · Society · Paris · People
The merchant Grigory Grigoryevich Yeliseyev, one of the richest men in the country and grandson of the founder of a famous trading dynasty, managed to leave Russia in 1920; by then he had property and accounts abroad and had no difficulty arranging his life. But not all of his children
NB! · Architecture · Books · Moscow · People
The writer Sergey Durylin, Pasternak's teacher, built a house on a foundation of stones from a chapel of the Moscow Kremlin, with the help of his friend the architect Shchusev, who designed Lenin's Mausoleum. Later a mail kukuruznik (a small Soviet biplane) crashed onto this house.
NB! · Heritage · Society · People
Memorial to Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin beside the Landwehr Canal, where she was murdered on 15 January 1919 together with Karl Liebknecht. The car in which they were being taken to prison was attacked. Rosa's body was thrown into the canal over this very railing, in which the
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Monarchies · Mores · People
Some Interesting Calculations Showing That in 34 Years Catherine II Spent More Than 88 Million Roubles on Her Favourites. Of course, it is impossible to say exactly how much this would be in present-day roubles, but judging by purchasing power, the cost of a basket of provisions and, say,
Archive · Science · People
When in the 1940s the world-renowned scientist, an outstanding researcher of the problems of evolution and population genetics, Nikolay Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky, head of the department of genetics and biophysics at the Brain Institute in Berlin-Buc. In fact, the scientist, who had been invited to Germany as early