NB! · Art · Books · Science

The Red and the Black Sun: illustrations from the late sixteenth-century alchemical book Splendor Solis by Salomon Trismosin

Screenshot of a The i Paper article with a photograph of an astronaut in a spacesuit on the lunar surface.

NB! · Science · Society · Humour

Half of Britons would not fly to the Moon for free, seeing no point in the trip

Half of Britons would turn down a free trip to the Moon, fearing that “there is not much to see” or that it would “take too long”. People complained that there is nothing to do and nothing to look at on the Moon, and that flying there “makes no sense”

NB! · Science · Pop Culture · Nature

The American photographer Andrew McCarthy, known for his richly detailed images of space, has published a new, mesmerising photograph of the Moon

Art · London · Science

At Sotheby’s Old Masters sale in London, the top lot was Sandro Botticelli’s "Madonna and Child Enthroned"

At Sotheby’s Old Masters sale in London, the top lot was the painting "Madonna and Child Enthroned" by Sandro Botticelli. The picture sold for £10.9 million, more than four times its estimate, becoming the fifth most expensive work by Botticelli ever sold at auction. The work

Science · Education · Society · Pop Culture

Reference portal Gramota.ru names its editors' "words of the year"

In the opinion of Gramota.ru, the word of the year is "vaib" ("vibe"), while in the individual categories the winners were "prompt" (IT), "podcast" (culture), "microRNA" (medicine) and "marketplace" (economics)

Archive · Books · Science · Saint Petersburg

On a Saint Petersburg Rooftop During the Solar Eclipse of 1912

On a Saint Petersburg rooftop during the solar eclipse of 1912. Photograph by Vladimir Vasilyevich Lebedev. In his book Sixty Years at the Telescope, the Pulkovo astronomer Gavriil Adrianovich Tikhov describes this eclipse thus: “On the seventeenth of April 1912 a partial solar eclipse was observed at Pulkovo. I prepared

Archive · Books · Science · Education

"For most people the appearance of books matters more than the beauties of science

"For most people the appearance of books matters more than the beauties of science. Some go so far as to extol and praise the bookbinders more than the authors. They boast that, thanks to their efforts, this craft has attained in the Academy the greatest perfection, while on the

Faith · Heritage · Science · Rome

Wood analysis dates the Chair of Saint Peter to no earlier than the 6th century

For the first time in 150 years, tourists and residents of Rome can see the wooden throne of Saint Peter the Apostle, previously hidden within the Chair of Saint Peter in the apse of Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. Flying to Rome at once! The relic was

Cinema · Science · Nature · Humour

The famous horse celebrated for being able to read and count is believed to have perished during the First World War

In its day, the mental powers of this horse astonished the European public. Investigators, however, were able to establish that the horse could neither count nor read after all, but could pick up even the slightest changes in a person's facial expression, and it was this that helped

NB! · Monarchies · Science · Pop Culture · Humour

Woman sees face of Princess Diana in slice of tinned ham

A woman has seen the face of Princess Diana in a slice of tinned ham. Though it looks rather more like Margaret Thatcher, my dear, or like pareidolia, the psychological phenomenon whereby people see faces in all manner of everyday objects, surfaces, abstract textures and details of the landscape

Archaeology · Art · Museums · Science

The Getty Museum bought a kouros for 10 million dollars, but later checks pointed to a forgery

At the close of 1983 the art dealer Gianfranco Becchina approached the Getty Museum in California, offering to sell it a beautifully preserved marble statue of the 6th century BC for a record 10 million dollars. The museum people naturally took the two-metre kouros away for examination, which pointed

Observations · Science · Nature · Ethnography

Third supermoon of the year on 17 October and traditional names of the Moon

A Moon such as tonight's was called by the American Indians the Moon of Dying Grass. The European tradition, for its part, has kept the name of the Hunter's Moon, since by its light game could be spotted with ease even at night. This is the