Archive · Science · People

Nikolay Timofeyev-Resovsky in Germany, the death of his son and his sentence after the war

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

Books · Science · Nature · Ethnography

There are many signs of the harsh frosts to come, but the surest is clouds that form fiery rings or even columns about the setting sun, making a kind of phantom city, or blazing pyramid-shaped rays that rise from the sun into the heavens…

There are many signs of the harsh frosts to come, but the surest is clouds that form fiery rings or even columns about the setting sun, making a kind of phantom city, or blazing pyramid-shaped rays that rise from the sun into the heavens. And when these fiery crimson

Faith · Books · Science · Society · People

In his treatise "On the Preservation and Increase of the Russian People", Lomonosov reflects on the importance of a proper attitude to fasting, recalling the number of deaths from overeating on the eve of the fast and immediately after its end, while at t

According to Lomonosov, "pure repentance is a good life, which inclines God to mercy, to bounty and to love of us. Keep the commandments given by Christ, on which hang all the law and the prophets: Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart (that is, not with

Books · Science · Mores

Origin of the English phrase skeleton in the cupboard and the ban on doctors working with corpses

A skeleton in the cupboard. The expression came to us from English and is connected with the history of medicine, or, to be more precise, with the ban in England on physicians working with dead bodies, the bodies of executed criminals alone excepted. This "scientific material", being very

Art · Science · Society · Ethnography

Soyuz-Apollo

Soyuz-Apollo. A work by Lubsan Dorzhiev (1918-2011), People's Artist of the Buryat ASSR, who painted in the folk style and for many years devoted himself to Buryat ornamentation. Soyuz-Apollo was the first international crewed space flight, and is considered to mark the end of the

NB! · Archive · Science · People

Einstein Is Three Years Old

NB! · Art · Science · Nature

Asian Elephant, Anselmus Boetius de Boodt, 1596 - 1610

Geography · Observations · Science

The Sharpest Photograph of Uranus Yet

A reminder: Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun, the third largest by diameter and the fourth by mass in our system. Please look upon this beauty as you did on the starry sky in childhood, and forget all that is transient and vain; leave your sorrows, fears and

Science · Society · Humour

Conclusions of a memorandum on astrology and its recommendations to astrologers

The Commission for Combating Pseudoscience of the Expert Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences has issued an 11-page memorandum on the pseudoscientific nature of astrology. The memorandum concludes: - Astrology does not meet the methodological requirements imposed on a scientific discipline. - Experimental tests of astrologers' claims yield negative

NB! · Observations · Science · Nature

Simply Incredible Photograph of the Moon

NB! · Art · Museums · Science · Rome

The Laocoön and His Sons of the Rhodian school from the Museo Pio-Clementino, and the Austrian anatomist Josef Hyrtl's reflections on the legendary sculpture

Geography · Maps · Science

Antarctica on World Maps from Ptolemy to the Discoveries of 1819 and 1820

Antarctica has appeared on maps of the world since the time of Ptolemy, mostly labelled Terra Australis Incognita. It is there, too, on this world map by Guillaume Le Testu of 1555, drawn in different projections, which records the Strait of Magellan, by then surely well known. From the seventeenth