Coming Up · Museums · Science · Nature

Exhibition “The Wondrous World of Cones” from botanist Nikolay Budishevsky’s collection in Vidnoye

The Children's Library No. 1 in the town of Vidnoye is hosting an exhibition, "The Wondrous World of Cones". From Tuesday to Sunday, visitors to the library can see more than 70 species, representing 4 families and 22 genera from North America, Europe, North Africa and

Geography · Observations · Science · Mores

Parisian millstones in English mills and Derbyshire gritstone

From an article on English milling I learnt that coarse Derbyshire millstone grit would do for grindstones, but the finest material was held to be stone from quarries outside Paris, which every millowner of any means tried to import. So for centuries the English were, quite literally, eating bread ground

Monarchies · Science · Society

Falling weight of the silver kopeck under Mikhail Fyodorovich and Alexei Mikhailovich

On the Government's Manipulation of the Exchange Rate in Days of Old. Under Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich the weight of the kopeck was 0.5 grams of silver. In practice, however, coins of lesser weight were struck: first 0.48 grams, then 0.46-0.47 grams, until matters

NB! · Books · Science · Humour

A reminder that the word "nightmare" has a French cousin, and that cauchemar came into French from Latin

NB! · Monarchies · Science · Society Pages

King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden yesterday at the dinner in honour of the Nobel laureates at the Royal Palace in Stockholm

Art · Books · Monarchies · Observations · Science

Pareidolia from Arcimboldo's portrait of Rudolf II to the divination of Natasha Rostova

I propose we recall Giuseppe Arcimboldo and his portrait of Emperor Rudolf II as Vertumnus, on the occasion of my having taken a closer look at my grandmother's blanket. The phenomenon itself, in which people see the outlines of faces and creatures in the patterns, stains and details

Observations · Science · Nature

An interesting letter about Knorozov's cat has arrived from Artem K., shedding some light on the history of the Thai and Siamese breeds

I remember a cat my uncle had. We took it for a Siamese, but I now realise that the clever, affectionate and sociable creature was in fact a Thai. Well, now you know too

Geography · Science · Nature

Bar-tailed godwit flew 13,560 km across the Pacific in 11 days without stopping

This small migratory bird, no more than 40 centimetres long, holds the record for the longest non-stop flight. The figure is phenomenal: 13,560 km. A five-month-old bar-tailed godwit chick flew over the Pacific Ocean for 11 days without stopping, travelling at a speed of about

Archaeology · The East · Science

The megalithic complex of Göbekli Tepe in Anatolia, between 9,000 and 12,000 years old

Göbekli Tepe in South-Eastern Anatolia is considered the oldest of the large megalithic structures in the world, its age estimated at 12 to 9 thousand years. The building of temples on this site began as early as the Mesolithic, which attests to the existence of a highly organised society

Observations · Science · People

The need for certainty has always been stronger than the need for truth

The French anthropologist Gustave Le Bon

Cinema · Observations · Science

Videoton-340 Terminal on Kalugina’s Desk in “Office Romance”, Not an Apple II

Some believe that the machine on Kalugina's desk in "Office Romance" is an Apple II, released in the same year as the film. It is not. For all the considerable resemblance between the two devices, what stands before the director of the statistical office is an

Science · Mores · Humour

Humphry Davy tested nitrous oxide on himself, and the gas became a parlour entertainment

Laughing gas, now widely used in Western medicine as an analgesic and inhalation anaesthetic, first came into use in the 1800s precisely as a substance that provoked fits of merriment when inhaled. The British chemist Sir Humphry Davy, who was investigating the treatment of disease by gases, was the first