Archive · Science · People
This is what one of the first X-ray images looks like, taken on 23 January 1896. Contrary to a misconception widespread on the internet, it is not a picture of the right hand of the wife of Wilhelm Röntgen, discoverer of the mysterious X-rays. It is a picture
Moscow · Museums · Observations · Science · Society
The Museum of Moscow has a rather successful exhibition, "Take Away the Stuffed Fox", devoted to the local-lore movement and the canon. The organisers declare that the project is meant to dispel "the nostalgic aura around the museum of local lore". Suit yourselves. Many historians
Faith · Science · Nature
Besides their part in the many rites of Easter and in the Christian legendarium, rabbits also played a role in the scientific establishment of the mechanisms of heredity. And in a rather unexpected fashion. Darwin supposed that certain capsules containing hereditary information were lodged in the germ cells. In his
Art · Books · Museums · Science
While you were making a discovery, Vermeer managed to paint two pictures. The pictures are called The Astronomer and The Geographer; they were painted in 1668-1669, and they show one and the same man in one and the same interior, but with different attributes. The Astronomer is in the
Cinema · Books · Science · Palaeontology · Nature · Humour
There have been other occasions when modern people ate frozen representatives of the Pleistocene megafauna found in icy landscapes. And I am not speaking of Andrew Bergman's crime comedy "The Freshman", in which, for a million dollars, Hawaiian tiger fish mixed with smoked turkey was served
Museums · Science · Mores · New York · Humour
At one party or another one hears it boasted how epic it is, and how it will certainly go down in history. The tale of heavily pomaded guests sewn about on every side with jewels, in whatever numbers they may be presented, is, however, as old as the Proverbs of
Books · Science · People · Saint Petersburg
Vasily Adodurov, Adjunct of the Academy of Sciences and a contemporary of Lomonosov, played a weighty part as early as the 1730s in establishing the norms of Russian orthography. True, many of his ideas were too progressive and remained no more than a project. He thought it sensible to rid
Archive · Observations · Science · Society
Found an interesting document in my home archive: the minutes of a meeting of one of the councils at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The agenda is extremely topical and perfectly intelligible in our present circumstances. The item in question was a ban on mentioning in dissertations the
London · Observations · Science · Education · Society
"When the Roman Empire fell, it was in large part the result of uncontrolled immigration. The empire could no longer control its borders ..and Europe sank into the Dark Ages, which lasted a very long time. ..it could happen again" The Prime Minister of Britain has warned of
Observations · Science · Humour
At last, a database of full-text scholarly publications has been found that allows one to search academic journals published before the Nativity of Christ. As a man who regards the sixteenth century as the recent past and can recall the contents of a Sumerian clay tablet dated to 3000
Aristocracy · Monarchies · Science · Mores · Paris
In the drawing room of the antiquary Michel Meyer stood a microscope, an intriguing trinket, though many would call it heaven knows what, neither the most decorative nor the most useful item in the furnishings. Good for propping up books, perhaps, or weighing down the sauerkraut? Yet this microscope dates
Art · Monarchies · Moscow · Museums · Science · Nature · Humour
Over the long years the picture has been restored more than once, and by our day all the insects, originally natives of the Illyrian Provinces, have been replaced by insects born, lived and died on Russian soil. One might say that this curious heraldic trinket has, in the end, become