Archaeology · Faith · Science · Ethnography
Archaeologists have discovered a sacred place of people who lived 23,000 years ago at a Palaeolithic site in the Bryansk Region. It was a hearth with mammoth bones dug into it, and beneath them lay objects which, in the researchers' opinion, were used for ritual purposes. Among them
Observations · Science · Education · Humour
A wave to all my lecturers at the Higher School who made us cram Excel. Some 20% of the genetic studies published in leading scientific journals contain errors caused by the autoformatting settings in Microsoft Excel. You have surely run into it yourselves, when the programme swaps the data you
Archaeology · Books · Observations · Science · Education
Friends! My book is out! It is a course of study on the peopling of the Americas, on which I worked for two years and which sets out exhaustive information on where the first people to reach the American continent came from, by what route, what drove them and what
NB! · Architecture · Moscow · Science
The eight-petalled dome of GUM, incidentally, was created by our greatest engineer, Vladimir Shukhov. So GUM is a relative of Shukhov's television tower, of the Pushkin Museum with its glass roof, and of the Kiyevsky Railway Station with its arched covered train shed
Architecture · London · Science · Education
Contrary to rumour, Isaac Newton has nothing to do with these moon dials at Queens' College. The curious panel appeared on a Cambridge wall in 1743, and to tell the time from it one did indeed need a university education. That is precisely why moon dials never became as
Science · Palaeontology · Humour
This is the first dinosaur bone to receive a name, in the eighteenth century. It was christened Scrotum humanum, that is, the human scrotum. Why, I think, hardly needs explaining. The term does not, of course, conform to the Linnaean binomial, being rather descriptive in character. Some suppose that it
Maps · Monarchies · Museums · Observations · Science · Nature · Reportage
Our stroll through the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco continues. In the frame: equipment for exploring the seabed and taking soil samples, along with preserved marine fauna from the time of the museum's founder, Prince Albert I, who, after service in the French navy, devoted his leisure to a
Architecture · Monarchies · Museums · Science · Nature
The Oceanographic Museum, founded in the late nineteenth century by Prince Albert I, occupies an enormous building overhanging the sea. Inside are a colossal collection of stuffed marine animals, equipment for the study of the ocean, an aquarium, interactive exhibits and a collection of personal belongings and instruments of the
Archive · Science · Society
A group of American scholars has created a 3D model of an eighteenth-century slave ship. Judging by the description, the model is based on the only fully surviving plan of a typical vessel used to transport slaves from Africa. Dr Nicholas Radburn, lecturer at Lancaster University and historian of
Art · Observations · Science · Humour
An engraving of 1646 depicts Prudence (left) and Boldness (right). Besides the ideals of medical practice, the engraving conveys the two principal medical trades of its day: the apothecary's art, with a physician giving medicine to a patient in bed, and surgery, with a surgeon amputating the leg
Museums · Science · People
In Russia there is only one instrument by the celebrated mathematician Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651-1708): the burning lens from a device acquired by the Academy of Sciences in the early 1700s. Until 1947 the lens was kept in the museum of the Physical Institute of the USSR Academy
Archive · Museums · Science · Saint Petersburg
The Lomonosov Museum's collection was assembled with the help of other academic institutions, the Hermitage, the Russian and Historical Museums, and the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. In 1946-1948, 343,950 roubles were spent on acquisitions, and for this sum 254 items were bought, illustrating Lomonosov'