In seventeenth-century England, this contraption was applied to women accused of gossiping: a metal frame fitted over the head made it impossible to open the mouth. A woman convicted of so nebulous an offence as tittle-tattle was required to walk through the town in such headgear
Alexander I, King of Poland, Tsar and Autocrat of All the Russias Just a reminder of Russia's borders before 1918: in 1815 the greater part of the Duchy of Warsaw became part of the Russian Empire as the Kingdom of Poland, or the Vistula Land, until everything fell
A photograph of 1930 showing the deportation of a kulak and his family The number of victims of dekulakisation has still not been established and can hardly be stated unambiguously, since the figure includes both those directly repressed (stripped of their property, evicted, exiled, arrested) and, on occasion, the victims
From a guidebook to Syria. Photographs by Félix Bonfils (1831-1885)
On the evening of 1 October the Miller mansion at 3 St Isaac's Square in Saint Petersburg burned down. A house of the second half of the eighteenth century, rebuilt in 1879-1880 in eclectic forms by the architect Ferdinand Miller, it was granted the status of a