I came across a mention of Catherine II's erotic cabinet, supposedly discovered at Tsarskoye Selo by soldiers at the very start of the war

I came across a mention of Catherine II's erotic cabinet, supposedly discovered at Tsarskoye Selo by soldiers at the very start of the war. The story is murky and even contradictory, and there is a great deal of muddle in it. If soldiers found it, what were they doing in an empty palace? If the palace had already been evacuated, why was part of the furniture left in the apartments? Unpacked, and not in a cellar. The tale has it that the palace yielded a room hung with wooden phalluses and filled with furniture decorated with erotic motifs. The subsequent fate of the suite is not specified. Narrators often vouch for the truth of the smuttiness with photographs of tables on phallic legs and armchairs with members at the headrest. Were such details connected with any monarch other than Catherine the Great, it would be positively odd.

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free. So, here is the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

I came across a mention of Catherine II's erotic cabinet, supposedly discovered at Tsarskoye Selo by soldiers at the very start of the war

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s