Mei Langfang
An introduction to Peking Opera would not be complete without mentioning female impersonator Mei Lanfang. Traditionally only men performed Peking Opera, including the female roles - and Mei Lanfang was the master.
Leo Belgicus
The Leo Belgicus is a map of Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium drawn in the shape of a lion.
Le Grand Meaulnes
Le Grand Meaulnes is the only novel by French author Alain-Fournier who was killed in the first month of WW I. It is somewhat biographical - especially the name of the heroine Yvonne, with whom he had a doomed infatuation in Paris. Fifteen-year-old François Seurel narrates the story of his friendship with seventeen-year-old Augustin Meaulnes as Meaulnes searches for his lost love. Impulsive, reckless and heroic, Meaulnes embodies the romantic ideal, the search for the unobtainable, and the mysterious world between childhood and adulthood.
Jacques Tati
Though he made only a handful of films, director, writer, and actor Jacques Tati ranks among the most beloved of all cinematic geniuses. With a background in music hall and mime performance, Tati steadily built an ever-more-ambitious movie career that ultimately raised sight-gag comedy to the level of high art.
Achille Castiglioni
Achille Castiglioni was a renowned Italian industrial designer. He was often inspired by everyday things and made use of ordinary materials.
Ant mill
An ant mill is a phenomenon where a group of army ants separated from the main foraging party lose the pheromone track and begin to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle. The ants will eventually die of exhaustion.
Documents
Documents was a Surrealist journal edited and masterminded by Georges Bataille. Published in Paris from 1929 through 1930, it ran for 15 issues, each of which contained a wide range of original writing and photographs.
Darvaza
The Derweze area is rich in natural gas. While drilling in 1971 geologists accidentally found an underground cavern filled with natural gas. The ground beneath the drilling rig collapsed, leaving a large hole with a diameter of about 50-100 meters. To avoid poisonous gas discharge, it was decided to burn the gas. Geologists had hoped the fire would go out in a few days but it has been burning ever since.
Escorial
Escorial wool is so rare there are only three remaining flocks in the world that directly descend from the original Royal Escorial flock. Two in Australia and one in New Zealand.
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.