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The library collection is the oldest in Switzerland, and is one of earliest and most important monastic libraries in the world. It holds 2,100 manuscripts dating back to the 8th through the 15th centuries, 1,650 incunabula (printed before 1500), and old printed books. The library holds almost 160,000 volumes. The manuscript B of the Nibelungenlied is kept here.
The Asse II pit is a former salt mine used as a deep geological repository for radioactive waste in the mountain range of Asse in district Wolfenbüttel in Germany.
The Algonquin Round Table was a celebrated group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of The Vicious Circle, as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929.
Alfie Atkins is a fictional character created by the author Gunilla Bergström from Sweden in 1972. In the books Alfie experiences many ordinary everyday events that all kids can easily recognize. In his longing to grow up and be a big boy, Alfie often competes with his father on who can manage these events in the best way. Alfie's father is a nice and positive man. Women appear less frequently in the stories: Alfie has an aunt named Fifi and a grandmother, but no mother is present.
After founding the Dada journal Sic, which printed his poems and those of more famous writers, Albert-Birot invented his joyously erotic hero, Grabinoulor, whose earliest exploits appeared in Sic in 1921. The irrepressible Grabinoulor performs his fantastic epic feats in an onrush of perpetual motion, which this slim book presents in rivers of unpunctuated prose. When Grabinoulor moves a statue in his apartment, trying to restore the parallels and perpendiculars of the furniture, he topples the earth. With his unconventional poetry, he squashes a grammarian. When unleashing his sexual fantasies, he produces poems shaped like bellies, breasts and phalluses. For some of these verses, the French text is included to reveal plays on words. Albert-Birot celebrated the erotic as a means of freeing the artistic imagination from bourgeois constraints. For him, sexuality represented poetic creation.
Vince Aletti is a photography collector.
The DSR-1 is a compact bolt-action rifle designed for police sharpshooters. The expected accuracy of the DSR-1 is extremely high. Some sources state sub 0.2 MOA accuracy with match-grade ammunition and favourable environmental conditions.
Aspen was a multimedia magazine published on an irregular schedule by Phyllis Johnson from 1965 to 1971. Described by its publisher as "the first three-dimensional magazine," each issue came in a customized box or folder filled with materials in a variety of formats, including booklets, "flexidisc" phonograph recordings, posters, postcards and reels of super-8 movie film. Issue #3 was designed by Andy Warhol and David Dalton. Published in December, 1966, the issue is housed in a box with graphics based on the packaging of "Fab" laundry detergent. Among its contents were a flip-book based on Warhol's film "Kiss," and Jack Smith's film "Buzzards Over Bagdad," a flexidisc by John Cale of the Velvet Underground, and a "ticket book" with excerpts of papers delivered at the Berkeley conference on LSD by Timothy Leary and others.
Ama are Japanese divers, famous for collecting pearls. The majority of ama are women. Japanese tradition holds that the practice of ama divers may be 2,000 years old. Traditionally, and even as recently as the 1960s, ama dived wearing only a loincloth. Even in modern times, ama dive without scuba gear or air tanks, making them a traditional sort of free-diver.
A Summer in St. Tropez is a 1983 French film written and directed by photographer David Hamilton. The film was shot at and around David Hamilton's own house in Saint Tropez, which is 800 years old. The film contains no dialogue at all, although the characters occasionally laugh and giggle.