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Encyclopædia of the sublime

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Hôtel Lambert

The Hôtel Lambert is a grand mansion townhouse in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. In 1843, the hôtel particulier was bought by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, member of the powerful family of Polish magnates.  In 1969, Baron de Redé staged his most famous ball, the Bal Oriental, with guests such as Jacqueline de Ribes, Guy de Rothschild, Salvador Dalí, Brigitte Bardot, Dolores Guinness, and Margrethe II of Denmark. In 1975, the Czartoryski heirs sold the Hôtel Lambert to Baron Guy de Rothschild. In September 2007, the Hôtel Lambert was sold by the Rothschilds to Prince Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Thani, brother of the Emir of Qatar for the purported sum of 80 million euros.

Hope Diamond

The Hope Diamond is one of the most famous jewels in the world, with ownership records dating back almost four centuries. According to specious later accounts, the original form of the Hope Diamond was stolen from an eye of a sculpted statue of the goddess Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh avatar of Vishnu. However, much like the "curse of Tutankhamun", this general type of legend was the invention of Western authors during the Victorian era, and the specific legends about the Hope Diamond's cursed origin were invented in the early 20th century to add mystique to the stone and increase its sales appeal.

Hal Lipset

Hal Lipset was the most respected and also the sleaziest private detective in America. Lipset began as an investigator in the U.S. Army. Later he became a pioneer in electronic surveillance techniques (Coppola's movie The Conversation was partly a portrait of Lipset), while remaining busy with a variety of cases that range from standard divorce snooping through insurance fraud to catching a jewel thief in Europe. Lipset had an apolitical approach to his work: according to him, guilt or innocence is the court's concern, not his; he worked for anyone who paid.

1 Milliard B-Pengo

After WW2, the new democratic government suffered from serious lack of money, so it ordered the national bank to manufacture banknotes quickly and cheaply. There was little time to design new notes, thus the plates of banknotes printed in 1926 were reused as well as portraits from other notes. Beginning with the 1000 pengő note, only denominations of integer powers of ten were used. The uncontrolled banknote issuing aggravated inflation. In 1946 Hungary issued a 100 Million B-Pengo, which was the the largest circulated banknote at the time, unfortunately it was worth only about $0.20 USD in 1946. Hungary also printed a 1 Milliard B-Pengo, but it was never released into circulation. The 1 Milliard B-Pengo translates into 1 trillion Pengos.

Halley’s Comet

Halley's Comet is the best-known of the short-period comets, and is visible from Earth every 75 to 76 years. Halley is the only short-period comet that is clearly visible to the naked eye, and thus, the only naked-eye comet that might appear twice in a human lifetime. Other naked-eye comets may be brighter and more spectacular, but will appear only once in thousands of years. Halley's returns to the inner solar system have been observed by astronomers since at least 240 BC, and recorded by Chinese, Babylonian, and mediaeval European chroniclers.