The Italian Artist Who Became a British Institution in Victorian England Carlo Pellegrini, in a painting by Degas Carlo Pellegrini (Naples, 25 March 1839 – London, 22 January 1889) was an Italian artist who for many years was the leading caricaturist for the magazine Vanity Fair, and whose drawings became synonymous with the magazine’s artistic sensibility. Pellegrini was born into a family...
Using Pigeons to Deliver Mail During the 1870 Siege of Paris In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, Paris was besieged by Prussian forces and cut off from what remained of unoccupied France. In an effort to maintain communications between the capital and the rest of the country, France established an innovative system of ail delivery that made use of the latest technology of the time. A balloon...
Frederick the Great Frederick the Great, This is what happens when you let an AI artist create the image for this article. Early Life Friedrich Wilhelm was born on 14 August 1688 as the only son of Frederick the First and the witty, philosophically gifted Charlotte of Hanover, only a few months after the death of his grandfather, the Great Elector. Even as a child he had a robust physique, an...
An Atlantic Storm Solo Atlantic Crossing Shortly after World War 1, in 1921, Alain Gerbault (November 17, 1893 – December 16, 1941), a former French Air Force pilot sailed alone across the Atlantic in a small schooner built in 1892. During the war, he and his two closest companions had dreamed of sailing together to the Pacific Islands, but both of his friends had been killed in action. He now...
Wallenstein Wallensteinafter an engraving by Peter de Jode. Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius Baron von Waldstein or Wallenstein (24 September 1583 – 25 February 1634) came from an old Bohemian family, whose name can already be found in the twelfth century. He was born on September 15, 1583 and was born two months prematurely. His parents were Protestants, and he soon lost both of them, his father when he...
“That you can’t end, that makes you great.”Goethe Dostoevsky Dosteovsky IT is difficult and responsible to speak worthily of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881) and his importance for our inner world, because Dostoevsky requires a new measure of vastness and violence. An enclosed work, a poet to strives to first find the near and then discovers...
Last Stand at the Battle of Saragarhi 21 Sikh Soldiers of the British Colonial Army Take on 10,000 Attacking Pashtun Rebels The Battle of Saragarhi was fought on 12 September 1897 between Pashtuns of the Afridi and Orakzai and the British Indian Army. Saragarhi was a communications post in the Samana Mountain Range in British India, now Pakistan. It was built between the two forts Lockhart (old...
Emma Goitein Dessau, also known as Emma Goitein, (Karlsruhe, Germany 1877 – Perugia, Italy September 17, 1968) was a German painter and woodcutter.. Emma Goitein Dessau, Self Portrait – Oil on Canvas (1918) CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Dessau was born in Karlsuhe, which at the time was the capital of the Grand Duchy of Baden. She was related on her father’s side of the family...
The Story of an Ancient French Christmas Tradition Christmas Traditions – The Christmas Shoe This account, taken from the original French in a book entitled La Nuit de Noel Dans Tous les Pays (Christmas Eve in All Countries), recounts the charming old Christmas tradition of filling a large shoe (instead of a Christmas stocking) with presents for a child. This traditional French custom...
Example of an Endband What is an Endband? – Meaning and Examples The Endband sounds like it would be a great name for a punk group but it is actually a term used in book binding and printing. The Endband is the small, colored ribbon that is glued to the top and bottom edge of the spine of the book, the outer covering that covers the binding in hardcover books, or woven through the pages of...