Le Mans

Thomas Browne was an English author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including medicine, religion, science and the esoteric.

Mário de Sá-Carneiro was a Portuguese poet and writer. While World War I was in progress in the north of France, he quit the university and started a relationship with a prostitute. A few months later, with growing financial problems and suffering from depression, Sá-Carneiro wrote a dramatic letter to Fernando Pessoa on March 31, 1916:

«Unless a miracle, next Monday, March (or even the day before), your friend Mário de Sá-Carneiro will take a strong dose of strychnine and disappear from this world.»

Extremely unhappy with his life, he still delayed the suicide almost one month. But, as he had proclaimed, at the age of 25 he killed himself swallowing a large dose of strychnine on April 26, 1916, at Hôtel de Nice in the Montmartre district of Paris.

Orpheu. Following the lead of other European vanguard movements of the early twentieth century, and taking the Futurist Vladimir Maiakovsky’s urgings to heart—and in the scintillating atmosphere of Lisbon’s Baixa district—the poets Fernando Pessoa, Mário de Sá-Carneiro and Almada Negreiros, and the painters Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso and Santa Rita Pintor joined together to form a journal of art and literature with principal function of agitating, subverting and scandalizing the Portuguese bourgeoisie and – by extension – all social conventions.

Blaugast is the story of ruin. A bored clerk, Klaudius Blaugast, pursues his desires down a path spiraling into complete degradation. Homeless and destitute, having lost everything to the evil prostitute Wanda, he seeks redemption in a Prague that has become alien to him. Flashbacks to incidents in his past, hallucinatory revelations of the meaning of events long forgotten, point to the seeds of his eventual downfall.

Bruges-la-Morte is a short novel by the Belgian author Georges Rodenbach, first published in 1892. The title is difficult to translate but might be rendered as The Dead City of Bruges. It tells the story of Hugues Viane, a widower overcome with grief, who takes refuge in Bruges, where he becomes obsessed with a dancer he sees at the opera Robert le diable who is the exact likeness of his dead wife. The book is notable for its poetic evocation of the decaying city and for its innovative form.

Angelo d’Arrigo was an Italian aviator, of French origin, who held a number of world records in the field of flight, principally with microlights and hang gliders, with or without motors. He has been referred to as the “Human Condor”. In 2003 he flew 5,500 kilometres from northern Siberia to the Caspian Sea in Iran in the company of a flock of Siberian Cranes  who had been born in captivity and, due to imprinting, considered him their parent: the bird is at risk of extinction and in order to try to save the species, Russian ornithologists hatched this plan: have the eggs incubated under Angelo’s hang-glider, so the chicks saw this as they hatched. Have Angelo be with the chicks as they fledge. And when they were ready to fly, have them fly alongside Angelo so they would consider him their mentor. That way, he could show them the traditional migratory route for their species. They had no other way to learn it.

More here.

Fancy pigeons are domesticated varieties of the Rock Pigeon. They are bred by pigeon fanciers for various traits relating to size, shape, color, and behavior. The breeders of these fancy varieties exhibit their birds at pigeon shows, fairs and other livestock exhibits. There are over 300 breeds of Fancy Pigeons.

Frillback pigeon.

Indian Runners are an unusual breed of domestic duck. They stand erect like penguins and, rather than waddling, they run. The females usually lay about 150 – 200 eggs a year or more, depending whether they are from exhibition or utility strains. They were found on the Indonesian Islands of Lombok, Java and Bali where they were ‘walked’ to market and sold as egg-layers or for meat.

Ani is a ruined and uninhabited medieval Armenian city-site situated in the Turkish province of Kars, beside the border with Armenia.

Rainbow eucalyptus.

Jabuticaba. Tree with fruits on its trunk.

Kalyazin appeared in the 12th century as a sloboda, or the settlement for people relieved from paying taxes. The town’s importance grew significantly with the foundation of the Makaryevsky monastery on the opposite bank of the Volga in the 15th century. This abbey used to be the most conspicuous landmark of Kalyazin and comprised numerous buildings of historic interest, including a refectory from 1525. In 1940 the monastery and most of the old town were flooded during the construction of the Uglich Reservoir. After that, the town was effectively relocated to a new, higher spot.

Dead Vlei is a white clay pan located near the more famous salt pan of Sossusvlei. Dead Vlei is surrounded by the highest sand dunes in the world, the highest reaching 300-400 meters. The clay pan was formed after rainfall, when the Tsauchab river flooded, creating temporary shallow pools where the abundance of water allowed camel thorn trees to grow. When the climate changed, drought hit the area, and sand dunes encroached on the pan, which blocked the river from the area. The trees died, as there no longer was enough water to survive. There are some species of plants remaining, such as salsola and clumps of !nara, adapted to surviving off of the morning mist and very rare rainfall. The remaining skeletons of the trees, which are believed to be about 900 years old, are now black because the intense sun has scorched them. Though not petrified, the wood does not decompose because it is so dry.

Sociable weaver nest. Sociable weavers construct the largest nests of any bird, housing hundreds of individuals spanning many generations.

Fasciation is a condition of plant growth in which the apical meristem, normally concentrated around a single point, producing approximately cylindrical tissue, becomes elongated perpendicularly to the direction of growth, producing flattened, ribbon-like, crested, or elaborately contorted tissue. The phenomenon may occur in the stem, root, fruit, or flower head.