Tag: Strelna

  • Why Russians name shoes, tools and weapons after foreign women

    Why Russians name shoes, tools and weapons after foreign women

    The Russian language, rich in metaphors, surprises many foreigners with the fact that some things are literally feminative of other nationalities. But don’t rush to accuse Russians of misogyny! It’s all about linguistic tradition. The complete coincidence of words denoting a representative of a nationality and an event (or object) is called “homonymy”. In our…

  • How magicians tricked Russian tsars

    How magicians tricked Russian tsars

    Rasputin was, most likely, the only court physician who could truly cure the Emperor and his family. The rest had simply deceived the other Russian Tsars and Emperors. Here are four of the most notorious of them. 1. Eliseus Bomelius The Alchemist (1634). David Ryckaert III Imagno/Getty Images “The Fierce Magus Bomelius,” as Russian sources…