🔥The 9th Round of Easy Loan, Earn $40 Reward is in progress❗️ ⏰ Promotion Period: January 15th - Feburary 15th, 2025 👉 Register now and check more details at gate.io/campaigns/358

There is no host at the Oscars this year but Douglas Fairbanks, one of the first hosts, visited in Moscow in 1926 with his then wife, “America’s Sweetheart” Mary Pickford. Here they are in the Savoy hotel alamy.com/stock-image-ma…

The New Economic Policy was in place and cinemas were booming as Hollywood films were shown and Fairbanks and Pickford were huge stars in Russia. Thousands of people came out to see them in Moscow.

“Among the first Hollywood celebrities, they were idolized everywhere, even in the Soviet Union, where audiences preferred American and German films to groundbreaking homemade fare like Battleship Potemkin.” silentfilm.org/archive/a-kiss…

Filmakers in Moscow cunningly made a movie starring Mary Pickford after filming an actor giving her a kiss. The film came out in 1927, but Pickford only found out about the film in the 1940s.

The film “A Kiss from Mary Pickford” is now on YouTube youtube.com/watch?v=Ftto00… Check out a gif from the film here with Pickford dressed in traditional Russian costume pinterest.co.uk/pin/2111131053…

Douglas Fairbanks also appears unwittingly but supposedly never found out that he had starred in the film. Two characters in the film are called “small female psycho” and “big female psycho”

Read more about the Fairbanks and Pickford’s visit here silentfilm.org/archive/a-kiss…

Though some observers say the bear "invasion" was caused by unsecured garbage on Novaya Zemlya, scientists have concluded last week that the primary cause is climate change and a growing ice-free period which keeps polar bears on land - my story for AFP News Agency news.yahoo.com/russias-arctic…

Choice quote: "An experienced biologist can scare off a polar bear with a stick from five meters away, but a military man will be eaten": Instead of writing guides on how to behave with bears, projects in the Arctic should be polar bear fortresses, ruling out any contact at all,

Another tidbit that didn't make it into the story: did you know that polar bears can mate with brown bears? The hybrid is called grolar and is colored like the Moscow winter. Some speculate that polar bears stuck behind on the mainland will eventually be bred out of existence.

Rehearsal for this youtube.com/watch?v=VV06pV…

Before there was such a thing as big data, there was Tim O'Donovan, a retired insurance broker who has tabulated every royal engagement every day for 40 years. At 87, Mr. O'Donovan contemplates the end of his project. nytimes.com/2019/03/08/wor…

A bear went into hibernation right near the Russian town of Snezhinsk (literally Snow-town). The town protected his sleep all winter and is now waiting for him to wake up with some food and a cage, to safely drive him to the forest. 🐻 Such service! znak.com/2019-03-11/dly…

Weekly #manul. They never get old.

Something lovely happened when this story ran: A woman in her 20s from the America midwest, who is also, improbably, obsessed with the court circular, offered to take over when he dies. He is considering the offer

"For Siberians, there are two things that are like a red rag to a bull: the Chinese and encroachment on the lake." I look at the unprecedented backlash against a bottling plant on Lake Baikal for AFP News Agency. news.yahoo.com/fuelled-china-…

Cats that look like an indie band #catsthatloollikeanindieband

This a great story on the amazing Stingray. Someone somehow found my Bowie trip to Soviet Union story from now dead Moscow News and put a link in the story. web.archive.org/web/2014032017…

Bowie asked if anyone had an opener ... two soldiers, one of whom had a mouth full of shiny metal teeth. Seeing Bowie’s stretched out hand, the soldier took the bottle and, “pop,” opened it with his teeth and handed it back.

How the Succession credits should really have played out. This was put together by my genius nephew. m.youtube.com/watch?v=XLdiAf…