Culture

St. Petersburg Mining Museum has expanded its collection of rare artifacts.

Some 165 years ago, virtually everyone on this planet believed that the world and all the living creatures would have never existed if not for the higher forces. Yet long before that, Greek philosophers had already presumed life forms could evolve.

Drafts drawings from the Mining Museum’s storage facilities will help restore the historic appearance of the Polevskoy Copper Smelting Plant.

The Exposition Universelle of 1900 or, as it is better known in English, 1900 Paris Exposition came to its end on 12 November 1900. Exhibits from Russia - including the Mining Museum’s collection of minerals, to which was awarded a grand prize - took over 1,500 prizes.

A malachite block weighing a ton and a half was extracted from below the surface 245 years ago in the vicinity of the area where nowadays the town of Polevskoye, Ural, stands.

Each year over 16 tons of large-sized meteorites fall down onto the surface of Earth. But until the end of the 18th century, scientists did not believe that meteorites were simply falling down from the sky. All because of the beliefs of the Catholic Church, stating this was impossible.

The first technical devices began to be used in mining back in the 14th century. By the middle of the 18th century, the industrial revolution led to the replacement of tools such as picks, shovels, wedges and hammers, with albeit primitive, but machines.

The first exhibition of the painting ”Moonlit Night on the Dnieper” took place 140 years ago. As is known, when creating the picture, the artist used special paints based on pigments from the collection of the oldest technical university in Russia.

The Hall contains systematic collections of igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks from both Russia and other parts of the world. The exposition is based on the principle of genetic and chemical classification of rocks.

The exposition of the Hall is dedicated to St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region and is conventionally divided into two parts.