Kseniia Pavlova

Cinderella’s shoes are actually an alloy of lead oxide - PbO - with silica, a sodium or potassium compound (soda or potash) and small additions of other oxides.

The first higher technical university in Russia was established by a decree of Empress Catherine the Great, following a request with which a mining entrepreneur from the Ural addressed her. But who was the person who established and headed the educational institution? A famous son of a famous father he was.

Circa 200-year-old rare exhibits have been restored in St. Petersburg.

One hundred and seventy-three years ago, in 1848, Nikifor Syutkin, a worker at the state-owned Miass gold mines, was, just as usually he did, digging for gold. Suddenly he heard a tinkling sound from underneath his pickaxe. When he shook the dirt off the find, he barely managed to elevate a 36-kilogram gold nugget up the wooden ladder.

One would ask, what mystery may little cast-iron statuettes, known as ’Capuchin Foxes’, hold?

Nature often shows us how the laws of physics and mathematics work through geometric shapes. Sometimes we think such forms cannot exist in nature since they seem too perfect and ideal.

As was initially planned by the city leaders of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, switching to distant learning should have caused university students to leave the cities, thereby reducing the pressure on hospital capacity brought by the Covid-19 pandemic. According to a Master’s student from Serbia, many non-locals and foreigners preferred to stay. She also spoke about the expectations of international students who study in Russia.

Analysts from Goldman Sachs say that oil prices will reach $65 per barrel this year. Is it, however, a realistic scenario?

The most well-known of gold fevers is presumably the Klondike Gold Rush. Thanks to Jack London, who himself as a young man left for Alaska to seek gold. But although many were reading his novels, few knew it had all started in Russia, years before coming to America.

The correct answers are as follows: on the window glass and in December. If, while the temperature is above zero, and provided the air humidity is high, a water film forms on the glass surface, then, once the temperature drops below freezing, the film may turn into a dendrite-like frost pattern.

Although this stone is found on all continents but Antarctica, it remains one of the most demanded globally.

The most well-known reference to windmills dates back to 1604 when the first part of the novel ’The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha’ was published.

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.

This stone was considered sacred by members of the most mysterious medieval order - the Knights Templar. It comes as no surprise since the rock may change its colour in a matter of a few minutes.

This rock may occur as below the Earth’s surface as in space, too. For centuries humanity was tricked into thinking it was a precious mineral.

Vladimir Lenin, a Russian revolutionary and politician, was known to favour monuments as an instrument of propaganda. Having won the revolution, the Council of People’s Commissars decreed to install monuments to the great people of the past - Spartacus, Brutus, Razin, Khalturin - onto the squares and parks of Russian cities. Yet out of 50 names in the Lenin’s list, there was only one woman - Sophia Perovskaya.