May in History May in History
Science

May in History

Diary of an Eternal Pessimist
Adam Węgłowski
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time 7 minutes

May in history, according to an eternal pessimist.

1st May 1786

Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro premiered in Vienna. It was a real celebration for music lovers, but a problem for political censors and defenders of morality. Nothing to worry about though, with Salieri in the audience…

2nd May 1729

A baby girl was born in Szczecin (Stettin) to a noble family. Her parents named her Sophie Friederike Auguste, but they will call her Fike. Although she was a princess, her life was no fairy tale. Her mother would have preferred a son, the family wasn’t very rich and Fike’s days were filled with boredom. Fortunately, there were some good fairies around – namely, influential relatives. They arranged for Fike to marry Peter, the future Tsar of Russia. She herself would become known as Empress

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An Introduction to Przekrój An Introduction to Przekrój
Variety

An Introduction to Przekrój

Sylwia Niemczyk

Near the end of the Second World War, a magazine made of wit and levity was born; everyone in Poland read it. While the external factors may change over time, our inner vibe remains the same.

If this text had gotten into the hands of Marian Eile, this paragraph wouldn’t exist. The founder of Przekrój always cut out the introduction, with no mercy and no hesitation. He believed an article with no beginning was better, and usually he was right. On rare occasions the editors would secretly restore the deleted passage, keeping their fingers crossed that the boss wouldn’t notice. Even when he did, he let it go. The issue went to print, and, as nature abhors a vacuum, other texts were already waiting in line where “the great editor”—as his colleagues called him with both humor and admiration—could cut other things out. And that’s how it went, week after week, for the full twenty-four years and 1,277 issues of Przekrój.

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