Modern art is truly fascinating. Not in a way that it produces some novel things that will fascinate future generations for decades and even centuries to come. No, that is very far from the truth. On the contrary, modern art is essentially anything (yes, any little thing) that is a bit unusual and was created by a famous person. Let’s take the creation of Antoine Bridier-Nahmias for example. His brainchild is a set of pictures of petri dishes that were contaminated by various cultures of fungi. If this is art, I missed my chance of becoming famous when I accidentally left a piece of bread in a bag in a cupboard for about six months, and didn’t take a picture of the rather shocking results that awaited me when I finally discovered it. (Photo by Antoine Bridier-Nahmias)

In this April 13, 2018 photo, motorcycle taxi driver Ricardo Medina, 60, transports vegetable vender Rigoberto Herrera Mendez, left, and coconut vendor Osvaldo Ochoa in Campo Florido, east of Havana, Cuba. The three men expressed hope that new government leadership will improve things, saying the country cannot move backwards. “We survive life with our work”, said Medina. (Photo by Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo)

Morgan Miller carries her one-year-old daughter Mia Jennings in one arm as she shovels the stairs to her Springfield home with the other Sunday, January 13, 2019. Miller said she's learned how to do a lot of things while holding a baby in the last year. (Photo by Ted Schurter/The State Journal-Register via AP Photo)

Photo: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 – 1924) lying in state in the Kremlin. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1924

Important! For the same article in Russian language click here.

Something quite intriguing is happening within Russian-speaking internet during the last few – should you type a fully academic inquiry (at least, according to Russian academic requirements) in national search engines for "Lenin's mausoleum" – the first thing you get (even in top 10 searches) is website pages talking about black magic and occult. Website authors view this construction differently, but unconditionally agree on one thing: the mausoleum of the "leader of the world proletariat” – the essence of a magical artifact, a sort of “energy vampire”. It was built with a certain purpose: to drain the energy out of miserable Soviet citizens on one hand; and to poison the anthroposphere of one-sixth part of the earth with its vibes (the exact territory that was occupied by the former Soviet Union), depriving the Russian people of will to resist on the other hand. Complete nonsense? No doubt. Nevertheless, an intriguing one. Well, probably because some oddities do exist in mausoleum's history. These oddities are the thing we are going to discuss this time. First, let me refresh you memory on the subject.

What happens when you combine two of our favorite things, “Game of Thrones” and Disney animation? That's right: magic. Artists Fernando Mendonça and Anderson Mahanski are the ones responsible for the abundance of joy you'll find below and all we can think is, will Disney ever take on Westeros and give us “Mother of Dragons and the 7 Kingdoms”?

Shironeko, also known as “Basket Cat”, is a Turkish van cat called “Shiro”, which is best known for his extremely relaxed demeanor and ability to balance things on his head, similar to Oolong the Pancake Bunny. The cat has been given several nicknames by its fans, most notably “Basket Cat” and “Zen Cat.”

Angel Falls is the world’s highest waterfall as well as the inspiration for Paradise Falls in the Pixar film Up. Unless you’re planning on visiting the falls in the heart of Venezuela in person, the next best thing might be this stunning series of 360° aerial panoramas recently captured by photographer Dmitry Moiseenko over two days from a helicopter. Pan around, zoom into the scene, and become immersed in the otherworldly landscapes found at Angel Falls.

Soap Bubble Structures by Kym Cox. Bubbles optimise space and minimise their surface area for a given volume of air. This phenomenon makes them a useful tool in many areas of research, in particular, materials science and “packing” – how things fit together. Bubble walls drain under gravity, thin at the top, thick at the bottom, which interferes with travelling lightwaves to create bands of colour. Black spots show the wall is too thin for interference colours, indicating the bubble is about to burst. (Photo by Kym Cox/2019 Science Photographer of the Year/RPS)