St Pancras in Spheroview

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The deteriorated Gothic splendour of George Gilbert Scott’s railway hotel at St Pancras station, London, in a series of 360 degree views. The empty building looks distinctly creepy in many of these panoramas, like unused maps for a computer game.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The panoramas archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
Adolph Sutro’s Gingerbread Palace

Giant mantis invades Prague

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Viriconium comes to life… Or should that be VR-conium? 360º panorama of this event.

A giant praying mantis invaded Old Town Square in Prague today at 8:15 pm to the delight of hundreds of human onlookers, and a few horses too. The humanoid invaders, on extended springy legs, drove their giant insect through the Old Town amid fireballs and deep heavy funk grooves. The police stood by, trying to direct the bug to more peaceful environs, as many of the grumpier tourists nearby were rather put off their expensive goulash and roasted duck.

The Letni Letna circus theater festival has come to Prague again! If you are in the area, the giant bug will be making another appearance, as well as plenty of other slightly perverse and zany acts.

Via Boing Boing.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The panoramas archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
Paris III: Le Grande Répertoire—Machines de Spectacle

Why “Feuilleton”?

A number of people have asked this question, perhaps inevitably. Aside from liking the sound of the word and enjoying obscure words in general, there’s some vague justification in applying the term to an online journal. The 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica has this to say:

FEUILLETON (a diminutive of the Fr. feuillet, the leaf of a book), originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers. Its inventor was Bertin the Elder, editor of Les Débuts. It was not usually printed on a separate sheet, but merely separated from the political part of the newspaper by a line, and printed in smaller type. In French newspapers it consists chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the fashions, and epigrams, charades and other literary trifles; and its general characteristics are lightness, grace and sparkle. The feuilleton in its French sense has never been adopted by English newspapers, though in various modern journals (in the United States especially) the sort of matter represented by it is now included. But the term itself has come into English use to indicate the instalment of a serial story printed in one part of a newspaper.

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