The Immortal Count (Is it possible for a person to live forever? That is what some people are claiming about a historical figure known as Count de Saint-Germain. His origins are still unclear. Some records date his birth to the late 1600s, although some believe that his longevity reaches back to the time of Christ. He has appeared many times throughout history – even as recently as the 1970s – always appearing to be about 45 years old. He was known by many of the most famous figures of European history, including Casanova, Madame de Pampadour, Voltaire, King Louis XV, Catherine the Great, Anton Mesmer, George Washington and others. He has also been linked to a number of occult movements and conspiracy theories. The date of birth for Saint German is unknown, although most accounts say he was born in the 1690s. A genealogy compiled by Annie Besant for her co-authored book, The Comte De St. Germain: The Secret of Kings, asserts that he was born the son of Francis Racoczi II, Prince of Transylvania in 1690. What we do know for certain is that he was an accomplished alchemist, which means he could turn heaps of metal into pure gold. If that wasn’t a neat enough trick already, the count also claimed to have discovered the secret of eternal life! Between 1740 and 1780 Saint-Germain, who was quite a celebrity in those days, traveled extensively throughout Europe – and in all that time never seemed to age. Voltaire, the 18th century philosopher, perhaps best summed up the Count of St. Germain: this is “a man who never dies, and who knows everything.”)

another Immortal Count..................

A book about Bela Lugosi...............

Off to work............................

Janet Evanovich - (née Schneider; April 22, 1943) is an American writer. She began her career writing short contemporary romance novels under the pen name Steffie Hall, but gained fame authoring a series of contemporary mysteries featuring Stephanie Plum, a former lingerie buyer from Trenton, New Jersey, who becomes a bounty hunter to make ends meet after losing her job. The novels in this series have been on The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Amazon bestseller lists. Evanovich has had her last seventeen Plums debut at #1 on the NY Times Best Sellers list and eleven of them have hit #1 on USA Today Best-Selling Books list. She has over two hundred million books in print worldwide, and her books have been translated into over 40 languages. She has also co-authored several series with other writers, such as the Fox and O'Hare series, the Knight and Moon series, and the Lizzy and Diesel series.

Comment: I've read all but the latest Stephanie Plum books.

The first book in the Stephanie Plum series - One for the Money - was made into a movie starring Katherine Heigl as Plum.

KunstHausWien (is a museum in Vienna, designed by the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. This museum in the Landstraße district houses the world's only permanent exhibition of Hundertwasser's works, and also hosts regular temporary exhibitions of other artists. The KunstHausWien operates as a private business and does not receive any government aid.[1] In 2009 the KunstHausWien received 174,000 visitors. The museum was created through the renovation of the 1892 building which housed the Thonet furniture factory (creator of the iconic bistro chair), in a style commensurate with Hundertwasser's art. It stands less than half a mile from the Hundertwasserhaus, a municipally owned apartment block also designed by Hundertwasser and completed in 1986. The renovation was planned by Hundertwasser himself and carried out from 1989-91 with sponsorship from BAWAG P.S.K. The museum was opened in April 1991. The KunstHausWien has a total exhibition area of 4,000 square meters. The two lower floors house the permanent exhibits. Temporary international exhibitions are held on the third and fourth floors. The entire building is designed in typical Hundertwasser style, with wavy, undulating floors and a notable lack of straight lines. Bright, glaring colors are used throughout, and foliage abounds. There is a fountain in the foyer, and a restaurant with abundant plant life reminiscent of a winter garden. An unevenly winding staircase leads to the main part of the exhibition on the upper floors. To keep the rooms flooded with daylight, Hundertwasser, who was said to be fond of sunlight and therefore windows too, had a glass frontage built in front of the facade. The museum was built in a traditional manner, but decorated with enamelled, checkerboard mosaics on the facade and adjacent sections. In contrast to Antoni Gaudí, Hundertwasser used symmetrical mosaic stones, carefully arranged. The size of each stone is likewise not accidental, which is rare for building-mounted mosaics that are not industrially manufactured. The mosaics cover only certain (non-load bearing) parts of the surface and contribute to the trademark features of the building: the incorporation of nearly every part of the facade into an overall picture, and the very deliberate concealment of the boundaries between floors. In 2003 Hunderwasser's colleague and co-author professor Joseph Krawina initiated a lawsuit against the museum board, claiming violation of his rights to jointly created art. The national Supreme Civil Court (OGH) issued an injunction in favor of Krawina and, according to 2003 publications, both parties were advised to resolve the dispute out of court)

FYI: From my Architecture topic folder......

Stieg Larsson - Karl Stig-Erland "Stieg" Larsson (15 August 1954 – 9 November 2004) was a Swedish writer, journalist, and activist. He is best known for writing the Millennium trilogy of crime novels, which were published posthumously, starting in 2005, after he died of a sudden heart attack. The trilogy was adapted as three motion pictures in Sweden, and one in the U.S. (for the first book only). The publisher commissioned David Lagercrantz to expand the trilogy into a longer series, which has six novels as of September 2019. For much of his life, Larsson lived and worked in Stockholm. His journalistic work covered socialist politics and he acted as an independent researcher of right-wing extremism. He was the second-best-selling fiction author in the world for 2008, owing to the success of the English translation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The third and final novel in the Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, became the bestselling book in the United States in 2010, according to Publishers Weekly. By March 2015, his series had sold 80 million copies worldwide.

Comment: I've read all of the books in the original trilogy and also the ones written by Lagercrantz.

At the time of Larsson's death, he was working on putting together all of the pieces surrounding the assassination on February 28, 1986, of Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister. This assassination was never solved. There was a book published in 2019 about Larsson's work on this mystery. I read this book also.

Mundus Novus (meaning “New World”, is a pamphlet first published in Latin in 1503, Amerigo Vespucci purportedly corresponds with his patron, Lorenzo Pietro di Medici, about his voyage to the New World. Many scholars believe this to be a highly exaggerated, possibly even fictionalized version of several genuine letters written by Vespucci, who participated in two voyages between 1499 and 1501. 

the author of this pamphlet is where the name America came from........................

is also the name of a board game.................

FYI: From my Encyclopedia topic folder................

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Calling it a night..............

Neptune is the last planet in our solar system. It is dark, cold, and very windy. It's more than 30 times as far from the sun as Earth is. Neptune is very similar to Uranus. It's made of a thick fog of water, ammonia, and methane over an Earth-sized solid center. Its atmosphere is made of hydrogen, helium, and methane. The methane gives Neptune the same blue color as Uranus. Neptune has six rings, but they're very hard to see. It also has 14 moons. One day on Neptune goes by in 16 hours. Neptune has such a long journey around the Sun it takes 165 Earth years to go around once. That’s a long year!

YouTube

NASA Makes Unexpected Discovery On Neptune | Real Images

NASA Makes Unexpected Discovery On Neptune | Real Images. It's been nearly 33 years since NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew close to Neptune, giving humanity...

Neptune is known as the Roman god of the Sea. In Roman religion and mythology, Neptune, also called Neptunus, was originally regarded as the god of fresh water, as opposed to salty sea water. He may have arisen as a sky god, casting lightning bolts instead of his throwing his trident. Or he may have initially been viewed as a fertility god, sending up springs of water from the earth. By 399 B.C., he was seen as equivalent to the Greek sea god Poseidon. Thus, his domain changed from freshwater springs to that of the ocean and sea. His former role as a deity of fresh water was filled by the deity Salacia, the goddess of “leaping springwater.”

Operation Popeye (was a military cloud-seeding project carried out by the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War in 1967–1972. The highly classified program attempted to extend the monsoon season over specific areas of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in order to disrupt North Vietnamese military supplies by softening road surfaces and causing landslides. The former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, was aware that there might be objections raised by the international scientific community but said in a memo to the president that such objections had not in the past been a basis for prevention of military activities considered to be in the interests of U.S. national security. The chemical weather modification program was conducted from Thailand over Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam and allegedly sponsored by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the CIA without the authorization of then Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, who had categorically denied to Congress that a program for modification of the weather for use as a tactical weapon even existed)

Calling it a night.......................................

Pin can be a thin piece of metal with a sharp point at one end and a round head at the other, used especially for fastening pieces of cloth.

Push pin

Safety pin

Bobby pin/Hair pin

Pin can be a stick with a flag placed in a hole to mark the hole's position in golf.

Pin can be a peg for regulating the tension of the strings of a musical instrument.

Pin can be an ornament or emblem you wear on your clothing to designate you like something.

Pin can be a fall in wrestling.

PIN can be an abbreviation for Personal Identification Number.

Quad God (aka Ilia Malinin, who dubbed himself the “Quad God, became the first figure skater to land a quad axel in competition, which he did while competing at the US International Figure Skating Classic. A month later, Malinin landed the first quad axel in the history of the Grand Prix of Figure Skating, helping him snag first place and become the youngest men's champion in Skate America history)

Calling it a night.........................

The Royal Lodge at Windsor Estate - is a Grade II listed house in Windsor Great Park in Berkshire, England, half a mile north of Cumberland Lodge and 3.2 miles (5.1 km) south of Windsor Castle. It is part of the Crown Estate. The grounds extend to 98 acres (40 hectares),[4] partly under its own head gardener, but mostly the responsibility of the Crown Estates Commissioners. While the house has grown piecemeal since the 1840s, and remains relatively small and informal, the grounds have a unifying plan. This was the result of work undertaken by the Duke and Duchess of York in the 1930s, with the assistance of Sir Eric Savill, of the Windsor Estate. In 1931, King George V granted Royal Lodge to the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth) as a country retreat. Wings were added on each flank in the 1930s. There are two lodges at the entrance, and groups of three cottages each side of the lodges. The main building has some 30 rooms, including 7 bedrooms, and a saloon (48 by 30 by 30 feet, 14.6 by 9.1 by 9.1 m). The original conservatory survives. The grounds contain the miniature cottage Y Bwthyn Bach, a gift to Princess Elizabeth as a child from the people of Wales in 1932. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and their daughters Princesses Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) and Margaret were depicted in the Royal Lodge in Herbert James Gunn's 1950 painting Conversation Piece at the Royal Lodge, Windsor. After the death of her husband George VI in 1952, the Queen Mother continued to use the house as one of her country retreats as a grace and favor residence until her death. The Queen Mother died at the Royal Lodge in March 2002, with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, by her side. 

In August 2003, Prince Andrew, Duke of York was granted a lease agreement by the Crown Estate for 75 years. The property leased included the Royal Lodge, a Gardener's Cottage, the Chapel Lodge, six Lodge Cottages, and police security accommodation in addition to 40 hectares of land. The lease agreement required Prince Andrew to carry out, at his own expense, refurbishments under-estimated at £7.5 million at September 2002 prices, excluding VAT. It also provided for a premium payment of £1 million. However, in 2023 it was reported that Andrew had been offered the smaller five-bedroom Frogmore Cottage instead, until then the UK residence of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and his family, who had been issued with an eviction notice by Buckingham Palace.