Tourists photographing the painting

The Founding Ceremony of the Nation is a 1953 oil painting by Chinese artist Dong Xiwen. It depicts Mao Zedong and other Communist officials inaugurating the People's Republic of China at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on October 1, 1949. A prominent example of socialist realism, it is one of the most celebrated works of official Chinese art. After the Communists took control of China, they sought to memorialize their success with art. Dong was chosen to reproduce the October 1 ceremony in a painting, and completed it in a folk art style, drawing on historical Chinese art. When Mao viewed it and liked it, it was assured of success, and was widely reproduced. After government purges, Dong was ordered to remove Gao Gang in 1954 and Liu Shaoqi in 1967. In 1972 a copy was made by other artists to accommodate another deletion. After the purged officials were rehabilitated, the replica was modified in 1979 to include them. Both canvases are in the National Museum of China in Beijing. (Full article...)

The Claimant in the Tichborne case

The Tichborne case concerned the claim by an individual known as "the Claimant" (pictured) to be the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy and fortune. Roger Tichborne disappeared after a shipwreck in 1854; rumours later surfaced that he had survived and made his way to Australia. In 1866 a butcher called Thomas Castro from Wagga Wagga came forward claiming to be Tichborne; he travelled to England where, despite his unrefined manners and bearing, he was accepted by Lady Tichborne as her son. Although other family members were unconvinced, the Claimant gained considerable public support. By 1871 evidence suggested that Castro was actually Arthur Orton, a butcher's son from Wapping in London, who had gone to sea as a boy. A civil case ended with charges of perjury against him, and in 1874 a criminal court jury decided that he was Orton. He was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. Released in 1884, he confessed in 1895 to being Orton, only to recant immediately. He died destitute in 1898. (Full article...)

Statue of a nymph and satyr once held in the Secretum

The Secretum was a British Museum collection of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that held artefacts and images deemed sexually graphic. Many of the items were from pre-Christian traditions and covered wide ranges of human history and geography. Many of the early artefacts with erotic or sexually graphic images acquired by the museum were not put on public display. Modern scholars believe this segregation was probably motivated by a paternalistic stance from the museum to keep what they considered morally dangerous material away from the public. By the 1860s there were around 700 such items held by the museum. In 1865 the antiquarian George Witt donated his phallocentric collection of 434 artefacts to the museum, which led to the formal setting up of the Secretum. Beginning in 1912 items were gradually transferred from the Secretum into departments appropriate for their time frame and culture. The last remaining items were moved out of the collection in 2005. (Full article...)