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The world’s first phone box called Fernsprechkiosk, was opened on January 12, 1881 at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, while credit for the telephone’s invention is disputed by more people, including Antonio Meucci. Today most phone booths have been abandoned for mobile phones and eventually transformed into other public street services like lending libraries or free book exchanges in the form of shelves of donated books (such as the one pictured above).

Well, Edna, that’s the power of an absolute democracy

• 52 perfect comfort films — to watch again and again, The Guardian, February 3, 2021

Composite: Alamy/Allstar/The Guardian Design.

O tempora, o mores

Alternate Academy Awards

On August 22, 2019 1st President of the Republic of Kalmykia and 6th FIDE President Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov was elected by acclamation as Honorary Chairman of the “Russian-Chinese Union of Entrepreneurs, Artists and Cinematographers”, a newly founded non-profit organisation aimed at facilitating and promoting development of the cinematographic, audiovisual and multimedia industry all around the world.

The Rodina Cinema in Elista, Kalmykia, Russia. Photo: Dmitry89/Wikimedia Commons.