Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.
The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds, by George de la Tour, c. 1635. Louvre Museum, Paris.
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Miscellany
Four years after the Romanovs were executed by Bolsheviks, a woman claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia surfaced. She impressed skeptics with her ability to recall various details of the royal family’s life, and after Nicholas II’s cousin Grand Duke Alexander spent two days with her, he exclaimed, “I have seen Nicky’s daughter!” The woman spent decades fighting to be the legal heir to the Romanov fortune, losing her last suit in 1970. In the 1990s DNA evidence posthumously proved she was an imposter.
We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.
—Tennessee Williams, 1953Lapham’s
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