Want to build a legacy and found a business for the ages? Brewing and distilling appear to be solid choices: The oldest company still in business in every (well, almost every) country. My own home is currently supporting the entrepreneurial traditions of Finland (Fiskars axe), Barbados (Mount Gay rum) and Trinidad and Tobago (Angostura bitters).

Scythians were known to be great drinkers, and Ossetian ceremonies typically involve the generous consumption of alcohol through repeated toasts. Indeed, the Ossetian word kwyvd (куывд) means both “toast” and “prayer”

 A sample of the many interesting things to be found on A Canadian in Ossetia.

Via Languagehat (who offers some gentle linguistic correction).

Let it never be said that appalling '70s culture was solely an American phenomenon: the Russians could hold their own. Dschinghis really starts gettin' down around 2:26.

A household at war with a ratel
Installed iron bars on their cradle
But then left them unlatched
And the baby was snatched:
What was left they scooped up with a ladle.

--D. Capoda

Sketches made alongside Darwin on the Beagle voyage: