Portal:Russia/DYK/17

... that Russian painter Konstantin Makovsky (pictured) left the Imperial Academy of Arts without a formal diploma, after having refused to paint on a set topic in Scandinavian mythology?
... that the cornerstone for the first museum of space exploration, the Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics in Kaluga, Russia, was laid by Yuri Gagarin?
... that some of the earliest Russians in Bulgaria were the Old Believer Nekrasov Cossacks known as Lipovans?

More did you know

Source