Thanks, Readers!

Having reached the milestone of 50,000 visitors today, I thought I'd write to say thank you to all who have read, commented on and shared this site. Its been rewarding for me to find that members of the general public are actually interested in the arcane oddities of historical research -- the nature of the historical discipline means that its sometimes easy to forget this. RES OBSCURA is still only around seven months old and is thus very much a work in progress, so I welcome any comments, suggestions and criticisms. Please comment on this post to let me know what you think and what might be improved! Also, here are my two most-viewed posts of 2010: Waterboarding in the Seventeenth Century and Color Photographs of Vanished Russia. One of my favorites, despite not getting many views, is Scurvy, Shipwreck and Spaniards in the Indies, which was based on some archival research I did in London this summer. These cropped images, by the way, come from an beautiful painting by Lorenzo Lotto which is usually called 'The Allegory of Virtue and Vice.' Look for a post on Lotto's enigmatic works in the near future!