"500 Person Sex" (５００人ＳＥＸ, EC-OPEN-0604) is a sex video released by Japanese adult video production house, Soft on Demand (SOD) on 4th May 2006. It is the largest known sex orgy recorded.

It features 250 couples, described by SOD as students, who enter what looks like a large warehouse, and over the course of two hours, engage in a variety of foreplay, mutual masturbation, and intercourse. All sexual acts are performed in near synchronization with all the other couples.

The least frequent references by men were to "non-erotic" items such as lips and hearts (none recorded). Three per cent of inscriptions related to the genitalia of the opposite sex; and non-erotic references to love (both with the same and the opposite sex) also scored three per cent. Five per cent of the inscriptions referred to heterosexual dating.

Paul Raymond, born Geoffrey Anthony Quinn, the son of a Liverpool haulage contractor, is without doubt the most successful individual promoter of magazine and theatrical erotica in Britain today. His "Men Only" is one of the best-selling girlie magazines in Britain, with "Club International", from the same Fleet Street stable, also chalking up impressive sales. In addition he now has five London theatres, including the Revuebar, the Windmill, and the Whitehall (this latter is said to have cost him £340,000). His most expensive show - costing around

Theda Bara was the first screen vamp. She was also the first star to have a screen personality specially created for her. Bara wore erotic costumes which often scarcely concealed her breasts or buttocks.

"A couple of loosely spun spider's webs did duty for a bra, or else an asp curved snugly around the contours of each breast, while a few bead whorls appliquéd on her hip bone by gum arabic looked like some satyr's erotic doodling."

She also had a liking for wearing metal chains against the naked flesh "in a way that carried an undertone of perversion".

This is another tricky one. Avid researchers into such matters have scrutinised films frame by frame. Was it hair or was it shadow? Not that it matters all that much, but some people find it nice to know the truth.

Some connoisseurs opt for "Blow Up": there is a sexy scene in which David Hemmings romps with a couple of naked teenagers. The Catholic Office gave "Blow-Up" a Condemned rating.

It is thought that Giorgione and Titian were the first painters to use a reclining nude woman as the subject of a painting. Where, before their time, such a position occurs, as on some Roman sarcophagi, the figure is only a detail, filling in the corners to complete the design.

The use of the nude woman in such a way was secondary to the main design. Giorgione and Titian in both sculpture and painting elevated the reclining nude to a significant status, and this is the teeth of opposition from the Christian Church to all things carnal.

It is difficult to say what the difference is between erotica and pornography. Those who praise sexual manifestations in art will tend to use the former word, those who are perpetually disgusted by all things carnal will incline to savour the latter. To say of a magazine that it was "pornographic" is not necessarily to condemn it, nor, mutatis mutandis, is it to praise it.

Brown and Bigelow of Saint Paul, Minnesota, is the world's oldest calendar company. Around 1903 the firm produced its first calendar with a female subject "Colette" (from a painting from Angelo Asti), a "charming but conservative portrait of a young beauty."

In the years that followed, "Colette" helped to sell more than 1.5 million calendars. In 1904 the first pin-up calendar indicated that the manufacture of "girlie" calendars could be a lucrative business.

Robert Herrick has been dubbed the "Kissing Poet." For instance his "Hesperides", 1648, is replete with kisses and kissing.

The appearance of women on the stage got under way in earnest when Tom Killigrew, one of the King's best friends produced "Othello" on 8 December 1660. Women had already appeared in plays on the Continent. In England no self respecting young woman would have thought of a career in acting - and so al the casting was done in brothels! The subject-matter of plays being performed was such that whores fitted naturally into the female roles. Theatre thrived on love intrigues, rape, seduction, and the like. I has been said that Restoration