"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.

Chou Fang is regarded as the greatest Chinese erotic painter. Mi Fei, a famous painter in the Sung Dynasty, held Chou in the same class as Ku Kai-chih (one of whose pictures is in the British Museum), Lu T'ang-wei, and Wu Tao-tzu.

The women in Chou's paintings are all rather plump - which relates to the T'ang Dynasty concept of beauty. Chou Fang, in common with many oriental artists, also tended to exaggerate the size of the genital organs: it is said that he influenced Japanese erotic art.

This is a debatable one. Atkins plumps for Spenser as "the first writer in English to be consciously erotic." The "Faerie Queen" is represented as a "mine of sensuality." A "Spectator" article is cited to indicate the sexual significance of the Spenser imagery -"You do not need any psychoanalytic training to see here a rather grisly amalgam of the male and female sexual organs," after quoting the description of the lustful monster in Book IV, Canto VII. Now it's Atkins again - Spenser reckoned to be preaching chastity and religion, but he "allowed his

The earliest postcards of bathing beauties came from France around 1900, and soon after that such cards were made available in England. The first bathing scenes were created by artists. Later, when a camera was used the model was usually posed against a hand-drawn beach background. Postcards in the early 1900s featured "French Actresses," "Japanese Beauties" dressed in traditional costume, "Actresses" in colour, and ballet dancers and bathers posing in tights. Some card manufacturers glued silk, oilcloth, or spangles on their pin-up cards.

In 1921 the U.S. Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America Inc. asked W. H. Hays, a prominent Republican, to be their president in an effort to ward off plans for government censorship. One of the first Hays initiatives was to insert a "morality clause" into all actors' contracts forcing them to maintain at least a facade of clean living. In 1930 his Production Code was adopted by the industry; in 1934 it was made mandatory, with fines and sanctions on any film-maker who ignored it. The Code had a statement of general aims followed by

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".

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.