~openculture | Bookmarks (59)
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My Neighbor Totoro Inspires a Line of Traditional Japanese Handicrafts
We suppose it’s conceivable that a gift of a wooden Totoro figurine, hand-carved from a single...
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How Londinium Became London, Lutetia Became Paris, and Other Roman Cities Got Their Modern Names
They Might Be Giants achieved pop-cultural immortality when they covered Jimmy Kennedy and music by Nat...
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How Toilets Worked in Ancient Rome and Medieval England
However detailed they may be in other respects, many accounts of daily life centuries and centuries...
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Behold the “Double Helix” Staircase Often Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci: It Features Two Intertwined Spiral Staircases That Let People Ascend & Descend Without Obstructing Each Other
Image by Zairon, via Wikimedia Commons Among the non-wine-related points of interest in the Loire Valley,...
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Two Ways To Shoot The Same Scene: A Comparison of The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and You’ve Got Mail (1998) Shows How Filmmaking Changed Over the Decades
Some years ago, the Guardian’s Anne T. Donahue recommended, as an alternative Christmas movie, Nora Ephron’s...
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For 500 Years, Every Student Who Attained a BA from Oxford Had to Swear Enmity Towards a Person Named Henry Symeonis
Image via The Bodleian Library If you were to ask a certain kind of Englishman what...
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A Man Hiding from the Nazis Made 95 Issues of a Highly Creative Zine (1943–1945)
Perhaps at some point in the future, the poems in your tongue I composed, will be...
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Hear the Haunting Aztec “Death Whistle,” the Instrument That Made Sounds Resembling a Human Scream
The received image of the Aztecs, with their savage battles and frequent acts of human sacrifice,...
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Why Abel Gance’s 1927 Napoléon Is “the Most Creative Film Ever Made”
Since it came out this past November, Ridley Scott’s Napoleon has drawn a variety of critical...
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The History of Cartography, the “Most Ambitious Overview of Map Making Ever,” Is Free Online
FYI: The University of Chicago Press has made available online — at no cost –five volumes...
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The History of the Earth (All 4.5 Billion Years) in 1 Hour: A Million Years Covered Every Second
From Kurzgesagt comes the history of our planet in one hour. They write: “Earth is 4.5...