~openculture | Bookmarks (62)
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The Song From the 1500’s That Blows Rick Beato Away: An Introduction to John Dowland’s Entrancing Music
In 2006, Sting released an album called Songs from the Labyrinth, a collaboration with Bosnian lutenist...
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Hear the Evolution of Mozart’s Music, Composed from Ages 5 to 35
More than a quarter of a millennium after he composed his first pieces of music, different...
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The Oldest Known Photographs of India (1863–1870)
After about a century of indirect company rule, India became a full-fledged British colony in 1858....
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The Evolution of Animation, 1833–2017: From the Phenakistiscope to Pixar
This year has given us occasion to revisit the 1928 Disney cartoon Steamboat Willie, what with...
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Around The World in 1896: See Colorized & Upscaled Footage of Egypt, Venice, Istanbul, New York City, London & More
The YouTube channel Lost in Time has taken footage from the legendary Lumière brothers, originally shot...
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Laurence Fishburne Reads a Former Slave’s Incredible Letter to His Old Master (1865)
Lawrence Fishburne brings a degree of gravity to his roles offered by few other living actors....
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A Day in Tokyo: A 1968 Film Captures a City Reborn 23 Years After Its Destruction
During World War II, Tokyo sustained heavy damage, especially with the bombings conducted by the U.S....
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180,000 Years of Religion Charted on a “Histomap” in 1943
For many, even most of us moderns, the central religious choice is a simple one: adhere...
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When Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Plan to Turn Ellis Island Into a Futuristic Jules Verne-Esque City (1959)
The very words “Ellis Island” bring to mind a host of sepia-toned images, shaped by both...
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An Architectural Tour of Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí’s Audacious Cathedral That’s Been Under Construction for 142 Years
In less than a year and a half, the centenary of Antoni Gaudí’s death will be...
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An Animated Introduction to the Rosetta Stone, and How It Unlocked Our Understanding of Egyptian Hieroglyphs
In 1799, Napoleon’s army encountered a curious artifact in Egypt, a black stone that featured writing...
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An Introduction to the Astrolabe, the Medieval Smartphone
Image by Anders Sandberg, via Wikimedia Commons Asked to imagine the character of everyday life in...
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The Book of Colour Concepts: A New 800-Page Celebration of Color Theory, Including Works by Newton, Goethe, and Hilma af Klint
The Book of Colour Concepts will soon be published by Taschen in a multilingual edition, containing...
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The Founder of the Red Cross Creates a Diagram of the Apocalypse (1887)
History remembers Henry Dunant (1828–1910) for two things–being the co-founder of the Red Cross movement and...
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6,000 Years of History Visualized in a 23-Foot-Long Timeline of World History, Created in 1871
A beautiful early example of visualizing the flow of history, Sebastian C. Adams’ Synchronological Chart of Universal...
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How Engineers Straightened the Leaning Tower of Pisa
?si=WxyK2XAukThVTpa7 Construction on the Tower of Pisa first began in the year 1173. By 1178, the...
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How Humanity Got Hooked on Coffee: An Animated History
Few of us grow up drinking coffee, but once we start drinking it, even fewer of...
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The Decimal Point Is 150 Years Older Than We Thought, Emerging in Renaissance Italy
Historians have long thought that the decimal point first came into use in 1593, when the...
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Watch the Film That Invented Cinema: Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon (1895)
The brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière are often referred to as pioneers of cinema, and their...
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The Armored-Knight “Robot” Designed by Leonardo da Vinci (circa 1495)
Image by Erik Möller, via Wikimedia Commons Those of us who were playing video games in...
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Discover the World’s Oldest University, Which Opened in 427 CE, Housed 9 Million Manuscripts, and Then Educated Students for 800 Years
In the Buddhist Asia of a dozen centuries ago, the equivalent of going off to study...
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Isaac Asimov Predicts the Future in 1982: Computers Will Be “at the Center of Everything;” Robots Will Take Human Jobs
Four decades ago, our civilization seemed to stand on the brink of a great transformation. The...
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Scenes from Life in Paris During the 1920s, Colorized and Restored: Cafés, Notre Dame, Street Life & More
Few cities have been as romanticized as Paris, and few eras in Paris have been as...
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A Web Site That Lets You Find Your Home Address on Pangea
A cool tool. Software engineer Ian Webster has created a website that lets you see how...