~openculture | Bookmarks (57)
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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...
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A 3D Animation Shows the Evolution of New York City (1524 — 2023)
Nearly two and a half centuries after its founding, the United States of America is still...
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Black History in Two Minutes: Watch 93 Videos Written & Narrated by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
We’re nearly halfway through February, which the United States of America also knows as Black History...
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Watch Dziga Vertov’s Soviet Toys: The First Soviet Animated Movie Ever (1924)
Dziga Vertov is best known for his dazzling city symphony A Man with a Movie Camera,...
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A Cultural Tour of Istanbul, Where the Art and History of Three Great Empires Come Together
Imagine a grand tour of European museums, and a fair few destinations come right to mind:...
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A 500-Page Book Explores the Ghosts & Monsters from Japanese Folklore
Westerners tend to think of Japan as a land of high-speed trains, expertly prepared sushi and...
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Pangea to the Present to the Future: Watch Animations Showing 500 Million Years of Continental Drift
Things change… Especially when you’re tracking the continental movement from Pangea to the present day in...
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The Golden Age of Japanese Cinema: Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi & Beyond
Oliver Hermanus’ latest film Living transplants the story of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru to postwar London. Apart...
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Read Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World: The First Sci-Fi Novel Written By a Woman (1666)
For a variety of reasons, science fiction has long been regarded as a mostly male-oriented realm...
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Before ChatGPT, There Was ELIZA: Watch the 1960s Chatbot in Action
In 1966, the sociologist and critic Philip Rieff published The Triumph of the Therapeutic, which diagnosed...
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The Roman Author Pliny the Younger Gets Ghosted by a Friend, and Goes on a Rant: Hear It Read by Actor Rob Delaney
Pliny the Younger may be best remembered for writing the only eye-witness account of the destruction...
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How George Washington Became President of the United States: It Was Weirder Than You Think
After serving two terms as the first President of the United States of America, George Washington...
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Why Perpetual Motion Machines Never Work, Despite Centuries of Experiments
According to the laws of physics — at least in simplified form — an object in...
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Martin Luther King, Jr. Gives Life-Changing Advice to Teens: Watch His Speech, “What Is Your Life’s Blueprint?” (1967)
Six months before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to students at Barratt Junior High...
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The Incubator Babies of Coney Island: How an Early 1900s Boardwalk Attraction Saved Thousands of Premature Babies Lives
Step right up, folks! Shoot the Chutes! Thrill to the Fire and Flames show! Ride an...
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Watch a 106-Year-Old Wizard of Oz Book Get Magically Restored … By Cutting the Book’s Spine, Washing Pages & Recoloring Illustrations
Author, educator and book restoration expert Sophia Bogle is in a constant race against time. Her...