~openculture | Bookmarks (160)
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Behold Gustave Doré’s Dramatic Illustrations of the Bible (1866)
One occasionally hears it said that, thanks to the internet, all the books truly worth reading...
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The Internet Archive Rescues MTV News’ Web Site, Making 460,000+ of Its Pages Searchable Again
Image via Internet Archive Last month, MTV News’ web site went missing. Or at least almost...
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“Tsundoku,” the Japanese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the English Language
There are some words out there that are brilliantly evocative and at the same time impossible...
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2000-Year-Old Bottle of White Wine Found in a Roman Burial Site
Image via Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Back in 2017, we featured the oldest unopened bottle...
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Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa Now Appears on Japanese Banknotes
If you’ve lived or traveled in Japan, you know full well how much of daily life...
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How a Steady Supply of Coffee Helped the Union Win the U.S. Civil War
Americans doing “e‑mail jobs” and working in the “laptop class” tend to make much of the...
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Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Hamburger Recipe
Image via Wikimedia Commons In 2013, the food writer Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan stumbled across an article...
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The Story of Lee Miller: From the Cover of Vogue to Hitler’s Bathtub
In late-twenties Manhattan, a nineteen-year-old woman named Elizabeth “Lee” Miller stepped off the curb and into...
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The Original Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland Manuscript, Handwritten & Illustrated By Lewis Carroll (1864)
On a summer day in 1862, a tall, stammering Oxford University mathematician named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson...
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Martin Mull (RIP) Satirically Interviews a Young Tom Waits on Fernwood 2 Night (1977)
These days, references to seventies television increasingly require prefatory explanation. Who under the age of 60...
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Why You Do Your Best Thinking In The Shower: Creativity & the “Incubation Period”
Image via Wikimedia Commons “The great Tao fades away.” So begins one translation of the Tao...
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A Close Look at Beowulf-Era Helmets & Swords, Courtesy of the British Museum
Even if a student assigned Beowulf is, at first, dismayed by its language, that same student...
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Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Available in a New Digital Archive
If you want to immerse yourself in the world of Pablo Picasso, you might start at...
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See Albert Camus’ Historic Lecture, “The Human Crisis,” Performed by Actor Viggo Mortensen
Back in 2016, New York City staged a month-long festival celebrating Albert Camus’ historic visit to NYC...
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Enter a Huge Archive of Amazing Stories, the World’s First Science Fiction Magazine, Launched in 1926
If you haven’t heard of Hugo Gernsback, you’ve surely heard of the Hugo Award. Next to...
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Watch a Japanese Artisan Hand-Craft a Cello in 6 Months
Cellists unwilling to settle for any but the finest instrument must, sooner or later, make a...
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How the 18th-Century French Media Stoked a Werewolf Panic
If you’ve studied French (or, indeed, been French) in the past couple of decades, you may...
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Gustave Doré’s Macabre Illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)
One of the busiest, most in-demand artists of the 19th century, Gustave Doré made his name...
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How Sci-Fi Writers Isaac Asimov & Robert Heinlein Contributed to the War Effort During World War II
Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague De Camp at the Navy Yard in 1944 Robert...
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Watch Patti Smith Read from Virginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Surviving Recording of Woolf’s Voice
In the video above, poet, artist, National Book Award winner, and “godmother of punk” Patti Smith...
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Tracking Pianist Yuja Wang’s Heartbeats During Her Marathon Rachmaninoff Performance
The Carnegie Hall YouTube Channel sets the scene: On January 28, 2023, pianist Yuja Wang joined...
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World Religions Explained with Useful Charts: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity & More
It doesn’t take an expert in the field to know that, around the world, there is much...
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How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Beautiful Purple Dye from Snail Glands
Much has been written about the loss of color in the twenty-first century. Our environments offered...
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Medievalist Professor Answers Medieval Questions From Twitter: Why Is It called the “Middle” Ages?, What Did Medieval English Sound Like?, and More
From Wired comes this: “Professor of English and Medieval Literature Dr. Dorsey Armstrong answers your questions...