~openculture | Bookmarks (162)
-
How Carl Jung Inspired the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous
There may be as many doors into Alcoholics Anonymous in the 21st century as there are people...
-
The Amazing Engineering of Roman Baths
Few depictions of ancient Roman life neglect to reference all the time ancient Romans spent at...
-
The Evolution of Hokusai’s Great Wave: A Study of 113 Known Copies of the Iconic Woodblock Print
The most widely known work by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese artist Hokusai, 神奈川沖浪裏, is usually translated...
-
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained in One of the Earliest Science Films Ever Made (1923)
Albert Einstein developed his theory of special relativity in 1905, and then mentally mapped out his...
-
16th-Century Japanese Historians Describe the Oddness of Meeting the First Europeans They Ever Saw
Go to Japan today, and the country will present you with plenty of opportunities to buy...
-
Watch the Earliest-Known Charles Dickens Film: The Death of Poor Joe
A little over a decade ago, a curator at the British Film Institute (BFI) discovered the...
-
What’s Under London? Discover London’s Forbidden Underworld
When the words London and underground come together, the first thing that comes to most of our minds,...
-
Harvard Removes the Human Skin Binding from a Book in Its Collection Since 1934
In June of 2014, Harvard University’s Houghton Library put up a blog post titled “Caveat Lecter,”...
-
How the 13th-Century Sufi Poet Rumi Became One of the World’s Most Popular Writers
The Middle East is hardly the world’s most harmonious region, and it only gets more fractious...
-
Download Issues of “Weird Tales” (1923–1954): The Pioneering Pulp Horror Magazine Features Original Stories by Lovecraft, Bradbury & Many More
We live in an era of genre. Browse through TV shows of the last decade to...
-
How a Bach Canon Works. Brilliant.
Brilliant. This moving manuscript depicts a single musical sequence played front to back and then back...
-
The Romans Stashed Hallucinogenic Seeds in a Vial Made From an Animal Bone
What’s popular in the metropolis sooner or later makes its way out into the provinces. This...
-
How Las Vegas’ Sphere Actually Works: A Looks Inside the New $2.3 Billion Arena
If the United States of America is the Roman empire of our time, surely it must...
-
Oh My God! Winston Churchill Received the First Ever Letter Containing “O.M.G.” (1917)
Winston Churchill is one of those preposterously outsized historical figures who seemed to be in the middle...
-
Get Unlimited Access to Courses & Certificates: Coursera Is Offering 40% (or $159) Off of Coursera Plus Until June 23
A heads up on a deal: Between today and June 23, 2024, Coursera is offering a...
-
Is Reality Real?: 8 Scientists Explain Whether We Can Ever Know What Objectively Exists
Ask aloud whether reality is real, and you’re liable to be regarded as never truly having...
-
The Roads of Ancient Rome Visualized in the Style of Modern Subway Maps
Sasha Trubetskoy, formerly an undergrad at U. Chicago, has created a “subway-style diagram of the major...
-
Patti Smith Reads Her Final Letter to Robert Mapplethorpe, Calling Him “the Most Beautiful Work of All”
If you go to hear Patti Smith in concert, you expect her to sing “Beneath the...
-
Behold the Codex Gigas (aka “Devil’s Bible”), the Largest Medieval Manuscript in the World
Bargain with the devil and you may wind up with a golden fiddle, supernatural guitar-playing ability,...
-
James Joyce Picked Drunken Fights, Then Hid Behind Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway seemed to feud with most of the prominent male artists of his time, from...
-
The Radical Artistic & Philosophical World of William Blake: A Short Introduction
Over the years, we’ve featured the work of William Blake fairly often here on Open Culture:...
-
Stephen King Names His Five Favorite Works by Stephen King
Stephen King has no doubt forgotten writing more books than most of us will ever publish. But...
-
When a Drunken Charles Bukowski Walked Off the Prestigious French Talk Show Apostrophes (1978)
Charles Bukowski didn’t do TV — or at least he didn’t do American TV. Like a...
-
Ray Bradbury Wrote the First Draft of Fahrenheit 451 on Coin-Operated Typewriters, for a Total of $9.80
Image by Alan Light, via Wikimedia Commons It sounds like a third grade math problem: “If...