From openculture.com
A Close Look at Beowulf-Era Helmets & Swords, Courtesy of the British Museum
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Even if a student assigned Beowulf is, at first, dismayed by its language, that same student may well be captivated by its setting.
on Jun 28
From openculture.com
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If you haven’t heard of Hugo Gernsback, you’ve surely heard of the Hugo Award. Next to the Nebula, it’s the most prestigious of science fiction prizes, bringing together in its ranks of winners such venerable authors as Ursula K. Le Guin, Arthur C.
on Fri, 5PM
From openculture.com
2000-Year-Old Bottle of White Wine Found in a Roman Burial Site
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Image via Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Back in 2017, we featured the oldest unopened bottle of wine in the world here on Open Culture.
on Fri, 2PM
From openculture.com
Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa Now Appears on Japanese Banknotes
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If you've lived or traveled in Japan, you know full well how much of daily life in that cash-intensive society involves the use of thousand-yen bills.
on Thu, 6PM
From openculture.com
Kurt Vonnegut Urges Young People to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”
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New York City high school students who'd contacted him as part of a 2006 English assignment. (The identities of the other authors selected for this honor are lost to time, but not one had the courtesy to respond except Vonnegut.) Dear Xavier High School, and Ms.
on Thu, 2AM
From openculture.com
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The Sonny and Cher Show aired in the years right before I was born. Not only do I have no memory of it, of course, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an entire episode, either in re-runs or on the internet.
on Wed, 10PM
From openculture.com
Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Hamburger Recipe
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Image via Wikimedia Commons In 2013, the food writer Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan stumbled across an article in the Boston Globe describing a trove of digitized documents from Ernest Hemingway's home in Cuba that had been recently donated to the John F.
on Wed, 12PM
From openculture.com
How a Steady Supply of Coffee Helped the Union Win the U.S. Civil War
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Americans doing 'e-mail jobs' and working in the 'laptop class' tend to make much of the quantity of coffee they require to keep going, or even to get started. In that sense alone, they have something in common with Civil War soldiers.
on Wed, 11AM
From openculture.com
The Matrix: What Went Into The Mix
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With a series of three films, director Kirby Ferguson has been gradually making the case that 'Everything is a Remix.' In doing what they do, artists collect material, combine and transform it, and eventually mold it into something unique, though not entirely new.
on Wed, 9AM
From openculture.com
How Marcel Marceau Used His Mime Skills to Save Children’s Lives During the Holocaust
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In 1972, Jerry Lewis made the ill-considered decision to write, direct, and star in a film about a German clown in Auschwitz.
on Wed, 2AM
From openculture.com
The Story of Lee Miller: From the Cover of Vogue to Hitler’s Bathtub
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In late-twenties Manhattan, a nineteen-year-old woman named Elizabeth 'Lee' Miller stepped off the curb and into the path of a car. She was pulled back to safety by none other than the magnate Condé Nast, founder of the eponymous publishing company.
on Tue, 9PM
From openculture.com
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How long has mankind dreamed of an international language? The first answer that comes to mind, of course, dates that dream to the time of the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.
on Tue, 4PM
From openculture.com
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On a summer day in 1862, a tall, stammering Oxford University mathematician named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson took a boat trip up the River Thames, accompanied by a colleague and the three young daughters of university chancellor Henry Liddell.
on Tue, 1PM
From openculture.com
Martin Mull (RIP) Satirically Interviews a Young Tom Waits on Fernwood 2 Night (1977)
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These days, references to seventies television increasingly require prefatory explanation.
on Mon, 6PM
From openculture.com
Why You Do Your Best Thinking In The Shower: Creativity & the “Incubation Period”
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Image via Wikimedia Commons “The great Tao fades away.” So begins one translation of the Tao Te Ching’s 18th Chapter. The sentence captures the frustration that comes with a lost epiphany.
on Mon, 12PM
From openculture.com
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Sometimes it’s hard to believe that certain entertainers did not arrive fully formed with their famous look already part of the act. It’s still weird to me, for example, to see very early George Carlin, looking like a nephew to the button-down comedy of Bob Newhart.
on Mon, 2AM
From openculture.com
How “Space Oddity” Launched David Bowie to Stardom: Watch the Original Music Video From 1969
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It may seem odd to contemplate, but rock titan David Bowie’s rise to fame was a long, frustrating, stop-and-start affair until he burst onto the international scene as Ziggy Stardust (though he had some success with his two prior albums, the excellent The Man Who Sold the World and Hunky Dory).
on Mon, 12AM
From openculture.com
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Tucked away in the style section of yesterday’s Washington Post (after the President of the United States basically declared allegiance to a hostile dictator after issuing yet more denunciations of the U.S. press as “enemies of the people”) was an admonition from Margaret Sullivan to the...
on Jun 29
From openculture.com
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When I think of rock ‘n’ roll high school, I think of the Ramones, but in the 1979 Roger Corman film no one really learns much.
on Jun 29
From openculture.com
Isaac Asimov’s Favorite Story “The Last Question” Read by Leonard Nimoy
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Isaac Asimov, one of the most prolific creators in science-fiction history, wrote or edited more than 500 books in his lifetime, including the high-profile ones we all recognize like I, Robot and the Foundation series (hear a version dramatized here).
on Jun 29
From openculture.com
Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Available in a New Digital Archive
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If you want to immerse yourself in the world of Pablo Picasso, you might start at the Museo Picasso Málaga, located in the artist's Spanish birthplace.
on Jun 28
From openculture.com
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In the early 1980s, Danish experimental filmmaker Jørgen Leth came to America intent on capturing it live as it was actually lived across that vast, still-new, and often strange country.
on Jun 26
From openculture.com
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Pioneering filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière, the inventors of the projected motion picture, held their first private screening in Paris in March of 1895.
on Jun 26
From openculture.com
Watch a Japanese Artisan Hand-Craft a Cello in 6 Months
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Cellists unwilling to settle for any but the finest instrument must, sooner or later, make a pilgrimage to Cremona — or rather, to the Cremonas. One is, of course, the city in Lombardy that was home to numerous pioneering master luthiers, up to and including Antonio Stradivari.
on Jun 26
From openculture.com
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Anyone can develop basic woodworking skills — and, per the advice of Nick Offerman, perhaps everyone should. Those who do learn that things of surprising functionality can be made just by cutting pieces of wood and nailing or gluing them together.
on Jun 26
From openculture.com
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Image by Alan Light, via Wikimedia Commons It sounds like a third grade math problem: “If Ray Bradbury wrote the first draft of Fahrenheit 451 (1953) on a coin-operated typewriter that charged 10 cents for every 30 minutes, and he spent a total of $9.80, how many hours did it take Ray to write...
on Jun 26
From openculture.com
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It doesn't take an expert in the field to know that, around the world, there is much disagreement on the subject of religion.
on Jun 26
From openculture.com
Tracking Pianist Yuja Wang’s Heartbeats During Her Marathon Rachmaninoff Performance
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The Carnegie Hall YouTube Channel sets the scene:
on Jun 26
From openculture.com
How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Beautiful Purple Dye from Snail Glands
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Much has been written about the loss of color in the twenty-first century. Our environments offered practically every color known to man not so very long ago — and in certain eras, granted, it got to be a bit much.
on Jun 26
From openculture.com
The Amazing Engineering of Roman Baths
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Few depictions of ancient Roman life neglect to reference all the time ancient Romans spent at the baths. One gets the impression that their civilization was obsessed with cleanliness, in contrast to most of the societies found around the world at the time, but that turns out hardly to be the case.
on Jun 26
From openculture.com
How Carl Jung Inspired the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous
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There may be as many doors into Alcoholics Anonymous in the 21st century as there are people who walk through them—from every world religion to no religion.
on Jun 26
From openculture.com
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained in One of the Earliest Science Films Ever Made (1923)
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Albert Einstein developed his theory of special relativity in 1905, and then mentally mapped out his theory of general relativity between 1907 and 1915.
on Jun 26
From openculture.com
The Evolution of Hokusai’s Great Wave: A Study of 113 Known Copies of the Iconic Woodblock Print
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The most widely known work by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese artist Hokusai, 神奈川沖浪裏, is usually translated into English as The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
on Jun 26
From openculture.com
16th-Century Japanese Historians Describe the Oddness of Meeting the First Europeans They Ever Saw
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Go to Japan today, and the country will present you with plenty of opportunities to buy pan, tabako, and tempura. These products themselves — bread, cigarettes, and deep-fried seafood or vegetables — will be familiar enough.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
Watch the Earliest-Known Charles Dickens Film: The Death of Poor Joe
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British Film Institute (BFI) discovered the oldest surviving film featuring a Charles Dickens character, “The Death of Poor Joe.” The silent film, directed by George Albert Smith in 1900, brings to life Dickens’ character Jo, the crossing sweeper from Bleak House.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Living in a Healthy Democracy
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Image by J. F. Horrabin, via Wikimedia Commons Bertrand Russell saw the history of civilization as being shaped by an unfortunate oscillation between two opposing evils: tyranny and anarchy, each of which contain the seed of the other.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
Warhol’s Screen Tests of Lou Reed, Dennis Hopper, Nico & More
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Between 1964 and 1966, Andy Warhol shot close to 500 short movies of friends, celebrities, models, and any of the other lovely young things who passed through his studio known as The Factory.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
“Joe Strummer’s London Calling”: All 8 Episodes of Strummer’s UK Radio Show Free Online
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Iconic Clash frontman Joe Strummer passed away a little over ten years ago on December 22nd, 2002. He was 50 years old, and died too soon, leaving his family, friends, and fans reeling with shock and sadness.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
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From dead parrots to The Meaning of Life, Monty Python covered a lot of territory. Educated at Oxford and Cambridge, the Pythons made a habit of weaving arcane intellectual references into the silliest of sketches. A classic example is 'Mrs. Premise and Mrs.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
Hunter S. Thompson Interviews Keith Richards, and Very Little Makes Sense (1993)
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Let's rewind the videotape to 1993. Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson finally gets to interview Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. The conversation is utterly and predictably incomprehensible. But it's amusing nonetheless. Decipherable conversation topics include: if J.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
The Best Animated Films of All Time, According to Terry Gilliam
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Terry Gilliam knows something about animation. For years, he produced wonderful animations for Monty Python (watch his cutout animation primer here) , creating the opening credits and distinctive buffers that linked together the offbeat comedy sketches.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
23-Year-Old Eric Clapton Demonstrates the Elements of His Guitar Sound (1968)
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In the fall of 1968, Eric Clapton was 23 years old and at the height of his creative powers. His band, Cream, was on its farewell tour of America when a film crew from the BBC caught up with the group and asked the young guitar virtuoso to show how he created his distinctive sound.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
Gustave Doré’s Macabre Illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)
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One of the busiest, most in-demand artists of the 19th century, Gustave Doré made his name illustrating works by such authors as Rabelais, Balzac, Milton, and Dante.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
How the 18th-Century French Media Stoked a Werewolf Panic
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If you've studied French (or, indeed, been French) in the past couple of decades, you may well have played the card game Les Loups-garous de Thiercelieux.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
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In 2006, David Foster Wallace published a piece in the New York Times Magazine headlined 'Roger Federer as Religious Experience.' Even then, he could declare Federer, 'at 25, the best tennis player currently alive.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
How Sci-Fi Writers Isaac Asimov & Robert Heinlein Contributed to the War Effort During World War II
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Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague De Camp at the Navy Yard in 1944 Robert Heinlein was born in 1907, which put him on the mature side by the time of the United States' entry into World War II.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
What’s Under London? Discover London’s Forbidden Underworld
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When the words London and underground come together, the first thing that comes to most of our minds, naturally, is the London Underground.
on Jun 25
From openculture.com
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In 1849, a little over 175 years ago, Edgar Allan Poe was found dead in a Baltimore gutter under mysterious circumstances very likely related to violent election fraud. It was an ignominious end to a life marked by hardship, alcoholism, and loss.
on Jun 24
From openculture.com
How the 13th-Century Sufi Poet Rumi Became One of the World’s Most Popular Writers
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The Middle East is hardly the world's most harmonious region, and it only gets more fractious if you add in South Asia and the Mediterranean. But there's one thing on which many residents of that wide geographical span can agree: Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī.
on Jun 24
From openculture.com
Harvard Removes the Human Skin Binding from a Book in Its Collection Since 1934
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In June of 2014, Harvard University's Houghton Library put up a blog post titled 'Caveat Lecter,' announcing 'good news for fans of anthropodermic bibliopegy, bibliomaniacs, and cannibals alike.' The occasion was the scientific determination that a book in the Houghton's collection long rumored...
on Jun 24