Archive for the 'history' Category

Podcast of historical oddities in short bursts.

"To improve access to scientific literature, we have created Botanicus, a freely accessible, Web-based encyclopedia of digitized historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library. We have been digitizing materials from our library since 1995, focusing primarily on beautifully illustrated volumes from our rare book collection." via karinalane.

"The last common ancestor of all life was not a free-living cell at all, but a porous rock riddled with bubbly iron-sulphur membranes that catalysed primordial biochemical reactions. Powered by hydrogen and proton gradients, this natural flow reactor filled up with organic chemicals, giving rise to proto-life that eventually broke out as the first living cells - not once but twice, giving rise to the bacteria and the archaea."

I think the Internet really came into its own in August 1998, with the birth of the Hamster Dance, which is older than Slashdot.

Literary history of extremely large numbers. That changed the world.

DoS document detailing the history of the Great Seal and its uses and associated protocols.

I, for one, was somewhat surprised to learn that subway ridership in NYC peaked in the late 40s.

"The Romans and ancient travelers in general did not use maps. They may have existed as specialty items in some of the libraries, but they were hard to copy and were not in general use. On the Roman road system, however, the traveller needed some idea of where he was going, how to get there, and how long it would take. The itinerarium filled this need. In origin it was simply a list of cities along a road. It was only a short step from lists to a master list. To sort out the lists, the Romans drew diagrams of parallel lines showing the branches of the roads. Parts of these were copied and sold on the streets. The very best featured symbols for cities, way stations, water courses, and so on. They cannot be considered maps, as they did not represent landforms, but they served a similar purpose much in the way schematic diagrams do for users of modern subway systems (e.g. the Tube map for users of the London Underground)."

Dazzle patterns.

Neolithic Snopes.

Essay on the use of technology among Amish communities.

Everything old is new again. "There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day."

I've been meaning to rent/buy/watch this for a while now. and it's on Pitchfork.tv for the next week. Now if they would just post Season 4 of House. I swear I could watch it all in a week, pitchfork!

"The Writing on the Wall project (1991-1993) took place in Berlin’s former Jewish quarter, the Scheunenviertel neighborhood. There Attie projected slides made from pre-Holocaust photographs of the neighborhood’s Jewish residents and shops in the same (or sometimes nearby) locations where the original images were taken."

Exhaustive, loving, history of New York City subway signage, only incidentally about Helvetica.

"We are used to these things. We are always here."

Nice chart from Good Magazine comparing the first 100 days of the last 12 US presidents.

"How was it that a German priest writing in Latin and living in a French city far from the coast became the first person to tell the world that a vast ocean lay to the west of the American continents?"

Žižek on the presidential election and what the election of Obama means.

"The arrival of colonial cities in sub-Saharan Africa at the dawn of the 20th Century may have sparked the spread of HIV."