Here you see a modern artist’s rendition of a mythical Malaysian evil tiger spirit called “hantu belian,” which the Malay peoples believed would possess a person’s body and make them commit great violence while they were unconsious. This belief in hantu belian’s destructive powers was pervasive enough that they formed the origin story of the
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I have a new historical figure that I want to invite to my imaginary dinner party with fascinating but dead people I wish I could talk to. And that’s this guy, Karl Pearson. A British Germanophile who lived from 1857-1936, Karl was a quirky, free-thinking mathematical giant in the field of statistics. He had a
The association of a snake and a woman in peril bring to mind many images in today’s world — the story of the serpent tempting Eve, the snake as representative of the “don’t tread on me” anti- government control in the United States, and of course the bodily autonomy of women in peril with the
France and Her Deadly Foe Read More »
Here’s the first automated game ever made: the Nimatron. Making its first appearance at the 1940 New York World’s Fair, it pitted a human against a machine which made perfect moves. The _New York Times_ wrote about the “new electric robot 8 feet tall”, that it would “play a variation of an old Chinese game
Birthday celebrations in history have differed across the globe, and historically an annual ritual to recognize the anniversary of a completed lap around the sun wasn’t the norm for most people. In the United States it was the advent of Industrialization — between 1860 and 1880 — that common people began to regularly acknowledge birthdays.
It’s an old photo, but with a squint this looks like a fishing village from the mid-20th century. And that’s exactly what Camp Hero was designed to fool the viewer into thinking it was. But in fact, this settlement of quaint-looking wooden clapboard buildings was a secret military base known as Montauk Air Force Station,
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Today I post on maths, and games, and a puzzle. In 1883 the brilliant mathematician Édouard Lucas brought a logic game to Western audiences in 1883 he called “the Tower of Hanoi.” Cottoning onto the Orientalism that made Asia and Asia Minor seem exotic and fascinating to Westerners, he marketed it as a kids’ puzzle.
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Stories from the French Revolution leave a physical mark even in the southern French countryside. Here are two episodes that reflect the violence of the counter-revolution and explain the reasons that the peasantry revolted in the first place. The last three images show an aristocratic mansion and fortress in the small mountainside village of Banne.
The Parc Montsouris was one of four urban green park spaces planned for each cardinal direction under the French Emperor Napoleon III. After the Revolution and the many urban uprisings that followed, Napoleon III undertook a massive revitalization of the capital. The Parc Montsouris, located in the south of Paris, was officially inaugurated in 1875.
“Stop! Here is the empire of death” reads the entrance to the catacombs of Paris. And if you don’t want to see photos of some of the six million bodies buried here, don’t scroll on through these images. Touring the catacombs has to be one of my favorite experiences in Paris. I have never seen
The most visited necropolis in the world is the Père-Lachaise Cemetery. It brings 3.5 million visitors a year, and it is a wonder. The layout is maze-like, with bodies upon bodies memorialized in stone sepulchres. There are paths to find various memorials and graves, but they wind around, turn corners, and go uphill. Père-Lachaise was
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The Museé de l’Orangerie was established in 1852 and specializes in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Claude Monet’s massive murals _Water Lilies_ reside there. I loved Paul Cézanne’s _Dans le parc de Chateau-Noir_, and Marie Laurencin’s works (a rare women artist for the museum) — _Femmes au chien_ is the one shown here.
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I love that as I get ready to write up my syllabi for this coming fall semester, perhaps a wee bit wistful of my fabulous summer coming to an end, I am reading about a time in the early 20th century when teaching college students was a lot more stressful. And that’s where the great
Conical Rebellions Read More »
The discipline of forensic anthropology was pushed forward dramatically in the 1930s with a crime in the UK called the “Jigsaw Murders”. The title here is gruesomely fitting. In September 1935 in Lancaster, England, the charismatic wife of a popular medical doctor — named Isabella Ruxton — and her housemaid, Mary Rogerson, had gone missing.
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One of my favorite artistic expressions is Surrealism — I love the dreamy nature of the subject material and the blend of realism with irrationality. This painting by Ernst Max from 1937, called _The Barbarians_, is an unusual representation of the genre. But even the ways _The Barbarians_ differs from typical Surrealist art tell something
This is Hertha Ayerton, a British Engineer whose discoveries unveiled mysteries about the behavior of electricity and helped develop technology to protect soldiers in the trenches of the First World War from poisonous gasses. Sarah Phoebe Banks was born in 1854 to a family of eight children, her father dying when she was just eight.
Tucked away in an incongruous green space close to a busy thoroughfare in Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania is Lincoln Cemetery, the final internment for tens upon tens of African Americans, buried here at a time when racial segregation was still legal in this country. Although the earliest tombstone dates to 1862, there is speculation that there were
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Shippensburg University hosted a speaker event on the Israel-Palestine crisis in Gaza. Four specialists gave short presentations from their areas of expertise: Dr. Mireille Rebeiz from Dickinson College spoke about international law and human rights; the three other scholars are from Shippensburg University. Dr. David Weaver addressed the military strategy of Hamas and IDF (Israel
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Here are scenes from the High Line of New York City, considered one of Manhattan’s most popular attractions. It isn’t that old: a group called Friends of the High Line formed in 1999 to create the public park, and they attracted enough wealthy donors to create and open it by 2009. The High Line is
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Just to the west of Las Cruces New Mexico, along the I10, is this ginormous statue of a roadrunner. It is built out of completely found materials — stuff like shoes, cell phones, old wire, crutches, headlights, and old toys. Artist Olin Calk created the recycled bird in 1993 to examine “consumption, recycling, and just
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