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Life evolves, but machines are invented: this dichotomy hardly conflicts with what most of us have learned about biology and technology. But certain specimens roaming around in the world can blur that line — and in the curious case of the Strandbeesten, they really are roaming around. First assembled in 1990 by the Dutch artist […]
7 months ago

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Hundreds of Medieval Medical Manuscripts with Strange Cures Get Digitized & Put Online: From Leeches to Crushed Weasel Testicles

If any discussion of medieval medicine gets going, it’s only a matter of time before someone brings up leeches. And it turns out that the centrality of those squirming blood-suckers to the treatment of disease in the Middle Ages isn’t much overstated, at least judging by a look through Curious Cures. A Wellcome Research Resources […]

yesterday 3 votes
Hear the Pieces Mozart Composed When He Was Only 5 Years Old

A preternaturally talented, precocious child, barely out of toddlerhood, in powdered wig and knee-breeches, capering around the great houses of 18th century Europe between virtuoso performances on the harpsichord. A young boy who can play any piece anyone puts in front of him, and compose symphonies extemporaneously with ease…. Few scenes better capture the mythos […]

2 days ago 5 votes
Curious Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Wonderland That Oddly Made Drugs Look Like Fun

The Reagan presidency was probably the golden age of anti-drug messaging. America’s school kids were told that a brain was like an egg and drugs were like a frying pan. The First Lady told America’s school kids simply to “Just Say No.” The message was stupefyingly simple. Drugs, like Communism and taxes, are bad. During […]

2 days ago 5 votes
An Introduction to Aleister Crowley, History’s Most Infamous Occultist

“Do what thou wilt”: as the central principle of a worldview, it may not sound like much, but at least there are always a great many people ready and willing to hear it. So discovered Aleister Crowley, the early twentieth-century Occultist now remembered not just for his unconventional religious practices, but also for his knack […]

3 days ago 5 votes
Man as Industrial Palace: Watch an Animation of the Famous 1926 Lithograph That Depicts the Human Body as a Modern Factory

In 1926, Fritz Kahn, a German gynecologist and anatomy textbook author, produced a lithograph called Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace) that depicted the human body as a factory, a chemical plant of sorts. Kahn’s body came complete with mechanical lungs, a rock-sorting stomach, gears for a throat, and a switchboard for a brain, and it […]

3 days ago 6 votes

More in history

Why Chinese Calligraphy Is More Than Just Beautiful Writing

Western perceptions of Chinese calligraphy often focus on the skills used to make the artistic lines. However, an appreciation of skills alone does not take into account the traditions tied to it. For over two millennia, Chinese calligraphy was more than an art form. It was a discipline that was used to build character, […]

11 hours ago 2 votes
Merry Mouse and His Trip to the Moon (1953)

My next 4 posts are celebrating children's illustrated fiction about going to the Moon. Even though I have been collecting these children's book for over 30 years it still is very exciting to find one that you never knew existed. Jack Coggins was an amazing space artist in the 1950s. His two early children's books that were especially memorable were Rockets, Jets, Guided Missiles, and Space Ships (1951) and By Spaceship to the Moon (1952). I have multiple copies of these in English, French and German. So I was very excited to find a 1960 reprint of his 1953 book Merry Mouse and His Trip to the Moon. It was written by his wife Alma Coggins. This is a fictional book with many of the same style of space painting about a mouse who goes to the Moon to find green cheese. I have chosen to reproduce almost he whole book since your chance of finding a copy are pretty small. I hope you enjoy this lost space art treasure. Coggins, Alma. Illustrated by Coggins, Jack. Merry Mouse and His Trip to the Moon. (2nd edition) (Jolly Books.) London: L. Miller & Co. (20 p.) 1960.  (reprint of 1953 1st edition).  Above is the cover and below an illustration from Rockets,Jets...1951 Here is the cover to By Space Ship to the Moon 1952

yesterday 5 votes
I Am a Stranger in This Country: An Outsider Photographs Britain and Ireland’s Travellers

In I Am a Stranger in This Country Berlin-based photograph Frederik Rüegger shows us pictures from the two years he spent visiting the Roma and Traveller communities in Britain and Ireland. The book’s title is a nod to his reflects his status as a foreigner abroad and the Travellers as outsiders in British and Irish … Continue reading "I Am a Stranger in This Country: An Outsider Photographs Britain and Ireland’s Travellers" The post I Am a Stranger in This Country: An Outsider Photographs Britain and Ireland’s Travellers appeared first on Flashbak.

yesterday 3 votes
How the Hospitallers Lost the Holy Land but Survived the Ages

During the Crusades, warriors devoted themselves to protecting the Holy Land from attack, dedicating themselves to God, the Church, and their mission. Several orders of devout knights emerged, the most famous of which was the Knights Templar, but another well-known order was the Knights Hospitallers. They had one of the longest and most eventful […]

yesterday 1 votes
Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IIIa: Family Formation

This is the first part of the third part of our series (I, II) discussing the patterns of life of the pre-modern peasants who made up the great majority of all humans who lived in our agrarian past and indeed a majority of all humans who have ever lived. Last week, we looked at death, … Continue reading Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IIIa: Family Formation →

yesterday 5 votes