Explore 1,300+ Beautiful Wildlife Illustrations from the 19th Century, Now Restored and Available Online

in Books, Nature | July 15th, 2026

Today, if you want to know about any of the flo­ra or fau­na that sur­round us, you have only to look it up online. After you get your fill of knowl­edge, you can decide whether or not you want to ven­ture out into the world and see your object of inter­est in its nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment (or a con­trolled sim­u­la­tion there­of). In the Vic­to­ri­an era, things worked a bit dif­fer­ent­ly. Ide­al­ly, you’d have grown up in a house­hold, or at least had access to an insti­tu­tion, with the com­plete set of The Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library, a series of more than 40 vol­umes on every­thing from the birds and the bees to the quadrupeds and the mar­su­pi­alia. Print­ed in a rel­a­tive­ly small for­mat and priced at six shillings each, they brought the intel­lec­tu­al fruits of the nat­u­ral­ist’s enter­prise clos­er to the reach of the every­man than ever before.

While these books offered a good deal of infor­ma­tive text, includ­ing mem­oirs from var­i­ous famous nat­u­ral­ists of the time, their imme­di­ate attrac­tion had more to do with their glo­ri­ous illus­tra­tions, in which col­ored exam­ples of each species popped right out of its black-and-white habi­tat. These more than 1,300 col­or plates, some of the finest that could be seen in any pub­li­ca­tion of sim­i­lar scale in the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, pre­sent­ed an attrac­tive project to the design­er Nicholas Rougeux, whose work we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

Hav­ing already restored and cre­at­ed dig­i­tal ver­sions of Euclid­’s Ele­ments, Pierre-Joseph Red­outé’s Les Ros­es and Les Lil­i­acées, Eliz­a­beth Twin­ing’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants, and Daniel Berke­ley Updike’s Print­ing Types, among oth­er books, he’s now put online a com­plete repro­duc­tion of the Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library — with, as usu­al, a blog post about the painstak­ing restora­tion and dig­i­tal re-cre­ation process.

This time, Rougeux has includ­ed a sec­tion about his use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, which actu­al­ly did its part to bring The Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library to his atten­tion in the first place. Not only did AI tools then help him unearth need­ed sources and fill in visu­al gaps, they also came in handy when he was brain­storm­ing cov­er con­cepts for a print­ed ver­sion. Though Rougeux’s restora­tion is pri­mar­i­ly a web site, free to all to explore, you can also buy your own hand­some, large-for­mat phys­i­cal copy of Plates of the Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library for $295.11 USD.

Eas­i­er on the wal­let is the series of posters he’s made with the same illus­tra­tions, each of which presents one of these cat­e­gories of crea­tures great or small at a glance. The orig­i­nal Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library inspired gen­er­a­tions to ded­i­cate them­selves to under­stand­ing the nat­ur­al world; these new ver­sions, whether in print, online, or on the wall, will no doubt encour­age the enthu­si­asm of more than a few bud­ding nat­u­ral­ists in the gen­er­a­tions to come. Vis­it the repro­duc­tion of the Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Lav­ish­ly Illus­trat­ed Cat­a­log of All Hum­ming­bird Species Known in the 19th Cen­tu­ry Gets Restored & Put Online

Behold an Inter­ac­tive Online Edi­tion of Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants (1868)

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra & Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

300,000 Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Explore a New Archive of 2,200 His­tor­i­cal Wildlife Illus­tra­tions (1916–1965): Cour­tesy of The Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety

Explore an Inter­ac­tive, Online Ver­sion of the Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed, 200-Year-Old British & Exot­ic Min­er­al­o­gy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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11,700 Free Photos from John Margolies’ Archive of Americana Architecture: Download, Use & Re-Mix

in Architecture, Comedy, History, Travel | July 15th, 2026

Many con­nois­seurs of archi­tec­ture are enthralled by the mod­ernist phi­los­o­phy of Le Cor­busier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and I M Pei, who shared a belief that form fol­lows func­tion, or, as Wright had it, that form and func­tion are one.

Oth­ers of us delight in gas sta­tions shaped like teapots and restau­rants shaped like fish or dough­nuts. If there’s a phi­los­o­phy behind these insis­tent­ly play­ful visions, it like­ly has some­thing to do with joy…and pulling in tourists.

Art his­to­ri­an John Mar­golies (1940–2016), respond­ing to the beau­ty of such quirky visions, scram­bled to pre­serve the evi­dence, trans­form­ing into a respect­ed, self-taught pho­tog­ra­ph­er in the process. A Guggen­heim Foun­da­tion grant and the finan­cial sup­port of archi­tect Philip John­son allowed him to log over four decades’ worth of trips on America’s blue high­ways, hop­ing to cap­ture his quar­ry before it dis­ap­peared for good.

Despite Johnson’s patron­age, and his own stints as an Archi­tec­tur­al Record edi­tor and Archi­tec­tur­al League of New York pro­gram direc­tor, he seemed to wel­come the ruf­fled min­i­mal­ist feath­ers his enthu­si­asm for mini golf cours­es, theme motels, and eye-catch­ing road­side attrac­tions occa­sioned.

On the oth­er hand, he resent­ed when his pas­sions were labelled as “kitsch,” a point that came across in a 1987 inter­view with the Cana­di­an Globe and Mail:

Peo­ple gen­er­al­ly have thought that what’s impor­tant are the large, unique archi­tec­tur­al mon­u­ments. They think Toronto’s City Hall is impor­tant, but not those won­der­ful gnome’s‑castle gas sta­tions in Toron­to, a Detroit influ­ence that crept across the bor­der and pol­lut­ed your won­der­ful­ly con­ser­v­a­tive envi­ron­ment.

As Mar­golies fore­saw, the type of com­mer­cial ver­nac­u­lar archi­tec­ture he’d loved since boyhood–the type that screams, “Look at me! Look at me”–has become very near­ly extinct.

And that is a max­i­mal shame.

Your chil­dren may not be able to vis­it an orange juice stand shaped like an orange or the Lean­ing Tow­er of Piz­za, but thanks to the Library of Con­gress, these locales can be pit­stops on any vir­tu­al fam­i­ly vaca­tion you might under­take.

In July 2017, the library select­ed the John Mar­golies Road­side Amer­i­ca Pho­to­graph Archive as its “free to use and reuse” col­lec­tion. So linger as long as you’d like and do with these 11,700+ images as you will–make post­cards, t‑shirts, sou­venir place­mats.

(Or eschew your com­put­er entirely—go on a real road trip, and con­tin­ue Mar­golies’ work!)

What­ev­er you decide to do with them, the archive’s home­page has tips for how to best search the 11,710 col­or slides con­tained there­in. Library staffers have sup­ple­ment­ed Mar­golies’ notes on each image with sub­ject and geo­graph­i­cal head­ings.

Begin your jour­ney through the Library of Con­gress’ John Mar­golies Road­side Amer­i­ca Pho­to­graph Archive here.

We’d love to see your vaca­tion snaps upon your return.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Stew­art Brand’s 6‑Part Series How Build­ings Learn, With Music by Bri­an Eno

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times 

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

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How Anti-Chinese Immigration Laws Unexpectedly Led to a Chinese Restaurant Boom in America

in Food & Drink, History | July 14th, 2026

This past spring, the old­est con­tin­u­ous­ly oper­at­ed fam­i­ly-owned Chi­nese restau­rant in the Unit­ed States served its last plate of chop suey. Pekin Noo­dle Par­lor had been an insti­tu­tion in Butte, Mon­tana’s Chi­na­town since 1911, long out­last­ing the town’s gold-rush boom, but accord­ing to its final, fifth-gen­er­a­tion own­er, it could­n’t sur­vive chang­ing atti­tudes toward din­ing out in the twen­ty-twen­ties. Whether or not COVID-influ­enced habits or deliv­ery-app addic­tion are to blame, the Pekin’s clo­sure con­sti­tut­ed an occa­sion to reflect on the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can Chi­nese food, and its rapid evo­lu­tion into a dis­tinct cui­sine unto itself.

Take chop suey, which was adver­tised on the Pekin’s neon sign in let­ter­ing larg­er than the name of the restau­rant itself. Often cit­ed as an ear­ly “Chi­nese” dish actu­al­ly invent­ed by Chi­nese immi­grants in the Unit­ed States, it may have a cer­tain basis in the tsap seui eat­en in Guang­dong province from which many of them had come.

But even there, it amount­ed to a tech­nique for throw­ing togeth­er a hodge­podge of left­overs in a palat­able man­ner; only with its Amer­i­can­iza­tion did it acquire a dis­tinct set of fla­vors and tex­tures. A sim­i­lar process seems to have pro­duced Gen­er­al Tso’s chick­en, broc­coli beef, lo mein, and all the oth­er dish­es that the movies have con­vinced the world Amer­i­cans eat direct­ly from wire-han­dled paper box­es.

What­ev­er Hol­ly­wood’s ten­den­cy to exag­ger­ate, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of domes­tic Chi­nese food is real. Accord­ing to the Busi­ness Insid­er video just above, Chi­nese restau­rants out­num­ber even McDon­ald’s fran­chis­es in the U.S. How they reached that point owes more than a lit­tle to immi­gra­tion, as any­one would expect, but also, less obvi­ous­ly, to restric­tions on immi­gra­tion. “Anti-Chi­nese sen­ti­ment was ram­pant in Amer­i­ca in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry — and had been since the lat­ter half of the 19th cen­tu­ry, when as many as 300,000 Chi­nese min­ers, farm­ers, rail­road and fac­to­ry work­ers came to the U.S.,” writes NPR’s Maria Godoy. The neg­a­tive reac­tion to that influx under­lay the Chi­nese Exclu­sion Act of 1882; the Immi­gra­tion Act of 1917, with its “Asi­at­ic Barred Zone”; and the Immi­gra­tion Act of 1924, which intro­duced a nation­al-ori­gin quo­ta sys­tem.

Despite the osten­si­bly severe restric­tion on Chi­nese immi­gra­tion per se, the law allowed that “some Chi­nese busi­ness own­ers in the U.S. could get spe­cial mer­chant visas that allowed them to trav­el to Chi­na, and bring back employ­ees. Only a few types of busi­ness­es qual­i­fied for this sta­tus. In 1915, a fed­er­al court added restau­rants to that list. Voila! A restau­rant boom was born.” Ditch­ing their tra­di­tion­al busi­ness­es like laun­dries, Chi­nese in the U.S. would “pool their mon­ey to start lux­u­ry ‘chop suey palaces,’ then each investor would take turns run­ning the joint for a year or 18 months” in order to earn mer­chant sta­tus. What sus­tained it all was the increas­ing­ly insa­tiable Amer­i­can demand for the food these immi­grants had per­fect­ed, from chop suey to kung pao chick­en to moo goo gai pan and beyond. The sto­ry neat­ly arrives at an Amer­i­can-style moral: where there’s a will, there’s a way — or rather, yǒu zhì zhě, shì jìng chéng.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The 63 Cuisines of Chi­na Explained in 40 Min­utes: A Com­plete Primer

A Brief His­to­ry of Dumplings: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The Sur­pris­ing Rea­son Why Chi­na­towns World­wide Share the Same Aes­thet­ic, and How It All Start­ed with the 1906 San Fran­cis­co Earth­quake

Col­or­ful Ani­ma­tion Visu­al­izes 200 Years of Immi­gra­tion to the U.S. (1820-Present)

Bob Dylan Pota­to Chips, Any­one?: What They’re Snack­ing on in Chi­na

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Russian Artists Imagined in 1914 What Moscow Would Look Like in 2259

in History, Sci Fi | July 14th, 2026

In the days of pop­u­lar retro­fu­tur­ism—say, the first half of the twen­ti­eth century—people tend­ed to imag­ine the world of tomor­row look­ing very much like the world of today, only with a lot more fly­ing cars, mono­rails, and video­phones. This is true whether those doing the imag­in­ing were titans of indus­try, mar­ket­ing mavens, ide­al­is­tic Sovi­ets, or sub­jects of the Tsar, though we might think that peo­ple liv­ing under an ancient monar­chi­cal sys­tem might not expect much change. In some ways we might be right, but as we can see in the 1914 post­cards here—printed as Rus­sia entered World War I—the coun­try did antic­i­pate a mod­ern, tech­no­log­i­cal future, though one that still close­ly resem­bled its present.

Per­haps few but the most far-sight­ed of Rus­sians pre­dict­ed what the ail­ing empire would endure in the years to come—the dis­as­ter of the Great War, and the waves of Rev­o­lu­tion and Civ­il War. Cer­tain­ly, who­ev­er paint­ed these images fore­saw no such cat­a­stroph­ic upheaval.

Although pur­port­ing to show us a view of Moscow in the 23rd cen­tu­ry, they show the city very hap­pi­ly “still under monar­chi­cal rule,” writes A Jour­ney Through Russ­ian Cul­ture, going about its dai­ly life just as it did over three hun­dred years ear­li­er, “with the addi­tion of every­thing from sub­ways to air­borne pub­lic trans­porta­tion, things prob­a­bly seen as stan­dard meth­ods of trans­port for the future.”

Of course, there would be hot-rod­ded sleds on St. Peters­burg High­way with head­lights, fan­cy wind­shields, and what look like Christ­mas elves perched in them. Lubyan­s­ka Square, fur­ther up, would still host mil­i­tary parades of men on horse­back, as chil­dren whiz by on motor­bikes and sub­way trains rum­ble under­neath. The Cen­tral Rail­way Sta­tion, above, might seem entire­ly unchanged, until one looks up, and sees ele­vat­ed trams stream­ing out of the ter­mi­nal like spider’s silk. Red Square, how­ev­er, just below, would appar­ent­ly host drag races, while peo­ple in trams and giant diri­gi­bles look on from above.

The images have a children’s book qual­i­ty about them and the fes­tive air of hol­i­day cards. They were appar­ent­ly redis­cov­ered only recent­ly when a choco­late com­pa­ny called Eyinem reprint­ed them on their pack­ag­ing. Like so much retro­fu­tur­ism, these seem—in their bustling, yet safe, cheer­ful orderliness—tailor-made for nos­tal­gic trips through Petro­vsky Park, rather than imag­i­na­tive leaps into the great unknown. For that, we must turn to Russ­ian Futur­ism, which, both before and after World War I and the Rev­o­lu­tion, imag­ined, helped bring about, but did­n’t quite sur­vive the mas­sive tech­no­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal dis­rup­tion of the next two decades.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­et Artists Envi­sion a Com­mu­nist Utopia in Out­er Space

How the Sovi­ets Imag­ined in 1960 What the World Would Look in 2017: A Gallery of Retro-Futur­is­tic Draw­ings

Down­load Russ­ian Futur­ist Book Art (1910–1915): The Aes­thet­ic Rev­o­lu­tion Before the Polit­i­cal Rev­o­lu­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.

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Tatlin’s Tower, One of the Most Ambitious Buildings That Was Never Built

in Architecture, Art, History | July 13th, 2026

It’s no small project to found a new soci­ety, espe­cial­ly when you’re doing it on the scale of a place like Rus­sia. Apart from the con­sid­er­able prac­ti­cal chal­lenges it entails, there’s also the need for sym­bols bold enough to rep­re­sent the under­ly­ing ide­al. The avant-garde artist Vladimir Tatlin took it upon him­self to cre­ate just such a sym­bol in the years after the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion. The result is offi­cial­ly known as the Mon­u­ment to the Third Inter­na­tion­al, named for the orga­ni­za­tion tasked with the pro­mo­tion of world com­mu­nism (often abbre­vi­at­ed to Com­intern). But it’s more com­mon­ly referred to as Tatlin’s Tow­er, per­haps in trib­ute to the artist’s par­tic­u­lar vision — one too ambi­tious for its real-life con­struc­tion even to begin.

“As part of a large-scale pro­gram to replace old czarist mon­u­ments with mon­u­ments to the rev­o­lu­tion, the huge struc­ture was both a sym­bol­ic sculp­ture and func­tion­al archi­tec­ture,” write Smarthis­to­ry’s Charles Cramer and Kim Grant. “Designed to strad­dle the Neva riv­er in St. Peters­burg, the 1300 foot (400 meter) iron and glass Mon­u­ment would sur­pass Paris’s Eif­fel Tow­er in both scale and com­plex­i­ty.”

Indeed, it would stand taller than the yet-to-be-con­struct­ed Empire State Build­ing, at least if you don’t count its anten­na. Con­sist­ing of “a con­tract­ing dou­ble helix that spi­rals upward, sup­port­ed by a huge diag­o­nal gird­er,” Tatlin’s Tow­er would con­tain four sub-struc­tures, each rotat­ing at a dif­fer­ent speed.

Yes, rotat­ing, and “com­plet­ing a full rev­o­lu­tion in accor­dance with the impor­tance of the insti­tu­tions con­duct­ing their busi­ness on the inside,” as Tim Brinkof writes at Big Think. “The cube that con­tains the leg­is­la­ture would have com­plet­ed a full rota­tion once per year. The pyra­mid above, hous­ing the offices of par­ty exec­u­tives, would have need­ed a month. The infor­ma­tion cen­ter, locat­ed at the very peak, would have rotat­ed once a day, offer­ing a 360-degree view of Pet­ro­grad,” as St. Peters­burg was known in 1920. (It would be re-named Leningrad in 1924 before going back to St. Peters­burg in 1991, after the end of the Sovi­et era.) You can learn more about how it all worked from the Archi­tec­ture Enthu­si­ast video at the top of the post, and the one from Side­pro­jects just above.

“Tatlin’s Tow­er was designed dur­ing a time when Com­mu­nist rule was still nascent and par­ty lead­ers sought to estab­lish a new and dis­tinct­ly social­ist iden­ti­ty through art,” writes Brinkof. Ide­al­ized rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the rul­ing class hav­ing been aggres­sive­ly scrapped along with the rul­ing class itself, the Bol­she­viks wel­comed any style that could shore up their rev­o­lu­tion­ary cause, total abstrac­tion includ­ed. Alas, though many par­ty offi­cials approved of Tatlin’s design, they com­mand­ed noth­ing like the resources to build it: “Rus­sia would go bank­rupt if it tried to acquire the insane amounts of steel and iron need­ed for the tow­er’s skele­tal frame­work.” Per­haps Leon Trot­sky, one of the pro­jec­t’s dis­senters, was right when he called it “imprac­ti­cal and roman­tic” — and per­haps those are the very qual­i­ties that keep Tatlin’s Tow­er an object of fas­ci­na­tion more than a cen­tu­ry lat­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Utopi­an, Social­ist Designs of Sovi­et Cities

Every­thing You Need to Know About Mod­ern Russ­ian Art in 25 Min­utes: A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Futur­ism, Social­ist Real­ism & More

What Makes Kaz­imir Malevich’s Black Square (1915) Not Just Art, But Impor­tant Art

The Unre­al­ized Projects of Frank Lloyd Wright Get Brought to Life with 3D Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tions

An Intro­duc­tion to Bru­tal­ism: the Icon­ic Post­war Archi­tec­tur­al Style That Com­bined Utopi­anism and Con­crete

The Futur­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Designs Cre­at­ed by Éti­enne-Louis Boul­lée in the 18th Cen­tu­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Cinemas Taught Early Movie-Goers the Rules & Etiquette for Watching Films (1912): No Whistling, Standing or Wearing Big Hats

in Film | July 13th, 2026

I admit, I some­times pay a pre­mi­um at a cer­tain din­ner the­ater chain with a lob­by-slash-bar designed to look like clas­sic indie video stores of yore. It’s not only the padded reclin­ers and half-decent grub that keeps me com­ing back. Nope, it’s the rules. Print­ed on the menu are a list of dis­rup­tive behav­iors that will get you uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly tossed out—no refunds and no back­sies.

I’ve nev­er seen it hap­pen. Giv­en what peo­ple put down for tick­ets, din­ner, drinks, and/or a babysit­ter, it’s unlike­ly many risk blow­ing the evening. But know­ing that the the­ater takes silence seri­ous­ly brings seri­ous movie­go­ers peace of mind. What is a movie, after all, with­out the all-impor­tant dia­logue, music, and sound cues?

Well, it’s silent film. And even then, when movies were sound-tracked with live accom­pa­ni­ment and dia­logue appeared on title cards, peo­ple wor­ried very much about dis­trac­tions. It just so hap­pens that talk­ing and tex­ting (obvi­ous­ly) were the least of ear­ly audience’s con­cerns.

For one thing, the cin­e­ma was a place where class­es, races, sex­es, and ages “mixed much more freely than had been Vic­to­ri­an cus­tom,” notes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate. There were the usu­al con­cerns about cor­rup­tion of the “del­i­cate sen­si­bil­i­ties” of ladies.

“But female cin­e­ma-goers were just as like­ly to be seen as a prob­lem,” writes Onion, “giv­en their sup­posed propen­si­ty for wear­ing big hats and chat­ting.” The melt­ing pot demo­graph­ic of the nick­elodeon could be exhil­a­rat­ing, and audi­ence mem­bers found they some­times lost their inhi­bi­tions. “Some­how you enter into the spir­it of the thing,” observed author W.W. Win­ters in 1910. “Don’t you slip away from your­self, lose your ret­i­cence, reserve, pride, and a few oth­er things?”

These days we’re accus­tomed to cram­ming in elbow-to-elbow next to any­one and every­one, and we most­ly heed the onscreen cajol­ing to put our phones away and keep qui­et, even when we aren’t in spe­cial­ty bou­tique chains or local art­house the­aters. Then again, if cer­tain behav­iors weren’t an issue, there wouldn’t be ads pro­hibit­ing them.

Enor­mous hats and applause (and applause with things oth­er than hands) may be relics of cinema’s infan­cy. But swap out those admo­ni­tions for oth­ers of the smart­phone vari­ety and these lantern slides instruct­ing view­ers in 1912 about prop­er movie the­ater eti­quette don’t look so dif­fer­ent from today… sort of.

We might want for inter­mis­sions to return, espe­cial­ly after the two-hour mark, and wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of keep­ing us in our seats for post-cred­it scenes, big block­buster movies just said “Good Night”? See more of these delight­ful pub­lic ser­vice announce­ments from 1912 nick­elodeons at Back Sto­ry Radio.

via Slate

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Cre­at­ing Spe­cial Effects in Silent Movies: Inge­nu­ity Before the Age of CGI

Enjoy the Great­est Silent Films Ever Made in Our Col­lec­tion of 101 Free Silent Films Online

The Char­lie Chap­lin Archive Opens, Putting Online 30,000 Pho­tos & Doc­u­ments from the Life of the Icon­ic Film Star

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.

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The Bayeux Tapestry Explained: Watch an Animated Retelling of the Norman Conquest

in Art, History | July 10th, 2026

Every time the World Cup comes around, or at least since Eng­land first and last won it 60 years ago, there’s talk of whether it’ll be brought “back home.” The idea being, of course, that foot­ball (or soc­cer, as it’s called in a cou­ple of the coun­tries host­ing this year’s match­es) was made in Eng­land. How­ev­er the show­down with Nor­way goes this Sun­day, and indeed how the rest of the World Cup plays out dur­ing the week there­after, some­thing much old­er — and of much less debat­able ori­gins — will be returned to Blighty: the Bayeux Tapes­try, which has been kept in the epony­mous Nor­mandy town since at least the four­teen-sev­en­ties, and most like­ly cen­turies ear­li­er than that.

This siz­able and intri­cate piece of embroi­dered fab­ric depicts the events lead­ing up to the Bat­tle of Hast­ings in 1066, the deci­sive event of the Nor­man Con­quest of Eng­land. Leg­i­ble today as a kind of “medieval com­ic strip,” as the nar­ra­tor of this new ani­mat­ed video from the British Muse­um puts it, the Bayeux Tapes­try also reveals “medieval life in amaz­ing detail,” while at the same time “hint­ing at secrets in its bor­ders.”

For all the schol­ar­ly and pop­u­lar atten­tion paid to it, the work has yet to yield the answers to any­where near all of its mys­ter­ies, nor to lose its fas­ci­na­tion through famil­iar­i­ty. It bears, after all, quite a lot of imagery to get famil­iar with in the first place.

It’s one thing to behold the Bayeux Tapes­try through images, how­ev­er high-res­o­lu­tion, and quite anoth­er to behold the real thing. The Eng­lish have been able to get fair­ly close to the lat­ter expe­ri­ence since the Vic­to­ri­an era with the aid of the full-size repli­ca, made in 1885, now dis­played at the Read­ing Muse­um in Berk­shire and pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. But this Sep­tem­ber, the orig­i­nal Bayeux Tapes­try will begin its res­i­dence at the British Muse­um, coin­cid­ing with the ren­o­va­tion of the Bayeux Muse­um. (France, for its part, gets a loan of trea­sures from the ship buried at Sut­ton Hoo and the Lewis chess­men.) If you get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have a look before it’s returned the fol­low­ing year, don’t turn it down; as the World Cup shows us, you can nev­er be sure when the next home­com­ing will hap­pen.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Bayeux Tapes­try Gets Dig­i­tized: View the Medieval Tapes­try in High Res­o­lu­tion, Down to the Indi­vid­ual Thread

Behold a Cre­ative Ani­ma­tion of the Bayeux Tapes­try

The Sto­ry Told on the Famous Bayeux Tapes­try Explained from Start to Fin­ish

The Entire His­to­ry of the British Isles Ani­mat­ed: 42,000 BCE to Today

Con­struct Your Own Bayeux Tapes­try with This Free Online App

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch the First Spectacular Film Adaptation of the Odyssey (1911)

in Film, History, Literature | July 9th, 2026

Pub­lic and com­mer­cial spaces around the world are now lined with imagery of a ver­te­bra-stud­ded bat­tle hel­met and stat­ues sur­round­ed by flame. It’s all part of the pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign for Christo­pher Nolan’s adap­ta­tion of the Odyssey, which will begin open­ing in the­aters lat­er this month. Much has been said and writ­ten about how the project rep­re­sents the next phase of Nolan’s ever-grander cin­e­mat­ic ambi­tions, but bank­ing on the spec­ta­cle val­ue of Homer has a long his­to­ry in film­mak­ing. When the Ital­ian silent adap­ta­tion L’Odis­sea came out in 1911, for exam­ple, it was uncer­tain even whether audi­ences would tol­er­ate the 44 min­utes it took to depict Odysseus’ ardu­ous jour­ney home.

Though it was released in the fall of 1911 in Italy and the fol­low­ing win­ter in the U.S., L’Odis­sea now looks like a sum­mer block­buster avant la let­tre, or ante lit­ter­am — or then again, giv­en the mate­r­i­al, πρὶν ὀνομασθῆναι, though most of us are still wait­ing to see just how ancient Nolan and his col­lab­o­ra­tors have allowed them­selves to get.

By the stan­dards of their day, the mak­ers of L’Odis­sea appear to have spared no expense on sets, cos­tumes, and even visu­al effects, most notably in its por­tray­al of the cyclops Polyphe­mus. Tech­ni­cal­ly, none of it may mea­sure up to what Nolan and com­pa­ny have in store, but the the­atri­cal ges­tures, shift­ing col­or tints, and occa­sion­al­ly bat­tered tex­tures do their part to con­jure up a real­i­ty of their own.

L’Odis­sea was actu­al­ly the sec­ond major lit­er­ary adap­ta­tion of that year for its direc­tors, the trio of Francesco Bertoli­ni, Adol­fo Padovan, and Giuseppe De Liguoro, all work­ing at the stu­dio Milano Films. Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured their first, L’In­fer­no, which dra­ma­tizes the first and most famous part of Dan­te’s Divine Com­e­dy at a length of 73 min­utes. That run­time qual­i­fied it as the first fea­ture-length film ever pro­duced in Italy, by com­par­i­son to which L’Odis­sea may have actu­al­ly felt like a more famil­iar view­ing expe­ri­ence to con­tem­po­rary view­ers accus­tomed to shorts. Now that human­i­ty has been re-accli­mat­ed to watch­ing things a few min­utes at a time here in the twen­ty-twen­ties, Nolan’s near­ly three-hour Odyssey looks like a bold move indeed. But then, an epic poem demands an epic inter­pre­ta­tion.

Note: If you click “cc” on the YouTube video above, Eng­lish sub­ti­tles will appear.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear What Homer’s Odyssey Sound­ed Like When Sung in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Jour­ney in Homer’s Odyssey

Hear the First Book of Homer’s Ili­ad Read Aloud in the Orig­i­nal Greek

Watch All 18,225 Lines of the Ili­ad Read by 66 Actors in a Marathon Event For an Audi­ence of 50,000

Watch L’Inferno (1911), Italy’s First Fea­ture Film and Per­haps the Finest Adap­ta­tion of Dante’s Clas­sic

Cinecit­tà Luce and Google to Bring Italy’s Largest Film Archive to YouTube

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Albert Einstein Imposes on His First Wife a Cruel List of Marital Demands

in Letters, Physics, Science | July 9th, 2026

Albert Ein­stein pas­sion­ate­ly wooed his first wife Mil­e­va Mar­ic, against his family’s wish­es, and the two had a tur­bu­lent but intel­lec­tu­al­ly rich rela­tion­ship that they record­ed for pos­ter­i­ty in their let­ters. Ein­stein and Maric’s love let­ters have inspired the short film above, My Lit­tle Witch (in Ser­bian, I believe, with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles) and sev­er­al crit­i­cal re-eval­u­a­tions of Einstein’s life and Mar­ic’s influ­ence on his ear­ly thought. Some his­to­ri­ans have even sug­gest­ed that Maric—who was also trained in physics—made con­tri­bu­tions to Einstein’s ear­ly work, a claim hot­ly dis­put­ed and, it seems, poor­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed.

The letters—written between 1897 and 1903 and only dis­cov­ered in 1987—reveal a wealth of pre­vi­ous­ly unknown detail about Mar­ic and the mar­riage. While the con­tro­ver­sy over Mar­ic’s influ­ence on Ein­stein’s the­o­ries raged among aca­d­e­mics and view­ers of PBS’s con­tro­ver­sial doc­u­men­tary, Einstein’s Wife, a scan­dalous per­son­al item in the let­ters got much bet­ter press. As Ein­stein and Maric’s rela­tion­ship dete­ri­o­rat­ed, and they attempt­ed to scotch tape it togeth­er for the sake of their chil­dren, the avun­cu­lar paci­fist wrote a chill­ing list of “con­di­tions,” in out­line form, that his wife must accept upon his return. Lists of Note tran­scribes them from Wal­ter Isaacson’s biog­ra­phy Ein­stein: His Life and Uni­verse:

CONDITIONS

A. You will make sure:

1. that my clothes and laun­dry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals reg­u­lar­ly in my room;
3. that my bed­room and study are kept neat, and espe­cial­ly that my desk is left for my use only.

B. You will renounce all per­son­al rela­tions with me inso­far as they are not com­plete­ly nec­es­sary for social rea­sons. Specif­i­cal­ly, You will forego:

1. my sit­ting at home with you;
2. my going out or trav­el­ling with you.

C. You will obey the fol­low­ing points in your rela­tions with me:

1. you will not expect any inti­ma­cy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
2. you will stop talk­ing to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bed­room or study imme­di­ate­ly with­out protest if I request it.

D. You will under­take not to belit­tle me in front of our chil­dren, either through words or behav­ior.

While it may be unfair to judge anyone’s total char­ac­ter by its most glar­ing defects, there’s no way to read this with­out shud­der­ing. Although Ein­stein tried to pre­serve the mar­riage, once they sep­a­rat­ed for good, he did not lament Mil­e­va’s loss for long. Man­jit Kumar tells us in Quan­tum: Ein­stein Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Real­i­ty that although “Mil­e­va agreed to his demands and Ein­stein returned”

[I]t could not last. At the end of July, after just three months in Berlin, Mil­e­va and the boys went back to Zurich. As he stood on the plat­form wav­ing good­bye, Ein­stein wept, if not for Mil­e­va and the mem­o­ries of what had been, then for his two depart­ing sons. But with­in a mat­ter of weeks he was hap­pi­ly enjoy­ing liv­ing alone “in my large apart­ment in undi­min­ished tran­quil­i­ty.”

Ein­stein prized his soli­tude great­ly. Anoth­er remark shows his dif­fi­cul­ty with per­son­al rela­tion­ships. While he even­tu­al­ly fell in love with his cousin Elsa and final­ly divorced Mar­ic to mar­ry her in 1919, that mar­riage too was trou­bled. Elsa died in 1936 soon after the cou­ple moved to the U.S. Not long after her death, Ein­stein would write, “I have got­ten used extreme­ly well to life here. I live like a bear in my den… This bear­ish­ness has been fur­ther enhanced by the death of my woman com­rade, who was bet­ter with oth­er peo­ple than I am.”

Einstein’s per­son­al fail­ings might pass by with­out much com­ment if he had not, like his hero Gand­hi, been ele­vat­ed to the sta­tus of a “sec­u­lar saint.” Yet, it is also the per­son­al incon­sis­ten­cies, the weak­ness­es and pet­ty, even incred­i­bly cal­lous moments, that make so many famous fig­ures’ lives com­pelling, if also con­fus­ing. As Ein­stein schol­ar John Stachel says, “Too much of an idol was made of Ein­stein. He’s not an idol—he’s a human, and that’s much more inter­est­ing.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Ein­stein Doc­u­men­tary Offers A Reveal­ing Por­trait of the Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Sci­en­tist

Albert Ein­stein Express­es His Admi­ra­tion for Mahat­ma Gand­hi, in Let­ter and Audio

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.

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How an Edward Hopper Painting Inspired Norman Bates’ Iconic House in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho

in Art, Film, History | July 8th, 2026

Alfred Hitch­cock was not Amer­i­can, as even casu­al view­ers of his tele­vi­sion show could tell right away. He may have exag­ger­at­ed his Eng­lish­ness, but like more than a few high-pro­file out­siders, he also used his cul­tur­al posi­tion to ren­der the Unit­ed States all the more vivid­ly in his work. Grow­ing up, he amassed enough sec­ond-hand knowl­edge of the coun­try in which he would one day live that he already knew his way around New York when first he set foot there. But it was some years after he relo­cat­ed to Hol­ly­wood that his films began to feel Amer­i­can — and, even­tu­al­ly, more Amer­i­can than those made by domes­tic direc­tors, thanks in part to his uncon­ven­tion­al per­spec­tive on local sources of inspi­ra­tion.

Image by Diego Del­so, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Take the archi­tec­ture. Asked by François Truf­faut about Nor­man Bates’ “ghost­ly house” in Psy­cho, he explained that “the mys­te­ri­ous atmos­phere is, to some extent, quite acci­den­tal. For instance, the actu­al locale of the events is in north­ern Cali­fornia, where that type of house is very com­mon.” He was­n’t try­ing to “recon­struct an old-fash­ioned Uni­ver­sal hor­ror pic­ture atmos­phere,” but “sim­ply want­ed to be accu­rate.” Yet the house is report­ed to have been inspired by an east-coast mod­el as well, and one found in art: Edward Hop­per’s paint­ingHouse by the Rail­road(top), from 1925, itself made with ref­er­ence to a real Vic­to­ri­an man­sion that still stands in Haver­straw, New York, between a rail­road and a ceme­tery.

Hitch­cock had already made use of Hop­per, that most cin­e­mat­ic of Amer­i­can painters. Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the visu­al influ­ence of Hop­per paint­ings from the nine­teen-twen­ties and thir­ties like Automat, Night Win­dows, Hotel Room, and Room in New York on Rear Win­dow. “Both artists explored the lone­li­ness that results from mod­ern­iza­tion,” writes Tim Brinkhof at Art­net. “Hopper’s paint­ings and Hitch­cock­’s films explore the extent to which progress and urban mod­ern­iza­tion have made the world lone­li­er and, as a result, capa­ble of acts of explo­sive, irra­tional vio­lence,” a capa­bil­i­ty per­son­i­fied in the dis­turbed motel-keep­er Nor­man Bates.

“The [Haver­straw] house was built in 1885, near the crest of a hill that ris­es steeply from the west bank of the Hud­son Riv­er,” writes Paul Bochn­er in the Atlantic. “By the turn of the cen­tu­ry it had been aban­doned; neigh­bor­hood chil­dren called it haunt­ed.” It was lat­er pur­chased by the dis­trict attor­ney of Rock­land Coun­ty, whose eldest daugh­ter remem­bered that, “when she was thir­teen, she looked out her bed­room win­dow and saw a man sit­ting across the road, paint­ing.” The man was, of course, Edward Hop­per. She would­n’t have known, sev­en­teen years before Nighthawks, that he was on his way to becom­ing one of the coun­try’s most famous artists. As for what the house would one day become in the hands of Alfred Hitch­cock, then just start­ing his career on the oth­er side of the Atlantic, nobody could have imag­ined.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

16 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

How Edward Hopper’s Paint­ings Inspired the Creepy Sus­pense of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Win­dow

How Cin­e­ma Inspired Edward Hopper’s Great Paint­ings, and How Edward Hop­per Inspired Great Film­mak­ers

Alfred Hitch­cock Want­ed Frank Lloyd Wright to Design the North by North­west House: An Archi­tect Just Built It for $45 Mil­lion

How Edward Hop­per “Sto­ry­board­ed” His Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks

Sal­vador Dalí Goes to Hol­ly­wood & Cre­ates a Wild Dream Sequence for Alfred Hitch­cock

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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A 3,000-Year-Old Painter’s Palette from Ancient Egypt, with Traces of the Original Colors Still In It

in Art, History, Museums | July 8th, 2026

It’s a good bet that your first box of crayons or water­col­ors was a sim­ple affair of six or so col­ors… just like the palette belong­ing to Amen­emopet, vizier to Pharaoh Amen­hotep III (c.1391 — c.1354 BC), a plea­sure-lov­ing patron of the arts whose rule coin­cid­ed with a peri­od of great pros­per­i­ty.

Amenemopet’s well-used artist’s palette, above, resides in the Egypt­ian wing of New York City’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art.

Over 3000 years old and carved from a sin­gle piece of ivory, the palette is marked “beloved of Re,” a roy­al ref­er­ence to the sun god dear to both Amen­hotep III and Akhen­aton, his son and suc­ces­sor, whose wor­ship of Re resem­bled monothe­ism.

As cura­tor Catharine H. Roehrig notes in the Met­ro­pol­i­tan’s pub­li­ca­tion, Life along the Nile: Three Egyp­tians of Ancient Thebes, the palette “con­tains the six basic col­ors of the Egypt­ian palette, plus two extras: red­dish brown, a mix­ture of red ocher and car­bon; and orange, a mix­ture of orpi­ment (yel­low) and red ocher. The painter could also vary his col­ors by apply­ing a thick­er or thin­ner lay­er of paint or by adding white or black to achieve a lighter or dark­er shade.”

(Care­ful when mix­ing that orpi­ment into your red ocher, kids. It’s a form of arsenic.)

Oth­er min­er­als that would have been ground and com­bined with a nat­ur­al bind­ing agent include gyp­sum, car­bon, iron oxides, blue and green azu­rite and mala­chite.

The col­ors them­selves would have had strong sym­bol­ism for Amen­hotep and his peo­ple, and the artist would have made very delib­er­ate—reg­u­lat­ed, even—choic­es as to which pig­ment to load onto his palm fiber brush when dec­o­rat­ing tombs, tem­ples, pub­lic build­ings, and pot­tery.

As Jen­ny Hill writes in Ancient Egypt Online, iwn—col­or—can also be trans­lat­ed as “dis­po­si­tion,” “char­ac­ter,” “com­plex­ion,” or “nature.” She delves into the specifics of each of the six basic col­ors:

Wadj (green) also means “to flour­ish” or “to be healthy.” The hiero­glyph rep­re­sent­ed the papyrus plant as well as the green stone mala­chite (wadj). The col­or green rep­re­sent­ed veg­e­ta­tion, new life and fer­til­i­ty. In an inter­est­ing par­al­lel with mod­ern ter­mi­nol­o­gy, actions which pre­served the fer­til­i­ty of the land or pro­mot­ed life were described as “green.”

Dshr (red) was a pow­er­ful col­or because of its asso­ci­a­tion with blood, in par­tic­u­lar the pro­tec­tive pow­er of the blood of Isis…red could also rep­re­sent anger, chaos and fire and was close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Set, the unpre­dictable god of storms. Set had red hair, and peo­ple with red hair were thought to be con­nect­ed to him. As a result, the Egyp­tians described a per­son in a fit of rage as hav­ing a “red heart” or as being “red upon” the thing that made them angry. A per­son was described as hav­ing “red eyes” if they were angry or vio­lent. “To red­den” was to die and “mak­ing red” was a euphemism for killing.

Irtyu (blue) was the col­or of the heav­ens and hence rep­re­sent­ed the uni­verse. Many tem­ples, sar­copha­gi and bur­ial vaults have a deep blue roof speck­led with tiny yel­low stars. Blue is also the col­or of the Nile and the primeval waters of chaos (known as Nun).

Khenet (yel­low) rep­re­sent­ed that which was eter­nal and inde­struc­tible, and was close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with gold (nebu or nebw) and the sun. Gold was thought to be the sub­stance which formed the skin of the gods.

Hdj (white) rep­re­sent­ed puri­ty and omnipo­tence. Many sacred ani­mals (hip­po, oxen and cows) were white. White cloth­ing was worn dur­ing reli­gious rit­u­als and to “wear white san­dals” was to be a priest…White was also seen as the oppo­site of red, because of the latter’s asso­ci­a­tion with rage and chaos, and so the two were often paired to rep­re­sent com­plete­ness.

Kem (black) rep­re­sent­ed death and the after­life to the ancient Egyp­tians. Osiris was giv­en the epi­thet “the black one” because he was the king of the nether­world, and both he and Anu­bis (the god of embalm­ing) were por­trayed with black faces. The Egyp­tians also asso­ci­at­ed black with fer­til­i­ty and res­ur­rec­tion because much of their agri­cul­ture was depen­dent on the rich dark silt deposit­ed on the riv­er banks by the Nile dur­ing the inun­da­tion. When used to rep­re­sent res­ur­rec­tion, black and green were inter­change­able.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Won­ders of Ancient Egypt: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia

Harvard’s Dig­i­tal Giza Project Lets You Access the Largest Online Archive on the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids (Includ­ing a 3D Giza Tour)

Pyra­mids of Giza: Ancient Egypt­ian Art and Archaeology–a Free Online Course from Har­vard

The Met Dig­i­tal­ly Restores the Col­ors of an Ancient Egypt­ian Tem­ple, Using Pro­jec­tion Map­ping Tech­nol­o­gy

Take a 3D Tour Through Ancient Giza, Includ­ing the Great Pyra­mids, the Sphinx & More

What Ancient Egypt­ian Sound­ed Like & How We Know It

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er in NYC.

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