The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Google, History | ≅ Leave a Comment
Google Earth’s historical imagery feature now includes aerial footage of the aftermath of World War II, allowing users to comprehend the extent of post-war destruction by comparing photos of cities as they are today to those of bombed out cities immediately after the war.
Here’s Warsaw in 1935, devastated in 1943, and restored today. You can [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ 1 Comment
Sad news. Howard Zinn, the American historian best known for his book, A People’s History of the United States, died today of a heart attack at the age of 87. The Boston Herald has more on his life and passing here. If you’re familiar with Zinn’s biography, you’ll know that he served in World War II [...]
≡ Category: Art, History | ≅ 4 Comments
Working with the BBC, Neil MacGregor, the Director of the British Museum, has launched a downright smart project. A History of the World in 100 Objects uses important pieces from the museum’s collections to recount the long history of humanity. Throughout the year, the serialized radio program will air 100 episodes, each averaging 15 minutes, and [...]
≡ Category: History, Stanford, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
The Chinese language has tens of thousands of characters, and many have considered it nearly impossible to fit these characters onto a single workable typewriter. But that hasn’t stopped inventors from trying … and, to a certain degree, succeeding. Stanford historian Thomas Mullaney is now writing the first history of the Chinese typewriter, and he [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, History | ≅ Leave a Comment
Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs & Steel (and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed), offers some timely thoughts on why Haiti, once a fairly prosperous country, has sunk into enduring poverty — a condition not comparatively shared by its neighbor on the same island, the Dominican Republic. According to Diamond, Haiti’s [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ Leave a Comment
For MLK’s birthday, we bring back the full “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered at The Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. Seventeen eloquent and brave minutes that changed the world and made it a better place.
≡ Category: Current Affairs, History, Stanford | ≅ Leave a Comment
What would Martin Luther King Jr. think about America in 2010? Few would know better than Clayborne Carson, the Stanford historian who directs the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. In this talk, Carson describes MLK’s likely thoughts about America during the Great Recession. King cared deeply about economic justice, and it’s clear [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ Leave a Comment
Let me quickly call your attention to an interview with Joseph Ellis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling historian, who most recently published American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic. In this casual, wide-ranging conversation (listen below or here) with Russ Roberts, the host of EconTalk, Ellis talks through the founding years of [...]
≡ Category: History, Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
Amazingly today marks the 29th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder in New York City. Below, you can listen to what NYC residents heard on the radio that night. The sound file was originally posted by WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. WFMU is also the force behind the The Free Music Archive, which offers up over 10,000 [...]
≡ Category: Google, History | ≅ 2 Comments
On Friday, I mentioned that you can now visit the Roman ruins at Pompeii, Stonehenge and Versailles via Google Street View. What I didn’t realize is that this looks to be part of a larger initiative, a larger attempt to provide digital tours of important world heritage sites. According to this UNESCO announcement, 19 historical [...]
≡ Category: Google, History | ≅ Leave a Comment
The story of Pompeii is well known. Back in 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted and covered the neighboring Roman city with 60 feet of ash over the course of two days. The city was wiped out and then entombed for centuries, until archaeologists started unearthing the ruins in the 18th and 19th centuries, offering the [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ Leave a Comment
20 years ago, the dominoes fell in Eastern Europe. Not long after the Wall fell in Berlin, a non-violent revolution got underway in Czechoslovakia. The Velvet Revolution took just a matter of six weeks (November 17 – December 29, 1989) to unfold. It was fast and bloodless, and it put on the world stage Václav [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ Leave a Comment
When I traveled to East Berlin in 1988, my first time as a youngster, I read reports of a split between the hardline East German regime and the opening Soviet government. But nobody really paid much attention to that news. Less than a year later, the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall would be gone, [...]
≡ Category: History, Literature | ≅ Leave a Comment
Excellent find by Stephen Grant… You can now experience the battle lines of World War I in Second Life, thanks to The First World War Poetry Digital Archive and the Learning Technologies Group at Oxford University. WWI shocked the Western world with its landscape-changing warfare and high tech carnage. Remembrances of “The Great War” live on [...]
≡ Category: Art, History | ≅ 5 Comments
The Bayeux Tapestry famously offers a pictorial interpretation of the Norman Conquest of England (1066), a pivotal moment in medieval history, and the events leading to the invasion itself. Currently residing in France, the tapestry measures 20 inches by 230 feet, and you can now see an animated version of the story it narrates. The [...]
≡ Category: History, Literature | ≅ Leave a Comment
We’re lucky to have Anne Frank’s diary — lucky that the diary was ever discovered, and lucky, too, that someone took a chance on publishing the eventual bestseller. This is all nicely outlined by Francine Prose, who has a new book out called Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife. You can listen to her [...]
≡ Category: History, Life | ≅ 1 Comment
There’s no sound, and the clip only runs 20 seconds. But this is the only known footage of Anne Frank, and it’s now online. The Anne Frank House does a good job of setting the scene for the video taken on July 22, 1941. “The girl next door is getting married. Anne Frank is leaning [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ 1 Comment
Last fall, Yale University introduced a second round of open courses that included Donald Kagan’s Introduction to Ancient Greek History. A major figure in the field, Kagan takes students from the Greek Dark Ages, through the rise of Sparta and Athens, The Peloponnesian War, and beyond. You’ll cover more than a millennium in 24 lectures. Above, we start with [...]
≡ Category: History, YouTube | ≅ Leave a Comment
The Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain collapsed a little more than 20 years ago (August 1989). And even though I watched the events on TV, my memory of it all has already started to fade. But that’s where YouTube comes in. Above, a quick refresher that makes my day. This clip comes from a [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ 6 Comments
Howard Zinn, a historian from Boston University, best known for his classic book, People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present, has been brought to YouTube. This video presents an animated version of Zinn’s essay, Empire or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me about the American Empire. You can otherwise find this clip on [...]
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