Archaeologists Discover a 2,400-Year-Old Skeleton Mosaic That Urges People to “Be Cheerful and Live Your Life”

in Archaeology, Food & Drink, History, Life | July 28th, 2025

Image by Dosse­man, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 2012, archae­ol­o­gists dis­cov­ered in South­ern Turkey a well-pre­served mosa­ic fea­tur­ing a skele­ton savor­ing a loaf of bread and a pitch­er of wine, sur­round­ed by the Greek words “Be cheer­ful and live your life.” Dat­ing back to the 3rd cen­tu­ry BCE, the mosa­ic like­ly adorned the din­ing room of a wealthy vil­la in the ancient Gre­co-Roman city of Anti­och. It’s a kind of memen­to mori, a reminder that life is short and you should enjoy it while you can. Or so that’s how many have inter­pret­ed the mes­sage of the mosa­ic.

If you would like to delve deep­er, it’s worth read­ing the analy­sis and back­ground infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by The His­to­ry Blog. Mean­while, this sep­a­rate post on Tum­blr high­lights oth­er trans­la­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions of the mosaic’s key inscrip­tion.

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via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent 

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

A Rab­bit Rides a Char­i­ot Pulled by Geese in an Ancient Roman Mosa­ic (2nd cen­tu­ry AD)

How a Mosa­ic from Caligula’s Par­ty Boat Became a Cof­fee Table in a New York City Apart­ment 50 Years Ago

How to Make the 2000-Year-Old “Piz­za” Dis­cov­ered on a Pom­peii Fres­co

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How Disney Fought Fascism with Propaganda Cartoons During World War II & Averted Financial Collapse

in Animation, History | July 25th, 2025

Today, the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny seems like one of those enti­ties that’s “too big to fail” — but dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, fail it near­ly did. Like the big-think­ing enter­tain­er-busi­ness­man he was, Walt Dis­ney him­self had been re-invest­ing the com­pa­ny’s prof­its into ever more ambi­tious ani­mat­ed films. This prac­tice took an unfor­tu­nate turn with Fan­ta­sia, which may now be regard­ed as a clas­sic even by those of us with­out inter­est in Dis­ney movies, but which did­n’t bring in the expect­ed box-office take when it was ini­tial­ly released in 1940. It fol­lowed the also-under­per­form­ing Pinoc­chio, which could­n’t reach audi­ences in war-torn Europe. The fol­low­ing year, Dis­ney found itself at the edge of bank­rupt­cy.

Then came the Japan­ese attack on Pearl Har­bor, which result­ed in the U.S. Army’s eight-month-long occu­pa­tion of Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios. The idea was to pro­tect a near­by Lock­heed plant, but Dis­ney, who’d already made inquiries about pro­duc­ing war films, used an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a deal that saved his com­pa­ny.

Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios was con­tract­ed to make not just a vari­ety of train­ing films for mil­i­tary use, but also a series of war-themed car­toons for pub­lic exhi­bi­tion. This was “total war,” after all, which required the mobi­liza­tion of the pub­lic at home, and the mobi­liza­tion of the pub­lic at home required domes­tic pro­pa­gan­da. Who bet­ter to stoke Amer­i­can desire for vic­to­ry over the Axis than Dis­ney’s biggest ani­mat­ed star at the time, Don­ald Duck?

In the most acclaimed of these car­toons, the Acad­e­my Award-win­ning Der Fuehrer’s Face from 1943, Don­ald Duck is employed at a muni­tions fac­to­ry in Nutzi­land, some kind of Axis super­state ruled over by Hiro­hi­to, Mus­soli­ni, and espe­cial­ly Hitler. It’s some­thing else to hear the phrase “Heil Hitler!” in Don­ald Duck­’s voice, and through­out his day of humil­i­a­tions and pri­va­tions in Nutzi­land, he has to say it quite a lot. Just when all of this has put him in a tail­spin toward mad­ness, he wakes up in his bed­room back in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, stars-and-stripes cur­tains, minia­ture Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, and all. For Don­ald, the night­mare is over — but in real life, Allied vic­to­ry remained far from a sure thing.

You can watch Der Fuehrer’s Face and sev­en oth­er Dis­ney-pro­duced World War II pro­pa­gan­da car­toons (along with the Looney Tunes short The Duck­ta­tors, from Warn­er Bros.) in the playlist above. To be sure, some of them con­tain ele­ments con­sid­ered crude and even offen­sive here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. But like all pro­pa­gan­da, they’re all of great his­tor­i­cal val­ue, in the realm of both polit­i­cal his­to­ry and the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion. Con­sid­er how they found their way into Europe and Rus­sia, find­ing audi­ences there even as the war raged on; con­sid­er, too, how well-loved Don­ald Duck and his com­pa­tri­ots have been by gen­er­a­tions of Ger­man, Ital­ian, and Japan­ese chil­dren. After this total war, no one enjoyed more total a vic­to­ry than Dis­ney.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of the Nazi – Walt Disney’s 1943 Film Shows How Fas­cists Are Made

Neu­ro­science and Pro­pa­gan­da Come Togeth­er in Disney’s World War II Film Rea­son and Emo­tion

Before Cre­at­ing the Moomins, Tove Jans­son Drew Satir­i­cal Art Mock­ing Hitler & Stal­in

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel

“Evil Mick­ey Mouse” Invades Japan in a 1934 Japan­ese Ani­me Pro­pa­gan­da Film

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Plato, Aristotle & Other Greek Philosophers in Raphael’s Renaissance Masterpiece, The School of Athens

in Art, History | July 24th, 2025

Among the won­ders to behold at the Vat­i­can Muse­ums are the larg­er-than-life forms of the titans of Greek phi­los­o­phy. It’s wide­ly known that at the cen­ter of Raphael’s fres­co The School of Athens, which dom­i­nates one wall of the twelve Stanze di Raf­fael­lo in the Apos­tolic Palace, stand Pla­to and Aris­to­tle. In real­i­ty, of course, the two were not con­tem­po­raries: more than three decades sep­a­rat­ed the for­mer’s death from the lat­ter’s birth. But in Raphael’s artis­tic vision, great men (and pos­si­bly a great woman) of all gen­er­a­tions come togeth­er under the ban­ner of learn­ing, from Anax­i­man­der to Aver­roes, Epi­cu­rus to Euclid, and Par­menides to Pythago­ras.

Even in this com­pa­ny, the fig­ure sit­ting at the bot­tom of the steps catch­es one’s eye. There are sev­er­al rea­sons for this, and gal­lerist-YouTu­ber James Payne lays them out in his new Great Art Explained video on The School of Athens above.

It appears to rep­re­sent Her­a­cli­tus, the pre-Socrat­ic philoso­pher asso­ci­at­ed with ideas like change and the uni­ty of oppo­sites, and a nat­ur­al can­di­date for inclu­sion in what amounts to a trans-tem­po­ral class por­trait of phi­los­o­phy. But Raphael seems to have added him lat­er, after that sec­tion of the pic­ture was already com­plete. An astute view­er may also notice Her­a­cli­tus’ hav­ing been ren­dered in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent, more mus­cu­lar style than that of the oth­er philoso­phers in the frame — a style more like the one on dis­play over in the Sis­tine Chapel.

In fact, Michelan­ge­lo was at work on his Sis­tine Chapel fres­coes at the very same time Raphael was paint­ing The School of Athens. It’s entire­ly pos­si­ble, as Payne tells it, for Raphael to have stolen a glimpse of Michelan­gelo’s stun­ning work, then gone back and added Michelan­ge­lo-as-Her­a­cli­tus to his own com­po­si­tion in trib­ute. There was prece­dent for this choice: Raphael had already mod­eled Socrates after Leonar­do da Vin­ci (who was, incred­i­bly, also alive and active at the time), and even ren­dered the ancient painter Apelles as a self-por­trait. With The School of Athens, Payne says, Raphael was “posi­tion­ing ancient philoso­phers as pre­cur­sors to Chris­t­ian truth,” in line with the think­ing of the Renais­sance. In sub­tler ways, he was also empha­siz­ing how the genius of the past lives on — or is, rather, reborn — in the present.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel & Explore Michelangelo’s Mas­ter­pieces Up Close

Artist Turns Famous Paint­ings, from Raphael to Mon­et to Licht­en­stein, Into Inno­v­a­tive Sound­scapes

What Makes The Death of Socrates a Great Work of Art?: A Thought-Pro­vok­ing Read­ing of David’s Philo­soph­i­cal & Polit­i­cal Paint­ing

The Sis­tine Chapel: A $22,000 Art-Book Col­lec­tion Fea­tures Remark­able High-Res­o­lu­tion Views of the Murals of Michelan­ge­lo, Bot­ti­cel­li & Oth­er Renais­sance Mas­ters

The Sis­tine Chapel of the Ancients: Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er 8 Miles of Art Paint­ed on Rock Walls in the Ama­zon

Ancient Phi­los­o­phy: Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Iconic Glass House Built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—and the Lawsuit That Cast a Shadow Over It

in Architecture, History | July 22nd, 2025

It’s tempt­ing, in telling the sto­ry of the Edith Farnsworth House, to break out clichés like “Peo­ple who live in glass hous­es should­n’t throw stones.” For the res­i­dence in ques­tion is made pre­dom­i­nant­ly of glass, or rather glass and steel, and its first own­er turned out to have more than a few stones for its archi­tect: Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe, the last direc­tor of the Bauhaus, who’d immi­grat­ed from Nazi Ger­many to the Unit­ed States in the late nine­teen-thir­ties. It was at a din­ner par­ty in 1945 that he hap­pened to meet the for­ward-think­ing Chica­go doc­tor Edith Farnsworth, who expressed an inter­est in build­ing a whol­ly mod­ern retreat well out­side the city. Asked if one of his appren­tices could do the job, Mies offered to take it on him­self.

The task, as Mies con­ceived of archi­tec­ture in his time, was to build for an era in which high and rapid­ly advanc­ing indus­tri­al tech­nol­o­gy was becom­ing unavoid­able in ordi­nary lives. Such lives, prop­er­ly lived, would require new frames, and thor­ough­ly con­sid­ered ones at that. The shape ulti­mate­ly tak­en by the Farnsworth House is one such frame: order­ly, and to a degree that could be called extreme, while on anoth­er lev­el max­i­mal­ly per­mis­sive of human free­dom.

That was, in any case, the idea: in phys­i­cal real­i­ty, Farnsworth her­self had a long list of prac­ti­cal com­plaints about what she began to call “my Mies-con­cep­tion,” not least to do with its attrac­tion of insects and green­house-like heat reten­tion (uncom­pen­sat­ed for, in true Euro­pean style, by air con­di­tion­ing).

Chron­i­clers of the Farnsworth House saga tend to men­tion that the cen­tral rela­tion­ship appears to have exceed­ed that of archi­tect and client, at least for a time. But what­ev­er affec­tion had once exist­ed between them had sure­ly evap­o­rat­ed by the time they were suing each oth­er toward the end of con­struc­tion, with Mies alleg­ing non-pay­ment and Farnsworth alleg­ing mal­prac­tice. In the event, Farnsworth lost in court and used the house as a week­end retreat for a cou­ple of decades before sell­ing it to the British devel­op­er and archi­tec­tur­al enthu­si­ast Peter Palum­bo, who espe­cial­ly enjoyed its ambi­ence dur­ing thun­der­storms. Today it oper­ates as a muse­um, as explained by its exec­u­tive direc­tor Scott Mahaf­fey in the new Open Space video above. Hear­ing about all the tur­moil behind the Farnsworth House­’s con­cep­tion, the atten­dees of its tours might find them­selves think­ing that hell hath no fury like a client scorned.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Quick Ani­mat­ed Tour of Icon­ic Mod­ernist Hous­es

An Oral His­to­ry of the Bauhaus: Hear Rare Inter­views (in Eng­lish) with Wal­ter Gropius, Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe & More

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

How a 1930s Archi­tec­tur­al Mas­ter­piece Har­ness­es the Sun to Keep Warm in the Win­ter & Cool in the Sum­mer

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

How This Chica­go Sky­scraper Bare­ly Touch­es the Ground

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Real Science Experiments That Inspired Frankenstein

in History, Literature, Science | July 21st, 2025

With the Hal­loween sea­son mere months away, the time has come to start think­ing about what fright­en­ing reads to line up for our­selves this year. Some of us may reach for Mary Shel­ley’s Franken­stein; or, The Mod­ern Prometheus, a sto­ry we all think we know. But a look into its con­text reveals that what’s now regard­ed as a time­less clas­sic was, in its day, quite a top­i­cal nov­el. Intro­duc­ing the 1931 James Whale film adap­ta­tion, the reg­u­lar hor­ror-movie play­er Edward Van Sloan describes Franken­stein as deal­ing with “the two great mys­ter­ies of cre­ation: life and death” — which, when Shel­ley’s nov­el was pub­lished more than a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er, were yet more mys­te­ri­ous still.

“Wor­ried by the poten­tial inabil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish between the states of life and death, two doc­tors, William Hawes and Thomas Cogan, set up the Roy­al Humane Soci­ety in Lon­don in 1774,” writes Sharon Rus­ton at The Pub­lic Domain Review. At the time, it was actu­al­ly called the Soci­ety for the Recov­ery of Per­sons Appar­ent­ly Drowned, a name that would’ve dou­bled neat­ly as a mis­sion state­ment. Falling into the rivers and canals of Lon­don was, it seems, a com­mon occur­rence in those days, and few mem­bers of the pub­lic pos­sessed the swim­ming skills to save them­selves. Thus the Soci­ety’s mem­bers took it upon them­selves to devise meth­ods of reviv­ing those “per­sons appar­ent­ly drowned,” whether their plunges were acci­den­tal­ly or delib­er­ate­ly tak­en.

One such attempt­ed sui­cide, writes Rus­ton, “seems to have been Mary Shelley’s moth­er, the fem­i­nist, Mary Woll­stonecraft,” who lat­er com­plained about how, after leap­ing into the Thames, she was “inhu­man­ly brought back to life and mis­ery.” That inci­dent could well have done its part to inspire Franken­stein, though notions of reviv­ing the dead were very much in the air at the time, not least due to the atten­tion being paid to the prac­tice of “Gal­vanism,” which involved stim­u­lat­ing the mus­cles of dead ani­mals and human bod­ies to move­ment using the then-nov­el phe­nom­e­non of elec­tric­i­ty. In the Eng­land of that his­tor­i­cal moment, it was­n’t entire­ly far-fetched to believe that the dead real­ly could be brought back to life.

You can learn more about the sci­en­tif­ic devel­op­ments, social changes, and human anx­i­eties (includ­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of being buried alive) that formed Franken­stein’s cul­tur­al back­ground from the Vox His­to­ry Club video above. In a way, it seems inevitable that some­one in the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry would write about a sci­en­tist avant la let­tre who dares to cre­ate life from death. It just hap­pened to be the teenage Shel­ley, to whom the idea came while engaged in a com­pe­ti­tion with Lord Byron, the writer-physi­cian John Poli­dori, and her soon-to-be hus­band Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley to see who could write the scari­est sto­ry. Two cen­turies lat­er, the sto­ry of Franken­stein may no longer scare us, but as told by Shel­ley, it still has a way of sound­ing strange­ly plau­si­ble.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Read­ing Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein on Its 200th Anniver­sary: An Ani­mat­ed Primer to the Great Mon­ster Sto­ry & Tech­nol­o­gy Cau­tion­ary Tale

Read a Huge Anno­tat­ed Online Edi­tion of Franken­stein: A Mod­ern Way to Cel­e­brate the 200th Anniver­sary of Mary Shelley’s Clas­sic Nov­el

Mary Shelley’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­script of Franken­stein: This Is “Ground Zero of Sci­ence Fic­tion,” Says William Gib­son

The Very First Film Adap­ta­tion of Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein, a Thomas Edi­son Pro­duc­tion (1910)

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Mary Shel­ley & Her Lit­er­ary Cre­ation Franken­stein Opens in Bath, Eng­land

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The First Photograph Ever Taken (1826)

in History, Photography | July 17th, 2025

first_photograph_home_trans

In his­to­ries of ear­ly pho­tog­ra­phy, Louis Daguerre faith­ful­ly appears as one of the fathers of the medi­um. His patent­ed process, the daguerreo­type, in wide use for near­ly twen­ty years in the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, pro­duced so many of the images we asso­ciate with the peri­od, includ­ing famous pho­tographs of Abra­ham Lin­coln, Edgar Allan Poe, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, and John Brown. But had things gone dif­fer­ent­ly, we might know bet­ter the hard­er-to-pro­nounce name of his one­time part­ner Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, who pro­duced the first known pho­to­graph ever, tak­en in 1826.

Some­thing of a gen­tle­man inven­tor, Niépce (below) began exper­i­ment­ing with lith­o­g­ra­phy and with that ancient device, the cam­era obscu­ra, in 1816. Even­tu­al­ly, after much tri­al and error, Niépce devel­oped his own pho­to­graph­ic process, which he called “heli­og­ra­phy.”

He began by mix­ing chem­i­cals on a flat pewter plate, then plac­ing it inside a cam­era. After expos­ing the plate to light for eight hours, the inven­tor then washed and dried it. What remained was the image we see above, tak­en, as Niépce wrote, from “the room where I work” on his coun­try estate and now housed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

niepce1_large

At the Ran­som Cen­ter web­site, you can see a short video describ­ing Niépce’s house and show­ing how schol­ars recre­at­ed the van­tage point from which he took the pic­ture. Anoth­er video offers insight into the process Niépce invent­ed to cre­ate his “heli­o­graph.” In 1827, Niépce trav­eled to Eng­land to vis­it his broth­er. While there, with the assis­tance of Eng­lish botanist Fran­cis Bauer, he pre­sent­ed a paper on his new inven­tion to the Roy­al Soci­ety. His find­ings were reject­ed, how­ev­er, because he opt­ed not to ful­ly reveal the details, hop­ing to make eco­nom­ic gains with a pro­pri­etary method. Niépce left the pewter image with Bauer and returned to France, where he short­ly after agreed to a ten-year part­ner­ship with Daguerre in 1829.

Sad­ly for Niépce, his heli­o­graph would not pro­duce the finan­cial or tech­no­log­i­cal suc­cess he envi­sioned, and he died just four years lat­er in 1833. Daguerre, of course, went on to devel­op his famous process in 1839 and passed into his­to­ry, but we should remem­ber Niépce’s efforts, and mar­vel at what he was able to achieve on his own with lim­it­ed mate­ri­als and no train­ing or prece­dent. Daguerre may receive much of the cred­it, but it was the “sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-mind­ed gen­tle­man” Niépce and his heli­og­ra­phy that led—writes the Ran­som Center’s Head of Pho­to­graph­ic Con­ser­va­tion Bar­bara Brown—to “the inven­tion of the new medi­um.”

Niepce Reproduction

Niépce’s pewter plate image was re-dis­cov­ered in 1952 by Hel­mut and Ali­son Gern­sheim, who pub­lished an arti­cle on the find in The Pho­to­graph­ic Jour­nal. There­after, the Gern­sheims had the East­man Kodak Com­pa­ny cre­ate the repro­duc­tion above. This image’s “pointil­lis­tic effect,” writes Brown, “is due to the repro­duc­tion process,” and the image “was touched up with water­col­ors by [Hel­mut] Gern­sheim him­self in order to bring it as close as pos­si­ble to his approx­i­ma­tion of how he felt the orig­i­nal should appear in repro­duc­tion.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First “Self­ie” In His­to­ry Tak­en by Robert Cor­nelius, a Philadel­phia Chemist, in 1839

The First Known Pho­to­graph of Peo­ple Hav­ing a Beer (1843)

The Old­est Known Pho­tographs of Rome (1841–1871)

Some of the Old­est Pho­tos You Will Ever See: Dis­cov­er Pho­tographs of Greece, Egypt, Turkey & Oth­er Mediter­ranean Lands (1840s)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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

in Art, History | July 16th, 2025

They say that his­to­ry is writ­ten by the vic­tors, but that isn’t always true: some­times it’s embroi­dered by the vic­tors. Such was the case with the Bayeux Tapes­try, which com­mem­o­rates the build-up to and suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion of the Nor­man con­quest of Eng­land in 1066. Cre­at­ed not long after the events it depicts in what we now call the Unit­ed King­dom, the near­ly 230-foot-long cloth has been kept in France for most of its exis­tence. But as report­ed by Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Isa Far­fan, the Bayeux Tapes­try is now set for a year­long sojourn back in its home­land, and at no less an august insti­tu­tion than the British Muse­um, after spend­ing the bet­ter part of a mil­len­ni­um abroad.

In a style that may strike twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry view­ers as a pre­de­ces­sor to the graph­ic nov­el — or even to the straight-ahead com­ic book, with its grotesque exag­ger­a­tions — the Bayeux Tapes­try’s embroi­dery tells the sto­ry, writes Far­fan, of “the vic­to­ry of William the Con­queror, the Duke of Nor­mandy, over Eng­land in the Bat­tle of Hast­ings. William assem­bled a fleet of ships filled with thou­sands of men and hors­es to cross the Eng­lish Chan­nel and suc­cess­ful­ly claimed the throne from the last Anglo-Sax­on king, Harold God­win­son.”

All this takes place over “58 scenes fea­tur­ing more than 600 wool-thread­ed peo­ple and 200 hors­es. Though it focus­es on the his­tor­i­cal bat­tle, the embroi­dery also reveals fix­tures of broad­er eleventh-cen­tu­ry life, includ­ing archi­tec­ture and armor, and includes almost 400 Latin words accom­pa­ny­ing the images.”

Those words are inter­pret­ed by YouTu­ber Lindy­beige in the video above, which offers a humor­ous ani­mat­ed tour of the full length of the Bayeux Tapes­try — or, in any case, a very close repli­ca made in Eng­land in the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. The elab­o­rate­ness of its treat­ment under­scores that the Nor­man con­quest was one of the most momen­tous events, if not the most momen­tous event, in all of Eng­lish his­to­ry; the extent of its glo­ri­fi­ca­tion under­scores how much the con­querors felt the need to legit­imize their rule. Noth­ing would ever be the same for Eng­lish cul­ture, Eng­lish law, and even, as recent­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, the Eng­lish lan­guage. If you go to Lon­don next year to behold the Bayeux Tapes­try for your­self, you’ll hear the usu­al ambi­ent grum­bling about the state of Eng­land — with a refreshed empha­sis, per­haps, on how wrong it all went after 1066.

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

How Eng­land First Became Eng­land: An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry

The Bayeux Tapes­try Ani­mat­ed

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. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Entire History of English in 22 Minutes

in History, Language | July 15th, 2025

When we speak Eng­lish, we might say we’re speak­ing the lan­guage of Samuel John­son, the man who wrote its first dic­tio­nary. Or we could say we’re speak­ing the lan­guage of Shake­speare, who coined more Eng­lish terms than any oth­er indi­vid­ual in his­to­ry. It would make just as much sense to describe our­selves as speak­ing the lan­guage of the King James Bible, the mass print­ing of which did so much to stan­dard­ize Eng­lish, steam­rolling flat many of the count­less local vari­a­tions that exist­ed in the ear­ly sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry. But as many an Eng­lish­man (and more than a few Amer­i­cans) would be loath to admit, when we speak Eng­lish, we are, much of the time, actu­al­ly speak­ing French.

“In 1066, the Nor­mans turn up and seize the Eng­lish throne from the Anglo-Sax­ons says YouTu­ber Rob­words in the new video above, describ­ing the sin­gle most impor­tant event in the entire his­to­ry of the Eng­lish lan­guage, which he recounts in just 22 min­utes. “William the Con­queror becomes king, and Nor­man French becomes the lan­guage of Eng­land’s élite.”

Under its new ruler, the coun­try’s earls, thanes, and athelings would be called barons, dukes, and princes. “The now-sub­dued Anglo-Sax­ons need­ed to learn French words if they want­ed to get by, so Eng­lish absorbs a whole host of French terms asso­ci­at­ed with pow­er, jus­tice, art, gov­ern­ment, law, and cul­ture — such as pow­er, jus­tice, art, gov­ern­ment, law, and cul­ture,” to name just a few.

This thor­ough­go­ing Frenchi­fi­ca­tion gave rise to what we now call Mid­dle Eng­lish, as dis­tinct from the Old Eng­lish spo­ken before. As not­ed by Rob­Words, about 85 per­cent of Old Eng­lish vocab­u­lary is no longer in use today, yet we’re still “using Old Eng­lish in every sen­tence that we utter,” not least when we break out such irreg­u­lar-seem­ing plu­rals as mice, oxen, and wolves. Tues­day, Wednes­day, Thurs­day, and Fri­day make ref­er­ence to “the Anglo-Sax­ons’ pre-Chris­t­ian gods.” And even in the fast-chang­ing, slang-rid­den, inter­net-influ­enced, and — for bet­ter or for worse — high­ly “glob­al­ized” Eng­lish we speak today, we can still hear dim echoes of the ancient ances­tor lin­guists call Pro­to-Indo-Euro­pean. Per­haps that’s why, despite being so wide­ly spo­ken, Eng­lish is still so tricky to learn: when we speak it, we’re speak­ing not just a lan­guage, but many lan­guages all at once.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Trac­ing Eng­lish Back to Its Old­est Known Ances­tor: An Intro­duc­tion to Pro­to-Indo-Euro­pean

Where Did the Eng­lish Lan­guage Come From?: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The Tree of Lan­guages Illus­trat­ed in a Big, Beau­ti­ful Info­graph­ic

The Alpha­bet Explained: The Ori­gin of Every Let­ter

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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