When Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945 in Berlin (footage here), the Second World War may have been over for Europe, but the war on the Pacific front waged on as Japan refused to surrender.

Popular Science is the fifth oldest continuously-published monthly magazine—a long way of saying that the magazine has done a fine job of maintaining a niche in a crazily fast-paced industry.

So much has been written about hand-written letters, mostly lamenting their death.

We recently posted a rare audio recording of Albert Einstein reading his essay, “The Common Language of Science.” Today we have a similarly rare treat: filmed excerpts from a speech on individual liberty that Einstein gave shortly after the Nazis rose to power and he became a refugee from his native Germany.

When you dive into our collection of 700 Free Online Courses, you can begin an intellectual journey that can last for many months, if not years. The collection lets you drop into the classroom of leading universities (like Stanford, Harvard, MIT and Oxford) and essentially audit their courses for free.

Like the rock and roll revolution of the 1950s, which shocked staid white audiences with translations of black rhythm and blues, the popularity of jazz caused all kinds of racial panic and social anxiety in the early part of the twentieth century.

Stanley Kubrick (looking like a creepy Rowan Atkinson above) came of age as a chess-hustling photographer in the jazz-saturated New York City of the 1940s. He began taking pictures at the age of thirteen, when his father bought him a Graflex camera.

Unlike the typewriter, the lowly fax machine never pulled itself out of the hive-like existence of utilitarian office machines and into literary celebrity. With their bland, functional styling, fax machines will not have their impending obsolescence capped with museum exhibitions.

You may struggle to find two more iconoclastic countercultural figures than William S. Burroughs and Frank Zappa. The well-known names conceal often less well-known and at times inaccessible or downright infuriating work and personalities.

Which best describes your museum-going experience? Inspiration and spiritual refreshment? Or a soul crushing attempt to fight your way past the hoards there for the latest blockbuster exhibit, with a too-heavy bag and a whining, foot sore companion in tow?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to lose yourself in contemplation of a single work? What abou