The 1883 Krakatoa Explosion Made the Loudest Sound in History–So Loud It Traveled Around the World Four Times

Think of our­selves though we may as liv­ing in a noisy era, none of us — not even mem­bers of sta­di­um-fill­ing rock bands known specif­i­cal­ly for their high-deci­bel inten­si­ty — have expe­ri­enced any­thing like the loud­est sound in his­to­ry. That sin­gu­lar son­ic event came as a con­se­quence of the explo­sion of Kraka­toa, one of the names (along with Vesu­vius) that has become a byword for vol­canic dis­as­ter. And with good cause: when it blew in mod­ern-day Indone­sia on Sun­day, 26 August 1883, it caused not only 36,000 deaths at the very least and untold destruc­tion of oth­er kinds, but let out a sound heard 3,000 miles away.

“Think, for a moment, just how crazy this is,” writes Nau­tilus’ Aatish Bha­tia. “If you’re in Boston and some­one tells you that they heard a sound com­ing from New York City, you’re prob­a­bly going to give them a fun­ny look. But Boston is a mere 200 miles from New York. What we’re talk­ing about here is like being in Boston and clear­ly hear­ing a noise com­ing from Dublin, Ire­land. Trav­el­ing at the speed of sound (766 miles or 1,233 kilo­me­ters per hour), it takes a noise about four hours to cov­er that dis­tance. This is the most dis­tant sound that has ever been heard in record­ed his­to­ry.”

Any­one who writes about the sound of Kraka­toa, which split the island itself, strug­gles to prop­er­ly describe it, see­ing as even jet mechan­ics lack a com­pa­ra­ble son­ic expe­ri­ence. Bha­tia quotes the cap­tain of the British ship Norham Cas­tle, 40 miles from Kraka­toa when it erupt­ed, writ­ing in his log that “so vio­lent are the explo­sions that the ear-drums of over half my crew have been shat­tered. My last thoughts are with my dear wife. I am con­vinced that the Day of Judge­ment has come.” Kraka­toa’s rever­ber­a­tions – not heard, but felt and record­ed as changes in atmos­pher­ic pres­sure – passed across the whole of the Earth not once but four times.

The sound of the explo­sion aside, “the rest of the world heard such sto­ries almost instant­ly because a series of under­wa­ter tele­graph cables had been recent­ly laid tra­vers­ing the globe,” writes the Inde­pen­dent’s San­ji­da O’Con­nell. “This new tech­nol­o­gy meant that Kraka­toa also gen­er­at­ed the first mod­ern sci­en­tif­ic study of a vol­canic erup­tion.” A Dutch sci­en­tist named Rogi­er Ver­beek turned up first to gath­er details for a detailed and pio­neer­ing report, fol­lowed by geol­o­gists from Lon­don’s Roy­al Soci­ety, whose 627-page The Erup­tion of Kraka­toa and Sub­se­quent Phe­nom­e­na you can read at the Inter­net Archive.

Since nobody would have got the explo­sion on tape in 1883, such ver­bal descrip­tions will have to suf­fice. Not that even today’s high­est-grade record­ing tech­nol­o­gy could with­stand cap­tur­ing such a sound, nor could even speak­ers that go up to a Spinal Tap-lev­el 11 repro­duce it. And no oth­er sound is like­ly to break Kraka­toa’s record in our life­times – not if we’re lucky, any­way.

via Nau­tilus

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

The Web Site “Cen­turies of Sound” is Mak­ing a Mix­tape for Every Year of Record­ed Sound from 1860 to Present

The British Library’s “Sounds” Archive Presents 80,000 Free Audio Record­ings: World & Clas­si­cal Music, Inter­views, Nature Sounds & More

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Cour­tesy of the UCSB Cylin­der Audio Archive

Map­ping the Sounds of Greek Byzan­tine Church­es: How Researchers Are Cre­at­ing “Muse­ums of Lost Sound”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

What the Entire Internet Looked Like in 1973: An Old Map Gets Found in a Pile of Research Papers


In 1923, Edwin Hub­ble dis­cov­ered the universe—or rather, he dis­cov­ered a star, and humans learned that the Milky Way wasn’t the whole of the cos­mos. Less than 100 years lat­er, thanks to the tele­scope named after him, NASA sci­en­tists esti­mate the uni­verse con­tains at least 100 bil­lion galax­ies, and who-knows-what beyond that. The expo­nen­tial growth of astro­nom­i­cal data col­lect­ed since Hubble’s time is absolute­ly stag­ger­ing, and it devel­oped in tan­dem with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary increase in com­put­ing pow­er over an even short­er span, which enabled the birth and mutant growth of the inter­net.

Mod­ern “maps” of the inter­net can indeed look like sprawl­ing clus­ters of star sys­tems, puls­ing with light and col­or. But the “weird com­bi­na­tion of phys­i­cal and con­cep­tu­al things,” Bet­sy Mason remarks at Wired, results in such an abstract enti­ty that it can be visu­al­ly illus­trat­ed with an almost unlim­it­ed num­ber of graph­ic tech­niques to rep­re­sent its hun­dreds of mil­lions of users. When the inter­net began as ARPANET in the late six­ties, it includ­ed a total of four loca­tions, all with­in a few hun­dred miles of each oth­er on the West Coast of the Unit­ed States. (See a sketch of the first four “nodes” from 1969 here.)

By 1973, the num­ber of nodes had grown from U.C.L.A, the Stan­ford Research Insti­tute, U.C. San­ta Bar­bara, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah to include loca­tions all over the Mid­west and East Coast, from Har­vard to Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­si­ty to the Carnegie Mel­lon School of Com­put­er Sci­ence in Pitts­burgh, where David Newbury’s father worked (and still works). Among his father’s papers, New­bury found the map above from May of ’73, show­ing what seemed like tremen­dous growth in only a few short years.

The map is not geo­graph­i­cal but schemat­ic, with 36 square “nodes”—early routers—and 42 oval com­put­er hosts (one pop­u­lar main­frame, the mas­sive PDP-10, is sprin­kled through­out), and only nam­ing a few key loca­tions. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Hawaii appears as a node, linked to the main­land by satel­lite. Just above, you can see an update from just a few months lat­er, now rep­re­sent­ing 40 nodes and 45 com­put­ers. “The net­work,” writes Seli­na Chang, “became inter­na­tion­al: a satel­lite link con­nect­ed ARPANET to nodes in Nor­way and Lon­don, send­ing 2.9 mil­lion pack­ets of infor­ma­tion every day.”

These ear­ly net­works of glob­al inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty, cre­at­ed by the Defense Depart­ment and used most­ly by sci­en­tists, pre­date Tim Bern­ers-Lee and CERN’s devel­op­ment of the World Wide Web in 1991, which opened up the enor­mous, expand­ing alter­nate uni­verse we know as the inter­net today (and was, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, invent­ed around the same time as the Hub­ble Tele­scope). Though maps aren’t ter­ri­to­ries (a 1977 ARPANET “log­i­cal map” dis­claims total accu­ra­cy in a note at the bot­tom), these ear­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the inter­net resem­ble medieval maps of the cos­mos next to the beau­ti­ful com­plex­i­ty of glow­ing col­ors we see in 21st cen­tu­ry info­graph­ics like the author­i­ta­tive­ly-named “The Inter­net Map.”

via Vice

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Inter­net in 8 Min­utes

What Hap­pens on the Inter­net in 60 Sec­onds

The Inter­net Imag­ined in 1969

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

The Vincent Van Gogh Action Figure, Complete with Detachable Ear

If you liked Mr. Pota­to Head, you may love the Vin­cent Van Gogh Action Fig­ure, which raised $142,000 on Kick­starter this sum­mer and can now be pur­chased for $35 over at the Today is Art Day web site. Made of PVC and stand­ing 5 inch­es high, the action fig­ure comes with:

  • 2 remov­able ears (Van Gogh cut his left ear)
  • 1 ban­daged ear
  • 1 paint­brush
  • 5 mas­ter­pieces and 1 card­board easel
  • 10 fun facts about the artist on the box

Oth­er fig­ures includ­ed in the col­lec­tion include Fri­da Kahlo and soon Ver­meer, da Vin­ci, Magritte and Rem­brandt. Enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Edvard Munch Scream Action Fig­ure

The Fri­da Kahlo Action Fig­ure

Famous Philoso­phers Imag­ined as Action Fig­ures: Plun­der­ous Pla­to, Dan­ger­ous Descartes & More

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

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How the Japanese Practice of “Forest Bathing”—Or Just Hanging Out in the Woods—Can Lower Stress Levels and Fight Disease

When the U.S. media began report­ing on the phe­nom­e­non of “for­est bathing” as a ther­a­py for men­tal and phys­i­cal health, the online commentariat—as it will—mocked the con­cept relent­less­ly as yet anoth­er pre­ten­tious, bour­geois repack­ag­ing of some­thing thor­ough­ly mun­dane. Didn’t we just used to call it “going out­side”?

Well, yes, if all “for­est bathing” means is “going out­side,” then it does sound like a grandiose and unnec­es­sary phrase. The term, how­ev­er, is not an Amer­i­can mar­ket­ing inven­tion but a trans­la­tion of the Japan­ese shin­rin-yoku. “Coined by the Japan­ese Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Forestry and Fish­eries in 1982,” writes Meeri Kim at The Wash­ing­ton Post, “the word lit­er­al­ly trans­lates to ‘tak­ing in the for­est atmos­phere’ or ‘for­est bathing’ and refers to the process of soak­ing up the sights, smells and sounds of a nat­ur­al set­ting to pro­mote phys­i­o­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal health.”

So what? We already have the exam­ples of thou­sands years of Bud­dhist monks (and Thich Nat Hanh), of Hen­ry David Thore­au, and the saints of the Sier­ra Club. But the old­est and most use­ful ideas and prac­tices can get care­less­ly dis­card­ed in the fran­tic pur­suit of inno­va­tion at all costs. The push­ing of hi-tech out­door gear, wear­able activ­i­ty track­ers, and health apps that ask us to log every move­ment can make going out­side feel like a daunt­ing, expen­sive chore or a com­pet­i­tive event.

For­est bathing involves none of those things. “Just be with the trees,” as Ephrat Livni describes the prac­tice, “no hik­ing, no count­ing steps on a Fit­bit. You can sit or mean­der, but the point is to relax rather than accom­plish any­thing.” You don’t have to hug the trees if you don’t want to, but at least sit under one for a spell. Even if you don’t attain enlight­en­ment, you very well may reduce stress and boost immune func­tion, accord­ing to sev­er­al Japan­ese stud­ies con­duct­ed between 2004 and 2012.

The Japan­ese gov­ern­ment spent around four mil­lion dol­lars on stud­ies con­duct­ed with hun­dreds of peo­ple “bathing” on 48 des­ig­nat­ed ther­a­py trails. In his work, Qing Li, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at Nip­pon Med­ical School in Tokyo, found “sig­nif­i­cant increas­es in NK [nat­ur­al killer] cell activ­i­ty in the week after a for­est vis­it… pos­i­tive effects last­ed a month fol­low­ing each week­end in the woods.” Nat­ur­al killer cells fight virus­es and can­cers, and are appar­ent­ly stim­u­lat­ed by the oils that trees them­selves secrete to ward off germs and pests. See the pro­fes­sor explain in the video above (he trans­lates shin­rin-yoku as tak­ing a “for­est show­er,” and also claims to have bot­tled some of the effects).

Addi­tion­al­ly, exper­i­ments con­duct­ed by Japan’s Chi­ba Uni­ver­si­ty found that for­est bathing low­ered heart rate and blood pres­sure and brought down lev­els of cor­ti­sol, the stress hor­mone that can wreak hav­oc on every sys­tem when large amounts cir­cu­late through the body. Then there are the less tan­gi­ble psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits of tak­ing in the trees. Sub­jects in one study “showed sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced hos­til­i­ty and depres­sion scores” after a walk in the woods. These find­ings under­score that spend­ing time in the for­est is a med­ical inter­ven­tion as well as an aes­thet­ic and spir­i­tu­al one, some­thing sci­en­tists have long observed but haven’t been able to quan­ti­fy.

In their review of a book called Your Brain on Nature, Moth­er Earth News quotes Franklin Hough, first chief of the U.S. Divi­sion of Forestry, who remarked in a 19th cen­tu­ry med­ical jour­nal that forests have “a cheer­ful and tran­quil­iz­ing influ­ence which they exert upon the mind, more espe­cial­ly when worn down by men­tal labor.” Hough’s hypoth­e­sis has been con­firmed, and despite what might sound to Eng­lish speak­ers like a slight­ly ridicu­lous name, for­est bathing is seri­ous ther­a­py, espe­cial­ly for the ever-increas­ing num­ber of urban­ites and those who spend their days in strip malls, office com­plex­es, and oth­er over­built envi­ron­ments.

What is a guid­ed for­est bathing expe­ri­ence like? You can lis­ten to NPR’s Ali­son Aubrey describe one above. She quotes Amos Clif­ford, founder of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Nature & For­est Ther­a­py, the cer­ti­fy­ing orga­ni­za­tion, as say­ing that a guide “helps you be here, not there,” sort of like a med­i­ta­tion instruc­tor. Clif­ford has been push­ing health care providers to “incor­po­rate for­est ther­a­py as a stress-reduc­tion strat­e­gy” in the U.S., and there’s no ques­tion that more stress reduc­tion tools are sore­ly need­ed.

But, you may won­der, do you have to call it “for­est bathing,” or pay for a cer­ti­fied guide, join a group, and buy some fan­cy out­er­wear to get the ben­e­fits hang­ing out with trees? I say, con­sid­er the words of John Muir, the inde­fati­ga­ble 19th nat­u­ral­ist, “father of the Nation­al Park Sys­tem,” and found­ing saint of the Sier­ra Club: In the eter­nal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go qui­et­ly, alone; no harm will befall you. The quote may under­es­ti­mate the amount of risk or over­state the ben­e­fits, but you get the idea. Muir was not one to get tan­gled up in seman­tics or over­ly detailed analy­sis. Nonethe­less, his work inspired Amer­i­cans to step in and pre­serve so much of the coun­try’s for­est in the 19th and 20th cen­turies. Maybe the pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine of “for­est bathing” can help do the same in the 21st.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers and Writ­ers Have Always Known

How Mind­ful­ness Makes Us Hap­pi­er & Bet­ter Able to Meet Life’s Chal­lenges: Two Ani­mat­ed Primers Explain

This Is Your Brain on Exer­cise: Why Phys­i­cal Exer­cise (Not Men­tal Games) Might Be the Best Way to Keep Your Mind Sharp

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

Dr. Demento’s New Punk Album Features William Shatner Singing The Cramps, Weird Al Yankovic Singing The Ramones & Much More

Call­ing all fans of the Dr. Demen­to Show. The new album, Dr. Demen­to Cov­ered in Punk, fea­tures “dement­ed” cov­ers of clas­sic punk tunes and “30 cov­ers of songs orig­i­nal­ly aired on the Dr. Demen­to radio show.” Think “Fish Heads.”

On the nos­tal­gia-induc­ing album, you can notably enjoy two fix­tures of Amer­i­can odd­ball cul­ture, William Shat­ner and Weird Al Yankovic, singing “The Garbage­man” by The Cramps (above) and The Ramones’ “Beat on the Brat” (below). The Mis­fits, Joan Jett, Fred Schnei­der of the B52s, the Van­dals, The Dead Milk­men, The Meatmen–they all make an appear­ance on the album too. It’s due out today.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 200 Tracks: An 11-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to 2016

The Cramps Play a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal in Napa, Cal­i­for­nia in 1978: The Punk­est of Punk Con­certs

Two Leg­ends: Weird Al Yankovic “Inter­views” James Brown (1986)

DC’s Leg­endary Punk Label Dischord Records Makes Its Entire Music Cat­a­log Free to Stream Online

A 17-Hour Chronological Playlist of Beatles Songs: 338 Tracks Let You Hear the Musical Evolution of the Iconic Band

The Bea­t­les have seem­ing­ly nev­er been just a band; they’ve been a brand, a his­to­ry, an insti­tu­tion, a genre, a gen­er­a­tional sound­track, a mer­chan­dis­ing empire, and so much more—possessed of the kind of cul­tur­al impor­tance that makes it impos­si­ble to think of them as only musi­cians. Their “nar­ra­tive arc,” Tom Ewing writes at Pitch­fork, from Beat­le­ma­nia to their cur­rent enshrine­ment and every­thing in-between, “is irre­sistible.” But the sto­ry of the Bea­t­les as we typ­i­cal­ly under­stand it, Ewing writes, does their music a dis­ser­vice, set­ting it apart from “the rest of the pop world” and “mak­ing new­com­ers as resent­ful as curi­ous.”

For all the deifi­ca­tion (which John Lennon scan­dalous­ly summed up in his “big­ger than Jesus” quip), the band began as noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly out of the ordi­nary. “Britain in the ear­ly 1960s swarmed with rock’n’roll bands,” and though the Bea­t­les excelled ear­ly on, they most­ly fol­lowed trends, they didn’t invent them.

Their sound was so of the time that Decca’s A&R exec­u­tive Dick Rowe passed on them in 1962, telling Bri­an Epstein, “gui­tar groups are on their way out.” Lit­tle could he have known, how­ev­er: “gui­tar groups” came roar­ing back because of the band’s first album, Please, Please Me, and the espe­cial­ly savvy mar­ket­ing skills of Epstein, who helped land them that fate­ful Ed Sul­li­van Show appear­ance.

Mil­lions of peo­ple saw them play their sin­gle “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and the world changed for­ev­er, so the sto­ry goes. In so many ways that’s so. The Ed Sul­li­van gig launched a thou­sand bands, and remains at top of the list of near­ly every baby boomer musician’s most influ­en­tial moments. But as the six­ties wore on, and Beat­le­ma­nia assumed the var­i­ous forms of lunch­box­es, fan clubs, and a wacky car­toon series with bad­ly imper­son­at­ed voic­es, their act seemed like it might run its course as a pass­ing pop-cul­ture fad. They were, in effect, a very tal­ent­ed boy band, sub­ject to the fate of boy bands every­where. Their ascent into Olym­pus wasn’t inevitable, and “every record they made was born out of a new set of chal­lenges.”

Rub­ber Soul, the band’s 1965 farewell to the care­free, boy­ish pop band they had been, per­fect­ly met the chal­lenge they faced—how to grow up. It was “the most out-there music they’d ever made, but also their warmest, friend­liest and most emo­tion­al­ly direct,” Rob Sheffield writes at Rolling Stone. They were “smok­ing loads of weed, so all through these songs, wild humor and deep emo­tion go hand in hand.” These threads of play­ful, drug-fueled exper­i­men­ta­tion, screw­ball com­e­dy, and earnest sen­ti­ment changed not only the band’s career tra­jec­to­ry, but “cut the sto­ry of pop music in half,” Sheffield opines.

Such procla­ma­tions can and have been made of the ground­break­ing Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. Each Bea­t­les mile­stone cements our impres­sion of them as a mes­sian­ic force, des­tined to steer the course of pop music history—a sto­ry that gloss­es over their nov­el­ty records, less­er works, many out­takes and half thoughts, cov­er songs, and flops, like their 1967 Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour film. Some of these less­er works deserve the label. The mel­lotron-heavy “Only a North­ern Song” on Yel­low Sub­ma­rine, for exam­ple, sounds far too much like an infe­ri­or “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.”

Oth­ers, like the Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour sound­track album, give us gems like McCartney’s “Pen­ny Lane” (a song orig­i­nal­ly record­ed dur­ing the Sgt. Pepper’s ses­sions), as well as “I Am the Wal­rus,” “Hel­lo Good­bye,” “Baby, You’re a Rich Man,” “All You Need is Love” … the film may have dis­ap­point­ed, but the record, I’d say, is essen­tial.

In the chrono­log­i­cal Spo­ti­fy playlist fur­ther up of 338 songs, you can fol­low the quirky, upbeat, down­beat, some­times uneven, some­times breath­tak­ing­ly bril­liant musi­cal jour­ney of the band every­one thinks they know and see why they are so much more inter­est­ing than a muse­um exhib­it or rock and roll mythol­o­gy. They were, after all, only human, but their will­ing­ness to indulge in weird exper­i­ments and to mas­ter genre exer­cis­es gave them the dis­ci­pline and expe­ri­ence they need­ed to make their mas­ter­pieces.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cov­er Design For­ev­er

Watch HD Ver­sions of The Bea­t­les’ Pio­neer­ing Music Videos: “Hey Jude,” “Pen­ny Lane,” “Rev­o­lu­tion” & More

Hear the 1962 Bea­t­les Demo that Dec­ca Reject­ed: “Gui­tar Groups are on Their Way Out, Mr. Epstein”

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

How to Draw in the Style of Japanese Manga: A Series of Free & Wildly Popular Video Tutorials from Artist Mark Crilley

In Japan, the word man­ga refers broad­ly to the art form we know in Eng­lish as comics. But as used in the West, it refers to a com­ic art style with dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic and sto­ry­telling con­ven­tions of its own, orig­i­nat­ing from but now no longer lim­it­ed to Japan. Just as the past cen­tu­ry or so has seen the emer­gence of West­ern mas­ters of such things thor­ough­ly Japan­ese as sushi, judo, and even tea cer­e­mo­ny, the past few decades brought us the work of the West­ern man­ga­ka, or man­ga artist. Mark Cril­ley stands as one of the best-known prac­ti­tion­ers of that short tra­di­tion, thanks not only to his art but to his efforts to teach fans how to draw in the style of Japan­ese man­ga them­selves as well.

Apart from com­ic-book series like Akiko, Miki Falls, and Brody’s Ghost, the Detroit-born Cril­ley has also pub­lished a tril­o­gy of Mas­ter­ing Man­ga instruc­tion­al books. In an inter­view with Wired, he frames his own man­ga-mas­ter­ing process as a project sim­i­lar to lan­guage-learn­ing: “When I went to Tai­wan to teach Eng­lish after grad­u­at­ing from col­lege, I threw myself into learn­ing Chi­nese with a real ‘tun­nel vision’ kind of ded­i­ca­tion. As a result I became con­ver­sa­tion­al in Man­darin with­in about a year. More recent­ly I decid­ed to teach myself how to draw in a man­ga-influ­enced style and thus focused exclu­sive­ly on that for many months.”

Cril­ley first took to Youtube to pro­mote his then-new man­ga series, but he “soon found that peo­ple were watch­ing my videos as draw­ing lessons. As more peo­ple watched I got hooked on pass­ing on draw­ing tips to the next gen­er­a­tion, and so I con­tin­ued pro­duc­ing more and more instruc­tion­al videos.”

More young­sters seem to have an inter­est in draw­ing in the style of Japan­ese comics and ani­ma­tion than ever (at least if my friends’ kids are gen­er­a­tional­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive), and Cril­ley finds that they “appre­ci­ate hav­ing an art teacher who takes man­ga seri­ous­ly, and doesn’t dis­miss it as an infe­ri­or art form. I’m sure plen­ty of art teach­ers are all, ‘Stop draw­ing those saucer-eyed char­ac­ters! Draw this still life instead!’ ”

Not to say that Cril­ley does­n’t appre­ci­ate real­ism: he’s put out a whole book on the sub­ject, and some of his instruc­tion­al videos cov­er how to draw life­like eyes (a tuto­r­i­al that has drawn 27 mil­lion views and count­ing), leop­ards, mush­rooms, and much else besides. But for the aspir­ing man­ga­ka of any nation­al­i­ty, his Youtube chan­nel offers a wealth of lessons on how to draw every­thing from faces to clothes to fig­ures in motion to big eyes in the man­ga aes­thet­ic. But as he sure­ly knows — hav­ing cit­ed in the Wired inter­view a wide range of influ­ences from Star Wars to Mad mag­a­zine to Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus — if you want to tru­ly find your own style, you can’t lim­it your­self to any one source of inspi­ra­tion. Acquire the skills, of course, but then take them to new places.

You can see a playlist of 256 how-to-draw videos by Cril­ley here. Or a series of small­er draw­ing playlists here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Big List of Free Art Lessons on YouTube

How to Draw the Human Face & Head: A Free 3‑Hour Tuto­r­i­al

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Shows You How to Draw Bat­man in Her UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

W.B. Yeats’ Poem “When You Are Old” Adapt­ed into a Japan­ese Man­ga Com­ic

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Read the Uplifting Letter That Albert Einstein Sent to Marie Curie During a Time of Personal Crisis (1911)

Marie Curie’s 1911 Nobel Prize win, her sec­ond, for the dis­cov­ery of radi­um and polo­ni­um, would have been cause for pub­lic cel­e­bra­tion in her adopt­ed France, but for the near­ly simul­ta­ne­ous rev­e­la­tion of her affair with fel­low physi­cist Paul Langevin, the fel­low stand­ing to the right of a 32-year-old Albert Ein­stein in the above group pho­to from the 1911 Solvay Con­fer­ence in Physics.

Both sto­ries broke while Curie—unsurprisingly, the sole woman in the photo—was attend­ing the con­fer­ence in Brus­sels.

Equal­ly unsur­pris­ing­ly, the press pre­ferred la scan­dal to la réal­i­sa­tion sci­en­tifique. Sex sells, then and now.

The fires of radi­um which beam so mysteriously…have just lit a fire in the heart of one of the sci­en­tists who stud­ies their action so devot­ed­ly; and the wife and the chil­dren of this sci­en­tist are in tears.…

—Le Jour­nal, Novem­ber 4, 1911

There’s no deny­ing that the affair was painful for Langevin’s fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly his wife, Jeanne, who sup­plied the media with incrim­i­nat­ing let­ters from Curie to her hus­band. She must have been aware that Curie would be the one to bear the brunt of the public’s dis­ap­proval. Dou­ble stan­dards with regard to gen­der are noth­ing new.

A furi­ous throng gath­ered out­side of Curie’s house and anti-Semit­ic papers, dis­sat­is­fied with label­ing the pio­neer­ing sci­en­tist a mere home wreck­er, declared—erroneously—that she was Jew­ish. The time­line was tweaked to sug­gest that Curie had tak­en up with Langevin pri­or to her husband’s death. Fel­low radio­chemist Bertram Bolt­wood seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to declare that “she is exact­ly what I always thought she was, a detestable idiot.”

In the midst of this, Ein­stein, who had made Curie’s acquain­tance at the con­fer­ence, proved him­self a true friend with a “don’t let the bas­tards get you down” let­ter, writ­ten on Novem­ber 23. Oth­er than a del­i­cate allu­sion to Langevin as a per­son with whom he felt priv­i­leged to be in con­tact, he refrained from men­tion­ing the cause of her mis­for­tune.

A friend­ly word can go a long way in times of dis­grace, and Ein­stein sup­plied his new friend with some stout­ly unequiv­o­cal ones, denounc­ing the scan­dal­mon­gers as “rep­tiles” feast­ing on sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic “hog­wash”:

High­ly esteemed Mrs. Curie,

Do not laugh at me for writ­ing you with­out hav­ing any­thing sen­si­ble to say. But I am so enraged by the base man­ner in which the pub­lic is present­ly dar­ing to con­cern itself with you that I absolute­ly must give vent to this feel­ing. How­ev­er, I am con­vinced that you con­sis­tent­ly despise this rab­ble, whether it obse­quious­ly lav­ish­es respect on you or whether it attempts to sati­ate its lust for sen­sa­tion­al­ism! I am impelled to tell you how much I have come to admire your intel­lect, your dri­ve, and your hon­esty, and that I con­sid­er myself lucky to have made your per­son­al acquain­tance in Brus­sels. Any­one who does not num­ber among these rep­tiles is cer­tain­ly hap­py, now as before, that we have such per­son­ages among us as you, and Langevin too, real peo­ple with whom one feels priv­i­leged to be in con­tact. If the rab­ble con­tin­ues to occu­py itself with you, then sim­ply don’t read that hog­wash, but rather leave it to the rep­tile for whom it has been fab­ri­cat­ed.

With most ami­ca­ble regards to you, Langevin, and Per­rin, yours very tru­ly,

A. Ein­stein

PS I have deter­mined the sta­tis­ti­cal law of motion of the diatom­ic mol­e­cule in Planck’s radi­a­tion field by means of a com­i­cal wit­ti­cism, nat­u­ral­ly under the con­straint that the structure’s motion fol­lows the laws of stan­dard mechan­ics. My hope that this law is valid in real­i­ty is very small, though.

That delib­er­ate­ly geeky post­script amounts to anoth­er sweet show of sup­port. Per­haps it for­ti­fied Curie when a week lat­er, she received a let­ter from Nobel Com­mit­tee mem­ber Svante Arrhe­nius, urg­ing her to skip the Prize cer­e­mo­ny in Stock­holm. Curie reject­ed Arrhe­nius’ sug­ges­tion thus­ly:

The prize has been award­ed for the dis­cov­ery of radi­um and polo­ni­um. I believe that there is no con­nec­tion between my sci­en­tif­ic work and the facts of pri­vate life. I can­not accept … that the appre­ci­a­tion of the val­ue of sci­en­tif­ic work should be influ­enced by libel and slan­der con­cern­ing pri­vate life.

For a more in-depth look at Marie Curie’s night­mar­ish Novem­ber, refer to “Hon­or and Dis­hon­or” the six­teenth chap­ter in Bar­bara Goldsmith’s Obses­sive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Marie Curie Attend­ed a Secret, Under­ground “Fly­ing Uni­ver­si­ty” When Women Were Banned from Pol­ish Uni­ver­si­ties

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

Marie Curie’s Research Papers Are Still Radioac­tive 100+ Years Lat­er

How Amer­i­can Women “Kick­start­ed” a Cam­paign to Give Marie Curie a Gram of Radi­um, Rais­ing $120,000 in 1921

Marie Curie Invent­ed Mobile X‑Ray Units to Help Save Wound­ed Sol­diers in World War I

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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