A Tour of Athens’ Acropolis, Explained with 3D Reconstructions

in Architecture, History | May 28th, 2026

Since it was first built as a Myce­naean fortress in the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry BC, what we now know as the Acrop­o­lis has been used to wor­ship not just Greek gods, but also, in lat­er peri­ods, the Vir­gin Mary and Allah. Now, of course, with its days of mil­i­tary and reli­gious func­tions long behind it, it stands as a set of ruins. Still, they’re very pop­u­lar ruins, as evi­denced by the crowds cap­tured in the video above from Manuel Bra­vo. Though most tourists at the Acrop­o­lis come with the idea that its build­ings would have looked more glo­ri­ous in the dis­tant past, few can have much of a sense of how to imag­ine that with any accu­ra­cy. Using 3D mod­els, Bra­vo inte­grates views of how the Parthenon, the Tem­ple of Athena Nike, and oth­er struc­tures look now with how they would have looked in Athens’ gold­en age.

To ful­ly appre­ci­ate the Acrop­o­lis requires not just an idea of how it was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to look, as Bra­vo empha­sizes, but also the inten­tions of ancient Greek archi­tec­ture. The approach up the hill was meant to feel like an ascent from the mun­dane world into the sacred one.

Enter­ing the cen­tral space on top, the vis­i­tor was led to view­ing points that showed the sur­round­ing col­lec­tion of build­ings at their most dra­mat­ic, a design the archi­tects might have described as cin­e­mat­ic, had cin­e­ma exist­ed at the time. Even in its ruined state, the Acrop­o­lis still trans­mits a sense of how, where, and to what degree that vis­i­tor was meant to be filled with awe, as well as where he was meant to look. And noth­ing up there — at least in the absence of Phidias’ thir­ty-foot stat­ue Athena Pro­ma­chos — draws atten­tion as delib­er­ate­ly as the Parthenon.

As we pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed here on Open Cul­ture, if you make the trip to the Acrop­o­lis your­self, you can now see the Parthenon with­out scaf­fold­ing (or, depend­ing on when you go, a min­i­mum of scaf­fold­ing) for the first time in 200 years. That lack of obstruc­tion makes it eas­i­er to envi­sion the glo­ries of that cel­e­brat­ed build­ing back when it was both the tem­ple of Athena and the trea­sury of Athens. But as Bra­vo says, if you real­ly want to gaze upon the Parthenon as the ancients knew it, mar­bles and all, you’ll have to make the trek out to Nashville, Ten­nessee, where a full-scale repli­ca was built in 1897 for the city’s Cen­ten­ni­al Expo­si­tion. It may feel a bit odd to turn up in a place known for coun­try music and bach­e­lorette par­ties in search of the archi­tec­tur­al, and per­haps spir­i­tu­al foun­da­tion of Europe. But then, civ­i­liza­tion has nev­er tak­en a pre­dictable course.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Ancient Greeks Built Their Mag­nif­i­cent Tem­ples: The Art of Ancient Engi­neer­ing

A 3D Mod­el Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Inte­ri­or Looked Like 2,500 Years Ago

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Athens: Fly Over Clas­si­cal Greek Civ­i­liza­tion in All Its Glo­ry

The City of Nashville Built a Full-Scale Repli­ca of the Parthenon in 1897, and It’s Still Stand­ing Today

How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Sto­ry of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi and the Duo­mo in Flo­rence

Take a High Def, Guid­ed Tour of Pom­peii

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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The Unexpected Math Behind Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”

in Art, Math | May 28th, 2026

If you’ve tak­en a good art his­to­ry course on the Impres­sion­ists and Post-Impres­sion­ists, you’ve inevitably encoun­tered Vin­cent van Gogh’s 1889 mas­ter­piece “Star­ry Night,” which now hangs in the MoMA in New York City. The paint­ing, the muse­um writes on its web­site, “is a sym­bol­ic land­scape full of move­ment, ener­gy, and light. The quiet­ness of the vil­lage con­trasts with the swirling ener­gy of the sky.… Van Gogh’s impas­to tech­nique, or thick­ly applied col­ors, cre­ates a rhyth­mic effect—the pic­ture seems to con­stant­ly move in its frame.” Artis­ti­cal­ly, van Gogh man­aged to cap­ture move­ment in a way that no artist had ever quite done it before. Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, it turns out, he was on to some­thing too. Just watch the new TED-ED les­son above, The Unex­pect­ed Math Behind Van Gogh’s “Star­ry Night.”

Cre­at­ed by math artist/teacher Natalya St. Clair and ani­ma­tor Avi Ofer, the video explores how “Van Gogh cap­tured [the] deep mys­tery of move­ment, flu­id and light in his work,” and par­tic­u­lar­ly man­aged to depict the elu­sive phe­nom­e­non known as tur­bu­lence. In Star­ry Night, the video observes, van Gogh depict­ed tur­bu­lence with a degree of sophis­ti­ca­tion and accu­ra­cy that rivals the way physi­cists and math­e­mati­cians have best explained tur­bu­lence in their own sci­en­tif­ic papers. And, it all hap­pened, per­haps by coin­ci­dence (?), dur­ing the tur­bu­lent last years of van Gogh’s life.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

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 

1,000+ Art­works by Vin­cent Van Gogh Dig­i­tized & Put Online by Dutch Muse­ums

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s “The Star­ry Night”: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

Dis­cov­er the Only Paint­ing Van Gogh Ever Sold Dur­ing His Life­time

The Met Releas­es High-Def­i­n­i­tion 3D Scans of 140 Famous Art Objects: Sar­copha­gi, Van Gogh Paint­ings, Mar­ble Sculp­tures & More

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Take a Random Walk Around the Berlin Wall Just Months Before Its Sudden Fall (Summer 1989)

in History, Travel | May 27th, 2026

Offi­cial­ly, the Berlin Wall fell on Novem­ber 9, 1989. Demo­li­tion would take more than four years, and a few sec­tions remain for memo­r­i­al pur­pos­es, but it was on that date that pas­sage between East and West Berlin — and thus East and West Ger­many — opened to all cit­i­zens of both coun­tries. To say that it came as a sur­prise would be a seri­ous under­state­ment. Ear­li­er that year, even the best informed observers were pre­dict­ing that the wall would stand for at least a few more decades. Ear­li­er that day, for that mat­ter, the offi­cials involved in the open­ing did­n’t fore­see that Social­ist Uni­ty Par­ty of Ger­many Sec­re­tary of Infor­ma­tion Gün­ter Sch­abows­ki would, that evening, mis­tak­en­ly declare on nation­al tele­vi­sion that the lib­er­al­iza­tion of bor­der trav­el was effec­tive “imme­di­ate­ly, with­out delay.”

When the bor­der guards final­ly gave up their attempts to hold the line around 11:00 that night, the sur­round­ing scene in both Berlins had turned into what atten­dees now remem­ber, 36 years lat­er, as the biggest street fes­ti­val of their lives. To those of us unable to join in the cel­e­bra­tion at the time, it may seem unlike­ly that such an event could real­ly have occurred with no inti­ma­tions what­so­ev­er.

Yet the footage shot by a trav­el­er in Berlin dur­ing the sum­mer of 1989, right there in the vicin­i­ty of the wall, depicts a city where events seem to be frozen. Though the built envi­ron­ment isn’t with­out touch­es of fad­ed grandeur here and there (and as many West Berlin­ers were soon to dis­cov­er, the real urban state­li­ness was over East), the over­all impres­sion giv­en by what was then the red hot cen­ter of Cold War geopol­i­tics is that of a dullsville.

The most out­ward­ly inter­est­ing fea­ture in these parts of Berlin at the very end of the nine­teen-eight­ies is, of course, the wall itself: the brutish­ness of its form, the hum­drum men­ace of its guards, the accu­mu­la­tion of graf­fi­ti both polit­i­cal and apo­lit­i­cal. At one point, the tourist’s cam­corder cap­tures the memo­ri­als for fall­en wall jumpers, the most recent of which, a cer­tain Chris Guef­froy, had made his fate­ful escape attempt from the East that past Feb­ru­ary. His­to­ry would soon immor­tal­ize him as the last per­son to be shot try­ing to get over the wall, though not the last to die doing so. That title belongs to Win­fried Freuden­berg, who in March of 1989 fell from a bal­loon he’d rigged up to fly across the bor­der. At this point, when the rapid urban evo­lu­tion of the reuni­fied Ger­man cap­i­tal has long since made it one of the most pop­u­lar cities in Europe, nei­ther she nor Guef­froy would rec­og­nize the for­mer East Berlin they were des­per­ate to escape — nor, for that mat­ter, the West Berlin of which they dreamed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Berlin Wall Worked: The Engi­neer­ing & Struc­tur­al Design of the Wall That For­mi­da­bly Divid­ed East & West

See Berlin Before and After World War II in Star­tling Col­or Video

The Gold­en Age of Berlin Comes to Life in the Clas­sic, Avant-Garde Film, Berlin: Sym­pho­ny of a Metrop­o­lis (1927)

The Dos & Don’ts of Dri­ving to West Berlin Dur­ing the Cold War: A Weird Piece of Ephemera from the 1980s

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

Watch Samuel Beck­ett Walk the Streets of Berlin Like a Boss, 1969

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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M.I.T. Computer Program Predicts in 1973 That Civilization Will End by 2040

in Computer Science, Data, Life | May 27th, 2026

In 1704, Isaac New­ton pre­dict­ed the end of the world some­time around (or after, “but not before”) the year 2060, using a strange series of math­e­mat­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions. Rather than study what he called the “book of nature,” he took as his source the sup­posed prophe­cies of the Book of Rev­e­la­tion. While such pre­dic­tions have always been cen­tral to Chris­tian­i­ty, it is star­tling for mod­ern peo­ple to look back and see the famed astronomer and physi­cist indulging them. For New­ton, how­ev­er, as Matthew Stan­ley writes at Sci­ence, “lay­ing the foun­da­tion of mod­ern physics and astron­o­my was a bit of a sideshow. He believed that his tru­ly impor­tant work was deci­pher­ing ancient scrip­tures and uncov­er­ing the nature of the Chris­t­ian reli­gion.”

Over three hun­dred years lat­er, we still have plen­ty of reli­gious doom­say­ers pre­dict­ing the end of the world with Bible codes. But in recent times, their ranks have seem­ing­ly been joined by sci­en­tists whose only pro­fessed aim is inter­pret­ing data from cli­mate research and sus­tain­abil­i­ty esti­mates giv­en pop­u­la­tion growth and dwin­dling resources. The sci­en­tif­ic pre­dic­tions do not draw on ancient texts or the­ol­o­gy, nor involve final bat­tles between good and evil. Though there may be plagues and oth­er hor­ri­ble reck­on­ings, these are pre­dictably causal out­comes of over-pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion rather than divine wrath. Yet by some strange fluke, the sci­ence has arrived at the same apoc­a­lyp­tic date as New­ton, plus or minus a decade or two.

The “end of the world” in these sce­nar­ios means the end of mod­ern life as we know it: the col­lapse of indus­tri­al­ized soci­eties, large-scale agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, sup­ply chains, sta­ble cli­mates, nation states…. Since the late six­ties, an elite soci­ety of wealthy indus­tri­al­ists and sci­en­tists known as the Club of Rome (a fre­quent play­er in many con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries) has fore­seen these dis­as­ters in the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry. One of the sources of their vision is a com­put­er pro­gram devel­oped at MIT by com­put­ing pio­neer and sys­tems the­o­rist Jay For­rester, whose mod­el of glob­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty, one of the first of its kind, pre­dict­ed civ­i­liza­tion­al col­lapse in 2040. “What the com­put­er envi­sioned in the 1970s has by and large been com­ing true,” claims Paul Rat­ner at Big Think.

Those pre­dic­tions include pop­u­la­tion growth and pol­lu­tion lev­els, “wors­en­ing qual­i­ty of life,” and “dwin­dling nat­ur­al resources.” In the video at the top, see Aus­trali­a’s ABC explain the computer’s cal­cu­la­tions, “an elec­tron­ic guid­ed tour of our glob­al behav­ior since 1900, and where that behav­ior will lead us,” says the pre­sen­ter. The graph spans the years 1900 to 2060. “Qual­i­ty of life” begins to sharply decline after 1940, and by 2020, the mod­el pre­dicts, the met­ric con­tracts to turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry lev­els, meet­ing the sharp increase of the “Zed Curve” that charts pol­lu­tion lev­els. (ABC revis­it­ed this report­ing in 1999 with Club of Rome mem­ber Kei­th Suter.)

You can prob­a­bly guess the rest—or you can read all about it in the 1972 Club of Rome-pub­lished report Lim­its to Growth, which drew wide pop­u­lar atten­tion to Jay Forrester’s books Urban Dynam­ics (1969) and World Dynam­ics (1971). For­rester, a fig­ure of New­ton­ian stature in the worlds of com­put­er sci­ence and man­age­ment and sys­tems theory—though not, like New­ton, a Bib­li­cal prophe­cy enthusiast—more or less endorsed his con­clu­sions to the end of his life in 2016. In one of his last inter­views, at the age of 98, he told the MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review, “I think the books stand all right.” But he also cau­tioned against act­ing with­out sys­tem­at­ic think­ing in the face of the glob­al­ly inter­re­lat­ed issues the Club of Rome omi­nous­ly calls “the prob­lem­at­ic”:

Time after time … you’ll find peo­ple are react­ing to a prob­lem, they think they know what to do, and they don’t real­ize that what they’re doing is mak­ing a prob­lem. This is a vicious [cycle], because as things get worse, there is more incen­tive to do things, and it gets worse and worse.

Where this vague warn­ing is sup­posed to leave us is uncer­tain. If the cur­rent course is dire, “unsys­tem­at­ic” solu­tions may be worse? This the­o­ry also seems to leave pow­er­ful­ly vest­ed human agents (like Exxon’s exec­u­tives) whol­ly unac­count­able for the com­ing col­lapse. Lim­its to Growth—scoffed at and dis­parag­ing­ly called “neo-Malthu­sian” by a host of lib­er­tar­i­an crit­ics—stands on far sur­er evi­den­tiary foot­ing than Newton’s weird pre­dic­tions, and its cli­mate fore­casts, notes Chris­t­ian Par­en­ti, “were alarm­ing­ly pre­scient.” But for all this doom and gloom it’s worth bear­ing in mind that mod­els of the future are not, in fact, the future. There are hard times ahead, but no the­o­ry, no mat­ter how sophis­ti­cat­ed, can account for every vari­able.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1953, a Tele­phone-Com­pa­ny Exec­u­tive Pre­dicts the Rise of Mod­ern Smart­phones and Video Calls

In 1922, a Nov­el­ist Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like in 2022: Wire­less Tele­phones, 8‑Hour Flights to Europe & More

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dicts the World Will End in 2060

It’s the End of the World as We Know It: The Apoc­a­lypse Gets Visu­al­ized in an Inven­tive Map from 1486

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

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

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Hear Robert Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen” in Remarkably Restored Audio, Taken from a Rare Test Pressing

in Music | May 26th, 2026

Robert John­son died at just 27 years old, some say as a con­se­quence of sell­ing his soul to the dev­il at a cross­roads. But before his time came, he man­aged to record 29 songs, a scant body of work that nev­er­the­less secured his artis­tic immor­tal­i­ty as one of the most influ­en­tial blues musi­cians of all time. It’s unfor­tu­nate that his record­ings, all of them made between 1936 and 1937 in less-than-ide­al stu­dio con­di­tions even for the time, leave some­thing to be desired in the audio qual­i­ty depart­ment. But now, some 90 years lat­er, sound restor­er Nick Del­low has been upload­ing rel­a­tive­ly crisp dig­i­tized “test press­ings” of John­son’s songs to YouTube: last month, for exam­ple, we fea­tured one of “Cross Road Blues” here on Open Cul­ture.

In the video above, you’ll find a sim­i­lar­ly high­er-qual­i­ty ver­sion of “Come On in My Kitchen,” a song acknowl­edged as an ear­ly demon­stra­tion of the young John­son’s oth­er­world­ly musi­cal pow­er. You may notice that the title labels this par­tic­u­lar record­ing as “take one.” John­son also record­ed a much dif­fer­ent sec­ond take, which his label Vocalion Records released in 1937, pos­si­bly because it sound­ed less mourn­ful and thus — accord­ing to record-indus­try log­ic — more viable as a hit.

Though take one now seems to be regard­ed as the “true” ren­di­tion of the song by his seri­ous enthu­si­asts, the pub­lic did­n’t get to hear it until 1961, when it was includ­ed on the com­pi­la­tion King of the Delta Blues Singers that did more than any oth­er release to win John­son his posthu­mous fan base.

It is, admit­ted­ly, not easy to imag­ine the first take of “Come On in My Kitchen” sweep­ing the dance halls, even with this sound qual­i­ty much improved from the ver­sion on King of the Delta Blues Singers. But the rea­sons John­son’s music has endured so long have less to do with his abil­i­ty to get a crowd mov­ing than with his com­bi­na­tion of under­stat­ed vir­tu­os­i­ty and preter­nat­ur­al-sound­ing abil­i­ty to reach into gen­uine­ly haunt­ing emo­tion­al realms. Like many canon­i­cal singer-song­writ­ers who died young, he seems always to be and remain some­how old­er than us, his lis­ten­ers, even as we reach (and indeed pass) mid­dle age. Occa­sion­al­ly, the release of nev­er-before-heard record­ings or press­ings reveals the true edge of imma­tu­ri­ty in such fig­ures; with John­son, it only deep­ens his leg­end.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A New­ly Dis­cov­ered Record­ing Lets You Hear Delta Blues Leg­end Robert John­son in Stun­ning Clar­i­ty

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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The Myth of Sisyphus Wonderfully Animated in an Oscar-Nominated Short Film (1974)

in Film | May 26th, 2026

Even if you don’t know the myth by name, you know the sto­ry. In Greek mythol­o­gy, Sisy­phus, King of Corinth, was pun­ished “for his self-aggran­diz­ing crafti­ness and deceit­ful­ness by being forced to roll an immense boul­der up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, repeat­ing this action for eter­ni­ty.” In mod­ern times, this sto­ry inspired Albert Camus to write “The Myth of Sisy­phus,” an essay where he famous­ly intro­duced his con­cept of the “absurd” and iden­ti­fied Sisy­phus as the absurd hero. And it pro­vid­ed the cre­ative mate­r­i­al for a breath­tak­ing­ly good ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by Mar­cell Jankovics in 1974. The film, notes the anno­ta­tion that accom­pa­nies the ani­ma­tion on YouTube, is “pre­sent­ed in a sin­gle, unbro­ken shot, con­sist­ing of a dynam­ic line draw­ing of Sisy­phus, the stone, and the moun­tain­side.” Fit­ting­ly, Jankovics’ lit­tle mas­ter­piece was nom­i­nat­ed for the Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film at the 48th Acad­e­my Awards.

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

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 

Mythos: An Ani­ma­tion Retells Time­less Greek Myths with Abstract Mod­ern Designs

The Greek Mythol­o­gy Fam­i­ly Tree: A Visu­al Guide Shows How Zeus, Athena, and the Ancient Gods Are Relat­ed

Mythol­o­gy Expert Reviews Depic­tions of Greek & Roman Myths in Pop­u­lar Movies and TV Shows

 

 

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Revisit Daily Life in China in 1917 Through Footage Enhanced and Colorized by AI

in Film, Travel | May 25th, 2026

Even for Amer­i­cans, keep­ing up with the geopo­lit­i­cal entan­gle­ments of the Unit­ed States has nev­er been an easy task. More than a cen­tu­ry ago, just a few months after their coun­try got involved in what’s now known as World War I, they got word that the mil­i­tary of a dis­tant nation had joined their side: Chi­na, whose image would have been both opaque and for­bid­ding­ly vast. A dozen years before they’d even heard the name Pearl S. Buck, what impres­sions of that coun­try they had would have come from scat­tered sources like post-Opi­um Wars mis­sion­ary pub­li­ca­tions, news­pa­per cov­er­age of com­pli­cat­ed events like the Box­er Rebel­lion and the fall of the Qing dynasty, and silent-film genre stereo­types. (Per­haps the rare read­er got ahold of John Thom­son’s Through Chi­na with a Cam­era.) Most could live a life­time with­out a glimpse of “the real Chi­na.”

By the end of 1917, how­ev­er, “there were at least 10 doc­u­men­taries avail­able to sat­is­fy curios­i­ty about America’s new ally in the Far East,” accord­ing to the Nation­al Film Preser­va­tion Foun­da­tion. Most were shorts that played along­side fea­tures, but A Trip Through Chi­na was dif­fer­ent. At least five years in the mak­ing, “the doc­u­men­tary was the brain­child of Ben­jamin Brod­sky, a wide­ly trav­eled Russ­ian-born busi­ness­man who claimed to speak 11 lan­guages. Accord­ing to a 1912 Mov­ing Pic­ture World pro­file, the young entre­pre­neur had moved to Chi­na from San Fran­cis­co after the 1906 Earth­quake and set up shop as a film exhibitor. Soon, as the Amer­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Vari­ety Film Exchange, he had a hand in dis­tri­b­u­tion and by 1909 branched into film pro­duc­tion in Shang­hai and Hong Kong. While jug­gling busi­ness inter­ests, he filmed his trav­els,” all of which took place not just before Chi­na’s eco­nom­ic rise, but before even the Com­mu­nist Rev­o­lu­tion.

Brod­sky brought 20,000 feet of neg­a­tives with him back to San Fran­cis­co, even­tu­al­ly cut­ting it down to ten reels, which would have run around one hour and 50 min­utes. Of this fea­ture-length trav­el­ogue film only cer­tain sec­tions sur­vive, but you can see them enhanced and col­orized with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in the video at the top of the post. (Some of an un-enhanced black-and-white print appears just above.) Bear in mind that col­ors you see are not, of course, the col­ors Brod­sky would have seen; there’s also some dis­cus­sion about whether the AI ren­dered cer­tain com­plex­ions unre­al­is­ti­cal­ly dark for the regions in which he shot these scenes. For Chi­na is quite a diverse place, not just in region­al land­scapes, cli­mates, and cul­tures, but also in the faces of its peo­ple: some­thing many West­ern­ers would­n’t have guessed in the nine­teen-tens — and for that mat­ter, some­thing a fair few of them don’t real­ize even today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold the Pho­tographs of John Thom­son, the First West­ern Pho­tog­ra­ph­er to Trav­el Wide­ly Through Chi­na (1870s)

A Trip Around the World in 1900: See Restored Footage Show­ing Life in New York, Lon­don, India, Japan, Chi­na & Beyond

Footage of Cities Around the World in the 1890s: Lon­don, Tokyo, New York, Venice, Moscow & More

Watch Life on the Streets of Tokyo in Footage Record­ed in 1913: Caught Between the Tra­di­tion­al and the Mod­ern

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

The Pho­to That Trig­gered China’s Dis­as­trous Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion (1966)

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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Who Would Be King of the United States If George Washington Had Become a Monarch?

in History | May 25th, 2026

The young George Wash­ing­ton may nev­er have hacked up his father’s cher­ry tree and refused to lie about it, but his life nev­er­the­less offers plen­ty of deeds both vir­tu­ous and ade­quate­ly doc­u­ment­ed. It was no small thing, for instance, to refuse to seek a third term as the first Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca — much less to exchange that title for “King of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.” As every enthu­si­ast of Amer­i­can his­to­ry knows, this set the prece­dent, only once vio­lat­ed and there­after writ­ten into law, of a two-term lim­it. But as every enthu­si­ast of alter­nate Amer­i­can his­to­ry has won­dered, what would have hap­pened had Wash­ing­ton become king? And if the U.S. monar­chy had remained intact for the past 227 years, who would rule it today?

In the Use­fulCharts video above, Matt Bak­er explains a series of dif­fer­ent suc­ces­sion sce­nar­ios. While none is high­ly plau­si­ble in itself, they togeth­er give an idea of the lines along which Amer­i­can monar­chi­cal his­to­ry could have played out, at least assum­ing that every oth­er event played out exact­ly the same way as it has in our real­i­ty.

One of the first com­pli­cat­ing fac­tors is that Wash­ing­ton him­self had no bio­log­i­cal descen­dants. Giv­en that, we can trace down a the­o­ret­i­cal roy­al lin­eage start­ing with his adopt­ed son, born from his wife Martha’s first mar­riage; with the nephew he select­ed as the pri­ma­ry heir of his estate; or with the senior-most heir of his father (own­er of the notion­al cher­ry tree). Not that any of those major paths through the chart of Wash­ing­ton’s indi­rect descen­dants is nec­es­sar­i­ly straight­for­ward either.

The whole mat­ter seems at least as com­pli­cat­ed as fig­ur­ing out who would be the Roman emper­or if Rome had nev­er fall­en, an exer­cise Bak­er works through in anoth­er Use­fulCharts video pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. The pos­si­bil­i­ties for the Amer­i­can monarch in 2026 come down to King Robert III, or Robert E. Lee V (and great-great grand­son of Robert E. Lee); Queen Bryn­da, or Bryn­da Hansen; King Richard, or Richard Wash­ing­ton; and King Lar­ry II, or Lawrence Shaffn­er, the descen­dant of George Wash­ing­ton’s nephew Bushrod. Bak­er finds that Shaffn­er is the most con­vinc­ing can­di­date for the job, which is hard to deny. Even apart from the rel­e­vant famil­ial, polit­i­cal, and legal fac­tors, con­sid­er that name again. King Lar­ry: apart from the title, how much more Amer­i­can could it pos­si­bly sound?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Who Would Be Emper­or If the Roman Empire Still Exist­ed Today?

How George Wash­ing­ton Became Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States: It Was Weird­er Than You Think

George Washington’s 110 Rules for Civil­i­ty and Decent Behav­ior

What We Can Learn from Past Pres­i­dents

A Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca (1861): Fea­tures George Wash­ing­ton Punch­ing Tigers, John Adams Slay­ing Snakes & Oth­er Fan­tas­tic Scenes

A Visu­al Time­line of World His­to­ry: Watch the Rise & Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions Over 5,000 Years

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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