The Very First Picture of the Far Side of the Moon, Taken 60 Years Ago

in Astronomy, History, Photography | November 5th, 2019

Six­ty years ago, mankind got its very first glimpse of the far side of the Moon, so called because it faces away from the Earth. (And as astronomers like Neil DeGrasse Tyson have long tak­en pains to point out to Pink Floyd fans, it isn’t “dark.”) Tak­en by the Sovi­et Union, that first pho­to may not look like much today, espe­cial­ly com­pared to the high-res­o­lu­tion col­or images sent back from the sur­face itself by Chi­na’s Chang’e‑4 probe ear­li­er this year. But with the tech­nol­o­gy of the late 1950s, even the tech­nol­o­gy com­mand­ed by the Sovi­ets’ then-world-beat­ing space pro­gram, the fact that it was tak­en at all seems not far short of mirac­u­lous. How did they do it?

“This pho­to­graph was tak­en by the Sovi­et space­craft Luna 3, which was launched a month after the Luna 2 space­craft became the first man-made object to impact on the sur­face of the Moon,” explains astronomer Kevin Hain­line in a recent Twit­ter thread. “Luna 2 fol­lowed Luna 1, the first space­craft to escape a geo­syn­chro­nous Earth orbit.” Luna 3 was designed to take pho­tographs of the Moon, hard­ly an uncom­pli­cat­ed prospect: “To take pic­tures you have to be sta­ble on three-axes. You have to take the pho­tographs remote­ly. AND you have to some­how trans­fer those pic­tures back to Earth.” The first three-axis sta­bi­lized space­craft ever sent on a mis­sion, Luna 3 “had to use a lit­tle pho­to­cell to ori­ent towards the Moon so that now, while sta­bi­lized, it could take the pic­tures. Which it did. On PHOTOGRAPHIC FILM.”

Even those of us who took pic­tures on film for decades have start­ed to take for grant­ed the con­ve­nience of dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy. But think back to all the has­sle of tra­di­tion­al pho­tog­ra­phy, then imag­ine mak­ing a robot car­ry them out in space. Once tak­en Luna 3’s pho­tos “were then moved to a lit­tle CHEMICAL PLANT to DEVELOP AND DRY THEM.” (In oth­er words, “Luna 3 had a lit­tle 1 Hour Pho­to inside.”) Then they con­tin­ued into “a device that shone a cath­ode ray tube, like in an old­er TV, through them, towards a device that record­ed the bright­ness and con­vert­ed this to an elec­tri­cal sig­nal.” You can read about what hap­pened then in more detail at Damn Inter­est­ing, where Alan Bel­lows describes how the space­craft sent “the light­ness and dark­ness infor­ma­tion line-by-line via fre­quen­cy-mod­u­lat­ed ana­log sig­nal — in essence, a fax sent over radio.”

Sovi­et Sci­en­tists could thus “retrieve one pho­to­graph­ic frame every 30 min­utes or so. Due to the dis­tance and weak sig­nal, the first images received con­tained noth­ing but sta­t­ic. In sub­se­quent attempts in the fol­low­ing few days, an indis­tinct, blotchy white disc began to resolve on the ther­mal paper print­outs at Sovi­et lis­ten­ing sta­tions.” As Luna 3’s pho­tos became clear­er, they revealed, as Hain­line puts it, that “the back­side of the moon was SO WEIRD AND DIFFERENT” — cov­ered in the craters, for exam­ple, which have become its visu­al sig­na­ture. For a mod­ern-day equiv­a­lent to this achieve­ment, we might look not just to Chang’e‑4 but to the image of a black hole cap­tured by the Event Hori­zon Tele­scope this past April — the one that led to an abun­dance of arti­cles like “In Defense of the Blur­ry Black Hole Pho­to” and “We Need to Admit That the Black Hole Pho­to Isn’t Very Good.” Astropho­tog­ra­phy has come a long way, but at least back in 1959 it did­n’t pro­duce quite so many takes.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mankind’s First Steps on the Moon: The Ultra High Res Pho­tos

8,400 Stun­ning High-Res Pho­tos From the Apol­lo Moon Mis­sions Are Now Online

How Sci­en­tists Col­orize Those Beau­ti­ful Space Pho­tos Tak­en By the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope

There’s a Tiny Art Muse­um on the Moon That Fea­tures the Art of Andy Warhol & Robert Rauschen­berg

The Glo­ri­ous Poster Art of the Sovi­et Space Pro­gram in Its Gold­en Age (1958–1963)

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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.

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The Entire History of the British Isles Animated: 42,000 BCE to Today

in Animation, History | November 1st, 2019

The Unit­ed King­dom is a con­fus­ing place for many peo­ple, and their not-quite-answered ques­tions about it go all the way to what does and does not con­sti­tute the Unit­ed King­dom in the first place. Not to give the end­ing away, but the ani­mat­ed map above by his­tor­i­cal-car­to­graph­i­cal Youtu­ber Ollie Bye even­tu­al­ly reveals that, if you’re look­ing at the British Isles, you’re look­ing at the UK — unless, of course, you’re look­ing at the Repub­lic of Ire­land. But tak­ing the long view, the polit­i­cal divi­sion of the British Isles has sel­dom been so sim­ple. We know they were pop­u­lat­ed by what we now call cau­ca­soids at least 44,000 years ago, but by 700 BC three groups had divid­ed them up: the Britons, the Picts, and the Gaels.

The com­pli­ca­tions real­ly start at the time of the Roman Empire, when, depend­ing on where in the British Isles you went, you’d have encoun­tered the Icenii, the Parisi, the Cale­donii, the Iverni, and many oth­er dis­tinct peo­ples besides. When the Roman Empire gave way to the Roman Repub­lic, Bri­tan­nia, or Roman Britain, began its expan­sion (and its road-build­ing) across the Isles, start­ing from the south­east.

But with Rome’s with­draw­al in 410 a great many new bor­ders appear like spi­der­web cracks across the land. For cen­turies there­after, the British Isles is a place of many king­doms: Mer­cia, Wes­sex, Northum­bria, Gwynedd, and Deheubarth, to name but a few. (Not to men­tion the Vikings.) And then you have a year like 1066, when the Nor­man con­quest redraws a large chunk of the map at a stroke.

Even those most igno­rant of British his­to­ry will rec­og­nize a few of the king­doms that arise lat­er on in this peri­od: the King­dom of Scot­land, for exam­ple, or the King­dom of Wales. Start­ing from the mid-12th cen­tu­ry, a cer­tain King­dom of Eng­land begins to paint the map red. By 1604, the British Isles are clean­ly divid­ed between the King­dom of Eng­land and the King­dom of Scot­land; by 1707, the King­dom of Great Britain is run­ning the whole place. The sit­u­a­tion has­n’t changed much since, though any­one who has trav­eled across the British Isles knows that the osten­si­ble lack of polit­i­cal frac­tious­ness masks many endur­ing cul­tur­al divi­sions sub­tle to the out­sider: while every­one liv­ing every­where from John o’ Groats to Land’s End may offi­cial­ly be British, few would coun­te­nance being lumped togeth­er with all the rest of them.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Rise and Fall of the British Empire in an Ani­mat­ed Time-Lapse Map ( 519 A.D. to 2014 A.D.)

The Roman Roads of Britain Visu­al­ized as a Sub­way Map

Watch the His­to­ry of the World Unfold on an Ani­mat­ed Map: From 200,000 BCE to Today

The His­to­ry of Civ­i­liza­tion Mapped in 13 Min­utes: 5000 BC to 2014 AD

5‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Maps 2,600 Years of West­ern Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

A His­to­ry of the Entire World in Less Than 20 Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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.

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Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Novel Adaptation

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, History, K-12, Literature | November 1st, 2019

The human imag­i­na­tion can be an extra­or­di­nary cop­ing device in times of trou­ble, a tiny win­dow pro­vid­ing men­tal escape from what­ev­er cell fate has con­signed us to.

Diarist and aspir­ing pro­fes­sion­al writer Anne Frank, who died in the Bergen-Belsen con­cen­tra­tion camp at the age of 15, chafed at her now-uni­ver­sal­ly-known con­fine­ment in the Secret Annex. She chafed at her mother’s author­i­ty and the seem­ing­ly effort­less saint­li­ness of her old­er sis­ter. Doc­u­ment­ing her dai­ly phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al real­i­ty offered tem­po­rary respite from it.

The lib­er­at­ing pow­er of the cre­ative mind is one of the aspects writer Ari Fol­man and illus­tra­tor David Polon­sky sought to tease out when adapt­ing Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl as a graph­ic nov­el.

The graph­ic nov­el for­mat decreed that entire pas­sages would be cut or con­densed. Polon­sky can use a sin­gle pan­el to show logis­tics it took Anne para­graphs to describe. The inter­per­son­al con­flicts she dwelt on are now con­veyed by facial expres­sions and body lan­guage.

As with Sid Jacob­son and Ernie Colón’s 2010 Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Autho­rized Graph­ic Biog­ra­phy, the diary’s small stage is expand­ed to give read­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those unac­quaint­ed with the orig­i­nal text, a his­tor­i­cal con­text for under­stand­ing the wider social impli­ca­tions of Anne’s tragedy.

But this graph­ic retelling is unique in that it traf­fics in mag­ic real­ist visu­als that should play well with 21st-cen­tu­ry youth, who cut their teeth on CGI, fast-paced edits, and stream­ing teen-focused enter­tain­ments where­in char­ac­ters are apt to break the fourth wall or break into song.

These are the read­ers to whom the project is most inten­tion­al­ly pitched. As Fol­man told Teen Vogue’s Emma Sar­ran Web­ster:

I tru­ly believe that in a few years, when the very last sur­vivors will have died, the angle that will be tak­en from the sto­ry will be that with every year, we are 10 years fur­ther away from the orig­i­nal. […] There is a severe threat that the things we have to learn from it will not be taught and learned if we don’t find a new lan­guage for them. So any new lan­guage in my opin­ion is blessed, as long as it stays with­in the frame­work and reach­es young audi­ences by means of their tools, which are now very visu­al.

Ergo, Kit­ty, Anne’s nick­name for her diary, has been per­son­i­fied, emerg­ing from the lit­tle plaid book’s pages like Peter Pan’s shad­ow, ear atten­tive­ly cocked toward the secrets Anne whis­pers into it.

The melo­dra­mat­ic Mrs. van Daan’s prized fur coat has an anthro­po­mor­phized rab­bit head col­lar, capa­ble of join­ing in the dia­logue.

Polon­sky pays homage to artists Edvard Munch, whose “degen­er­a­tive” work Hitler had removed from Ger­man muse­ums, and Gus­tav Klimt, who paint­ed many works that were con­fis­cat­ed from their Jew­ish own­ers by Nazi decree.

Young read­ers’ mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties also guid­ed Folman’s approach to the text. The spir­it of the orig­i­nal is pre­served, but cer­tain phras­ings have been giv­en a 21st cen­tu­ry update.

The snarky Secret Annex menus and diet tips he allows his hero­ine harken to the direct address of var­i­ous meta teen come­dies, as well as the blis­ter­ing par­o­dy of the Sara­je­vo Sur­vival Guide, a pur­port­ed trav­el guide writ­ten dur­ing the Siege.

Noble goal of engag­ing the next gen­er­a­tion aside, there are no doubt some purists who will view these inno­va­tions as impo­si­tion. Rest assured that Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graph­ic Adap­ta­tion is sanc­tioned by Anne Frank Fonds, the char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion estab­lished by Anne’s father, Otto.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Only Known Footage of Anne Frank

Read the Poignant Let­ter Sent to Anne Frank by George Whit­man, Own­er of Paris’ Famed Shake­speare & Co Book­shop (1960): “If I Sent This Let­ter to the Post Office It Would No Longer Reach You”

How Art Spiegel­man Designs Com­ic Books: A Break­down of His Mas­ter­piece, Maus

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Animated Introduction to Medieval Taverns: Learn the History of These Rough-and-Tumble Ancestors of the Modern Pub

in Food & Drink, History | October 31st, 2019

When I think of the medieval tav­ern, I see grim footage from Bergman’s The Sev­enth Seal and grimy drink­ing scenes from Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings. While only the first of these uses an osten­si­bly his­tor­i­cal set­ting, the imagery of them all is what we think of when we think of tav­erns. Huge casks in the cor­ners, great, inde­struc­tible wood­en tables and wood­en mugs, signs with pic­tures instead of words; drunk­en singing and the occa­sion­al axe fight.

The crude­ly ani­mat­ed Sim­ple His­to­ry video above con­firms these impres­sions, describ­ing the tav­erns, inns, and ale hous­es that were ances­tors of the mod­ern pub as “places of drink­ing, gam­bling, vio­lence, and crim­i­nal activ­i­ty.” Art his­to­ry and schol­ar­ship fur­ther con­firm our impres­sion of tav­erns as rough-hewn, row­dy hous­es where brawls fre­quent­ly broke out and all sorts of shady busi­ness trans­act­ed.

Ale hous­es had an “ale stake or ale pole” that could be raised to show they had a brew ready to serve. Tav­erns had a pole with leaves, called a “bush,” for the same pur­pose. Wine might be pricey, but beer was cheap, as “tax­ing it would not have been well-received.” Bar­maids poured drinks from pitch­ers of leather into mugs of wood. Food was… well, not so good…. Maybe we can visu­al­ize tav­ern life by extrap­o­lat­ing back­wards from our local dive bars.

How­ev­er, we might find it hard to imag­ine liv­ing in a time before beer. Milan Pajic, junior research fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, found that beer made a rel­a­tive­ly late entry in the his­to­ry of Eng­lish drink, arriv­ing only in the lat­ter half of the 14th cen­tu­ry when intro­duced by Dutch immi­grants and demand­ed by sol­diers return­ing from the 100 Years War.

Between around 1350 and around 1400, Pajic claims, all of the beer drunk in Eng­lish tav­erns was import­ed from the Nether­lands. “The first evi­dence of some­one brew­ing beer” in Eng­land, Pajic writes in an arti­cle pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Medieval His­to­ry, “comes from 1398–9.” The brew­er, a “Duche­man,” was “fined for buy­ing ‘wheat in the mar­ket in order to pro­duce beer, to the great dam­age of the same mar­ket.”

Such per­se­cu­tion could not last. In a hun­dred year’s time, a few hun­dred brew­ers could be found around the coun­try, most of them immi­grants from the Low Coun­tries. But in part because the Eng­lish dis­trust­ed the Dutch, “it took almost a cen­tu­ry from the moment it was intro­duced as an import­ed com­mod­i­ty and con­sumed large­ly by immi­grants before it came to be pro­duced on Eng­lish soil and accept­ed by the natives.”

Tav­ern, inn, and ale house designs would have con­formed to local join­ery trends, but the medieval Eng­lish tavern’s chief draw—cheap, fresh­ly-brewed beer, and lots of it—was a sus­pi­cious con­ti­nen­tal import before it became a nation­al trea­sure.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beer Archae­ol­o­gy: Yes, It’s a Thing

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

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

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

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What Guitars Were Like 400 Years Ago: An Introduction to the 9 String Baroque Guitar

in History, Music | October 30th, 2019

Maybe it’s just me, but it some­times feels like gui­tar music is on the wane. Sure, there are plen­ty of gui­tar bands out there, gui­tar sales seem to hold steady, but the syn­the­siz­er, midi con­troller, and dig­i­tal audio work­sta­tion have become the dom­i­nant instru­ments of pop­u­lar music. Then again, it’s short-sight­ed to count the gui­tar out just yet, giv­en the 500-year longevi­ty of its design.

In the 17th cen­tu­ry, the Lute Soci­ety of Dart­mouth notes, the gui­tar was “cul­ti­vat­ed by play­ers and com­posers with­in the courts of princes and kings.” The Baroque gui­tar was very much like the mod­ern six string (or, as often these days, sev­en and eight string) that we know today, “aside from a dif­fer­ence of tun­ing,” writes luthi­er Clive Tit­muss. Where “the mod­ern gui­tar is a baritone/tenor… the baroque is an alto instru­ment, about the size of a vio­la.”

The dif­fer­ences in size and pitch change the sus­tain and artic­u­la­tion. The Baroque gui­tar’s tonal char­ac­ter­is­tics are much more del­i­cate, per­cus­sive, and lute-like. “The great­est music for baroque gui­tar is dif­fi­cult to ren­der ade­quate­ly on the mod­ern gui­tar because the tra­di­tions of the two instru­ments have diverged so wide­ly: They speak basi­cal­ly the same lan­guage, but with a dif­fer­ent vocab­u­lary and accent.” Ear­ly Renais­sance gui­tars had what is called a “four course” string arrange­ment, with eight dou­bled strings. The baroque gui­tar added one more for a “five course” instru­ment with nine strings.

Like its Renais­sance fore­bear, lutes, and mod­ern twelve-string gui­tars today, four of those “cours­es” were dou­bled, with pairs of strings tuned to the same note. This essen­tial­ly made it a five string gui­tar with the ring­ing sonor­i­ty of a man­dolin. In the video at the top, Bran­don Ack­er explains what this means in the­o­ry and prac­tice. The tun­ing was fair­ly close to a mod­ern six-string, but one octave up and miss­ing the low E. The lone high E string was called the chanterelle or “singing string.”

Pop­u­lar main­ly in south­ern Europe, the Baroque gui­tar “may well have been used as it fre­quent­ly is today,” the Lute Soci­ety points out: “to pro­vide a sim­ple strummed accom­pa­ni­ment for a singer or small group.” It was first held in con­tempt by ear­ly Span­ish com­posers who pre­ferred the sim­i­lar vihuela. But the gui­tar would dis­place that instru­ment, as well as the lute, in musi­cal com­po­si­tions across Spain, Italy, France and else­where in Europe.

In the videos above, you can see and hear some fine demon­stra­tions from Ack­er, who plays peri­od pieces like Suite in D Minor by Robert de Visée, court com­pos­er and musi­cian for Louis XIV and Louis XV. Below, see gui­tarist Ste­fano Maio­rana play a gor­geous Span­ish piece.

Giv­en the 400 years that sep­a­rate the mod­ern gui­tar from its Baroque ances­tor, the resem­blances are remark­able, prov­ing that the instrument’s 17th cen­tu­ry refin­ers hit on a design that per­fect­ly com­ple­ments the human voice, sounds great solo and in groups, and can han­dle both rhythm and lead. Even if most gui­tars in the future dou­ble as midi-con­trol­ling synth instru­ments, it’s prob­a­bly safe to say mod­ern music won’t give up this bril­liant, time-test­ed design any time soon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

The His­to­ry of the Gui­tar & Gui­tar Leg­ends: From 1929 to 1979

The Ency­clo­pe­dia Of Alter­nate Gui­tar Tun­ings

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

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How Monument Valley Became the Most Iconic Landscape of the American West

in Film, History | October 29th, 2019

The Amer­i­can West has nev­er been a place so much as a con­stel­la­tion of events—incursion, set­tle­ment, seizure, war, con­tain­ment, and exter­mi­na­tion in one order or anoth­er. These bloody his­to­ries, san­i­tized and seen through anti-indige­nous ide­ol­o­gy, formed the back­drop for the Amer­i­can Western—a genre that depends for its exis­tence on cre­at­ing a con­vinc­ing sense of place.

But where most West­erns are sup­posed to be set—Colorado, Cal­i­for­nia, Texas, Kansas, or Montana—seems less impor­tant than that their scenery con­form to a stereo­type of what The West should look like. That image has, in film after film, been sup­plied by the tow­er­ing buttes of Mon­u­ment Val­ley. The Vox video above tells the sto­ry of how this par­tic­u­lar place became the sym­bol of the Amer­i­can West, begin­ning with the iron­ic fact that Mon­u­ment Val­ley isn’t actu­al­ly part of the U.S., but a trib­al park on the Nava­jo Nation reser­va­tion, inside the states of Utah and Ari­zona.

“For cen­turies, only Native Amer­i­cans, specif­i­cal­ly the Paiute and Nava­jo, occu­pied this remote land­scape, field­ing con­flicts with the U.S. gov­ern­ment.” That would change when set­tlers and sheep traders Har­ry and Leone “Mike” Gould­ing set up a trad­ing post right out­side Nava­jo ter­ri­to­ry on the Utah side. Gould­ing tried tire­less­ly to attract tourists to Mon­u­ment Val­ley dur­ing the Great Depres­sion but didn’t get any trac­tion until he took pho­tos of the land­scape to Hol­ly­wood.

The movie world imme­di­ate­ly saw poten­tial, and West­ern direct­ing leg­end John Ford chose the stun­ning loca­tion for his 1939 film Stage­coach. It would be the first of scores of films shot in Mon­u­ment Val­ley and the ori­gin of cin­e­mat­ic iconog­ra­phy now insep­a­ra­ble from our idea of the rugged Amer­i­can West. The land­scape, and Ford’s vision, ele­vat­ed the West­ern from low-bud­get pulp to “one of Hollywood’s most pop­u­lar gen­res for the next 20 years.”

Pho­to by Dsdugan, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Stage­coach pro­vid­ed the “break­out role for Amer­i­can icon John Wayne” (who once declared that Native peo­ple “self­ish­ly tried to keep their land” for them­selves and thus deserved to be dis­pos­sessed.) And just as Wayne became the face of the West­ern hero, Mon­u­ment Val­ley became the cen­tral icon of its mythos. Ford used Mon­u­ment Val­ley sev­en more times in his films, most notably in The Searchers, set in Texas, wide­ly praised as one of the best West­erns ever made.

Ford’s final film to fea­ture the land­scape takes place all over the coun­try, appro­pri­ate­ly, giv­en its title, How the West Was Won. Its all-star cast, includ­ing Wayne, sold this major 1962 epic, mar­ket­ed with the tagline “24 great stars in the might­i­est adven­ture ever filmed.” But it wouldn’t have been a true West­ern at that point, or not a true John Ford West­ern, with­out Mon­u­ment Val­ley as one of its many land­scapes. The imagery may have become cliché, but “clichés are use­ful for sto­ry­telling,” sig­nal­ing to audi­ences “what kind of sto­ry this is.”

From Stage­coach to Marl­boro Ads to Thel­ma and Louise to The Lego Movie to the Cohen Broth­ers’ com­ic clas­sic West­ern trib­ute The Bal­lad of Buster Scrug­gs, the image of Mon­u­ment Val­ley has become short­hand for free­dom, adven­ture, and the risks of the fron­tier. But like oth­er icon­ic places in oth­er for­bid­ding land­scapes around the world, the myth of Mon­u­ment Val­ley cov­ers over the his­tor­i­cal and present-day strug­gles of real peo­ple. We get a lit­tle bit of that sto­ry in the Vox explain­er, but most­ly we learn how Mon­u­ment Val­ley became an end­less­ly repeat­ing “back­drop” that “could be any­where in the West.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Ser­gio Leone Made Music an Actor in His Spaghet­ti West­erns, Cre­at­ing a Per­fect Har­mo­ny of Sound & Image

The Great Train Rob­bery: Where West­erns Began

John Wayne: 26 Free West­ern Films Online

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

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A 108-Year-Old Woman Recalls What It Was Like to Be a Woman in Victorian England

in History, Life, Television | October 25th, 2019

The per­ils of old age—demen­tia, eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty, social iso­la­tion—are receiv­ing a lot of atten­tion these days.

How refresh­ing to spend three min­utes in the com­pa­ny of a sharp-wit­ted 108-year-old, who, respond­ing to a ques­tion about what life was like for women in Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, acts out a cou­ple of social­ly rel­e­vant, peri­od Punch car­toons, delib­er­ate­ly draw­ing atten­tion to her shock­ing­ly well-pre­served ankles in the process.

Flo­rence Pan­nell was born in Lon­don in 1868, 3 years after the US abol­ished slav­ery and eleven before the advent of the elec­tric light­bulb.

Her appear­ance on Thames Television’s Mon­ey-Go-Round pro­gram appears to be her only pub­lic record­ing. The Kens­ing­ton Post cap­tured her leav­ing her polling place, after cast­ing her bal­lot in a 1971 elec­tion at the age of 102.

It’s a pity there’s not more of an online pres­ence, as this cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry­teller clear­ly rel­ish­es the oppor­tu­ni­ty to revis­it the past.

A pity too, that she was stuck with a dud of an inter­view­er, Joan Shen­ton, who has gone on to find fame as a promi­nent AIDS denial­ist.

The AIDS cri­sis is one event of glob­al his­tor­i­cal impor­tance that Mrs. Pan­nell missed—barely—she died in 1980, a few months shy of her 112th birth­day.

We learn that she found­ed a suc­cess­ful beau­ty care busi­ness that took her to Paris for a time, but oth­er than that, the details of her pri­vate life are left to our spec­u­la­tion. She was mar­ried. Did she have chil­dren, and if so, did she sur­vive them?

Did she ever get the chance to go up in an air­plane? As of 1977, she hadn’t, but was open to the idea, imply­ing that the risk had out­weighed the poten­tial thrill in the ear­ly days of avi­a­tion.

Most strik­ing is her hearty reply con­cern­ing the biggest change she had wit­nessed over the years:

Every­thing! Noth­ing is the same! Everything’s changed!

Some of the mile­stones she was alive for, as not­ed by var­i­ous YouTube and Red­dit com­menters:

The coro­na­tion of the five mon­archs to fol­low Queen Vic­to­ria: Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, George VI and Eliz­a­beth II (whose 93 years on the plan­et she makes seem mar­gin­al­ly less impres­sive)

Jack the Ripper’s ter­ror­iza­tion of Lon­don

The sink­ing of the Titan­ic

Both World Wars

The Great Depres­sion

The tele­phone

Tele­vi­sion

The hip­pie move­ment

The moon land­ing

Star Wars

Anoth­er com­menter sug­gest­ed that it would have been math­e­mat­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble for Mrs. Pan­nell to have heard sto­ries about Napoleon at her grandpa’s knee.

Read­ers, what are you bog­gled by, with regard to the sig­nif­i­cant events tran­spir­ing with­in this woman’s life­time?

(And for those curi­ous as to her for­mi­da­ble accent, there’s a wealth of lin­guis­tic infor­ma­tion here.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s Advice For How (Not) to Grow Old: “Make Your Inter­ests Grad­u­al­ly Wider and More Imper­son­al”

You’re Only As Old As You Feel: Har­vard Psy­chol­o­gist Ellen Langer Shows How Men­tal Atti­tude Can Poten­tial­ly Reverse the Effects of Aging

Meet Vio­la Smith, the World’s Old­est Drum­mer: Her Career Start­ed in the 1930s, and She’s Still Play­ing at 106

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Discover the Persian 11th Century Canon of Medicine, “The Most Famous Medical Textbook Ever Written”

in History, Science | October 24th, 2019

It may nev­er lend a catchy title to a steamy TV hos­pi­tal dra­ma, but Avicenna’s 11th-cen­tu­ry Canon of Med­i­cine has the dis­tinc­tion of being “the most famous med­ical text­book ever writ­ten.” It has remained, as William Osler wrote in a 1918 Yale lec­ture, “a med­ical bible for a longer time than any oth­er work.” Com­plet­ed in 1025, the com­pendi­um drew Greek, Roman, Ara­bic, Indi­an, and Chi­nese med­ical sci­ence togeth­er in five dense vol­umes of mate­r­i­al informed by the the­o­ries of Galen and struc­tured by the sys­tem­at­ic phi­los­o­phy of Aris­to­tle, whom Avi­cen­na (Abū-ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn-ʿAb­dal­lāh Ibn-Sīnā) called “The First Teacher.”

Trans­lat­ed into Latin in the 12th cen­tu­ry and “often revised,” the Canon, notes the Stan­ford Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy, “formed the basis of med­ical instruc­tion in Euro­pean Uni­ver­si­ties until the 17th cen­tu­ry.” A copy of excerpts from the text has even been found trans­lat­ed into 15th-cen­tu­ry Irish, demon­strat­ing a link between medieval Ire­land and the Islam­ic world. Avicenna’s influ­ence gen­er­al­ly on the intel­lec­tu­al cul­ture of medieval and ear­ly mod­ern Europe and the Arab-speak­ing world can hard­ly be over­stat­ed.

Born in 980 A.D., the Per­sian philoso­pher and physi­cian was instru­men­tal in the recov­ery of Hel­lenic thought, first in the Islam­ic world, then lat­er in Europe. He took to the study of med­i­cine very ear­ly in his extra­or­di­nary career. “I became pro­fi­cient in it in the short­est time,” he says, “until the excel­lent schol­ars of med­i­cine began to study under me.” He also became a prac­tic­ing physi­cian, inspired by a desire to put his learn­ing to the test. “Through my expe­ri­ences I acquired an amaz­ing prac­ti­cal knowl­edge and abil­i­ty in meth­ods of treat­ment.”

The prac­ti­cal knowl­edge in The Canon of Med­i­cine was large­ly the basis for its con­tin­ued use for cen­turies. It lays out rules for drug test­ing, which include an insis­tence on human tri­als and the impor­tance of con­duct­ing mul­ti­ple exper­i­ments and show­ing con­sis­tent results across cas­es. Like most clas­si­cal sci­en­tif­ic texts, it weaves empir­i­cal obser­va­tion with meta­physics, the­ol­o­gy, scholas­tic spec­u­la­tion, and cul­tur­al bias­es par­tic­u­lar to its time and place. But the prac­ti­cal out­lines of its med­ical knowl­edge tran­scend its archaisms.

The work presents “an inte­grat­ed view of surgery and med­i­cine,” notes the Jour­nal of the Roy­al Soci­ety of Med­i­cine. In addi­tion to his immi­nent­ly use­ful guide for assess­ing the effects of drugs, Ibn Sina tells his read­ers “how to judge the mar­gin of healthy tis­sue to remove with an ampu­ta­tion,” an inter­ven­tion that has saved count­less num­bers of lives. “The endur­ing respect in the 21st cen­tu­ry for a book writ­ten a mil­len­ni­um ear­li­er is tes­ti­mo­ny to Ibn Sina’s achieve­ment.”

One of the defin­ing fea­tures of the text is its insis­tence on the prac­tice of med­i­cine as a sys­tem­at­ic sci­en­tif­ic pur­suit of equal mer­it to the the­o­riz­ing of it:

Some­one might say to us that med­i­cine is divid­ed into the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal parts and that, by call­ing it a sci­ence, we have con­sid­ered it as being all the­o­ret­i­cal. To this we respond by say­ing that some arts and phi­los­o­phy have the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal parts, and med­i­cine, too, has its the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal parts. The divi­sion into the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal parts dif­fers from case to case, but we need not dis­cuss these divi­sions in dis­ci­plines oth­er than med­i­cine. If it is said that some parts of med­i­cine are the­o­ret­i­cal and oth­er parts are prac­ti­cal, this does not mean that one part teach­es med­i­cine and the oth­er puts it into prac­tice – as many researchers in this sub­ject believe. One should be aware that the inten­tion is some­thing else: it is that both parts of med­i­cine are sci­ence, but one part is the sci­ence deal­ing with the prin­ci­ples of med­i­cine, and the oth­er with how to put those prin­ci­ples into prac­tice.

Of course, much of the med­ical the­o­ry in the Canon has been dis­proven, but it remains of keen inter­est to stu­dents of the his­to­ry of med­i­cine and of Euro­pean and Islam­ic intel­lec­tu­al cul­tur­al his­to­ry more gen­er­al­ly. Avi­cen­na tow­ers above his con­tem­po­raries, yet his work also bears wit­ness to the larg­er “intel­lec­tu­al cli­mate of his time,” as the site Med­ical His­to­ry Tour points out. He emerged from a milieu “shaped by cen­turies of trans­la­tion and cross-cul­tur­al schol­ar­ship” of Greek, Roman, Indi­an, Chi­nese, Per­sian, and Ara­bic lit­er­a­ture. “A rich Per­sian med­ical tra­di­tion began 200 years before Avi­cen­na.”

Nonethe­less, “how­ev­er the world came by the genius of Avi­cen­na, his influ­ence was last­ing,” with The Canon of Med­i­cine remain­ing a defin­i­tive “best prac­tices” guide to med­i­cine for cen­turies after its com­po­si­tion. See full scans of sev­er­al Ara­bic copies of the text at the Library of Congress’s World Dig­i­tal Library and read a full Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the mas­sive 5‑volume work, with its exten­sive chap­ters on def­i­n­i­tions, anato­my, eti­ol­o­gy, and treat­ments, at the Inter­net Archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

700 Years of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

How Ara­bic Trans­la­tors Helped Pre­serve Greek Phi­los­o­phy … and the Clas­si­cal Tra­di­tion

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

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