Take a 3D Tour Through Ancient Giza, Including the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx & More

in Architecture, History, Technology | March 31st, 2020

Imag­ine the pyra­mids of ancient Egypt, and a vivid image comes right to mind. But unless you hap­pen to be an Egyp­tol­o­gist, that image may pos­sess a great deal more vivid­ness than it does detail. We all have a rough sense of the pyra­mids’ size (impres­sive­ly large), shape (pyra­midi­cal), tex­ture (crumbly), and set­ting (sand), almost whol­ly derived from images cap­tured over the past cen­tu­ry. But what about the pyra­mids in their hey­day, more than 4,500 years ago? Do we know enough even to begin imag­in­ing how they looked, let alone how peo­ple made use of them? Har­vard Egyp­tol­o­gist Peter Der Manuelian does, and in the video above he gives us a tour through 3D mod­els that recon­struct the Giza pyra­mid com­plex (also known as the Giza necrop­o­lis) using both the best tech­nol­o­gy and the fullest knowl­edge avail­able today.

“You’ll see we’ve had to remove mod­ern struc­tures and exca­va­tors, debris dumps,” says Der Manuelian as the cam­era flies, drone­like, in the direc­tion of the Great Sphinx. “We stud­ied the Nile, and we had to move it much clos­er to the Giza pyra­mids, because in antiq­ui­ty, the Nile did flow clos­er. And we’ve tried to rebuild each and every struc­ture.”

Of the Sphinx, this mod­el boasts “the most accu­rate recon­struc­tion that has ever been attempt­ed so far,” and Der Manuelian shows it in two pos­si­ble col­ors schemes, one with only the head paint­ed, one with the entire body paint­ed in “the red­dish brown reserved for male fig­ures.” He also shows the pyra­mid tem­ple of Khafre, both in the near-com­plete­ly ruined state in which it exists today, and in full dig­i­tal recon­struc­tion, com­plete with seat­ed stat­ues the Fourth-Dynasty pharaoh Khafre him­self.

The mod­el accom­mo­dates more than just the built envi­ron­ment. Der Manuelian shows a mod­el bark with anoth­er stat­ue being car­ried into one of the cham­bers, explain­ing that it allows researchers to deter­mine “whether or not it’s big enough or small enough to actu­al­ly fit between the doors of the tem­ple.” Else­where in the mod­el we see a re-enact­ment of the “Open­ing of the Mouth cer­e­mo­ny,” the “rean­i­ma­tion cer­e­mo­ny for the deceased king, meant to mag­i­cal­ly and rit­u­al­ly bring him back to life for the nether­world.” The ren­der­ing takes place inside the tem­ple of the Pyra­mid of Khu­fu, peo­pled with human char­ac­ters. But “how many should there be? What should they be wear­ing? Where are the reg­u­lar Egyp­tians? Are they allowed any­where near this cer­e­mo­ny, or indeed are they allowed any­where near Giza at all?” The greater the detail in which researchers recon­struct the ancient world, the more such ques­tions come to the sur­face.

In the video just above, Der Manuelian explains more about the impor­tance of 3D mod­el­ing to Egyp­tol­ogy: how it uses the exist­ing research, what it has helped mod­ern researchers under­stand, and the promise it holds for the future. The lat­ter includes much of inter­est even to non-Egyp­tol­o­gists, such as tourists who might like to famil­iar­ize them­selves with Giza necrop­o­lis in the days when the Open­ing of the Mouth cer­e­monies still took place — or any era of their choice — before set­ting foot there them­selves. These videos come from “Pyra­mids of Giza: Ancient Egypt­ian Art and Archae­ol­o­gy,” Der Manuelian’s online course at edX, a worth­while learn­ing expe­ri­ence if you’ve got your own such trip planned — or just the kind of fas­ci­na­tion that has gripped peo­ple around the world since the Egyp­to­ma­nia of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. The tech­nol­o­gy with which we study Egypt has advanced great­ly since then, but for many, the mys­ter­ies of ancient Egypt itself have only become more com­pelling.

via The Kid Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

What the Great Pyra­mid of Giza Would’ve Looked Like When First Built: It Was Gleam­ing, Reflec­tive White

The Met Dig­i­tal­ly Restores the Col­ors of an Ancient Egypt­ian Tem­ple, Using Pro­jec­tion Map­ping Tech­nol­o­gy

Human All Too Human: A Roman Woman Vis­its the Great Pyra­mid in 120 AD, and Carves a Poem in Mem­o­ry of Her Deceased Broth­er

The Grate­ful Dead Play at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ancient Pyra­mids of Egypt, Sudan & Mex­i­co

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Take a Virtual Tour of the Paris Catacombs

in History, Life, Travel | March 25th, 2020

The Paris Cat­a­combs is “one of those places,” wrote pho­tog­ra­ph­er Félix Nadar, “that every­one wants to see and no one wants to see again.” If any­one would know, Nadar would. He spent three months in and out of the under­ground city of death, with its macabre piles of skulls and cross­bones, tak­ing pho­tographs (see here) that would help turn it into an inter­na­tion­al­ly famous tourist attrac­tion. In these days of quar­an­tine, no one can see it; the site is closed until fur­ther notice. But if you’re the type of per­son who enjoys tour­ing necrop­olis­es, you can still get your fix with a vir­tu­al vis­it.

Why would any­one want to do this, espe­cial­ly dur­ing a glob­al out­break? The Cat­a­combs have attract­ed seek­ers after mor­bid curiosi­ties and spir­i­tu­al and philo­soph­i­cal truths for over two hun­dred years, through rev­o­lu­tions, mas­sacres, and plagues.

A stark, haunt­ing reminder of what Nadar called “the egal­i­tar­i­an con­fu­sion of death,” they wit­ness mute­ly, with­out euphemism, to the future we are all assured, no mat­ter our rank or posi­tion. They began as a dis­or­dered pile of bones in the late 18th cen­tu­ry, trans­ferred from over­crowd­ed ceme­ter­ies and became a place where “a Merovin­gian king remains in eter­nal silence next to those mas­sa­cred in Sep­tem­ber ‘92” dur­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion.

Con­tem­pla­tions of death, espe­cial­ly in times of war, plague, famine, and oth­er shocks and crises, have been an inte­gral part of many cul­tur­al cop­ing mech­a­nisms, and often involve med­i­ta­tions on corpses and grave­yards. The Cat­a­combs are no dif­fer­ent, a sprawl­ing memen­to mori named after the Roman cat­a­combs, “which had fas­ci­nat­ed the pub­lic since their dis­cov­ery,” as the offi­cial site notes. Expand­ed, ren­o­vat­ed, and rebuilt dur­ing the time of Napoleon and lat­er dur­ing the exten­sive ren­o­va­tions of Paris in the mid-19th cen­tu­ry, the site was first “con­se­crat­ed as the ‘Paris Munic­i­pal Ossuary’ on April 7, 1786” and opened to the pub­lic in 1809.

It is a place that reminds us how all con­flicts end. To the “litany of roy­al and impov­er­ished dead from French his­to­ry,” writes Alli­son Meier at the Pub­lic Domain Review, Nadar added in his essay on the Cat­a­combs “the names of rev­o­lu­tion­ary vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors like Max­im­i­lien Robe­spierre and Jean-Paul Marat.” Rumi­na­tions on the uni­ver­sal nature of death may be an odd diver­sion for some, and for oth­ers an urgent reminder to find out what mat­ters to them in life. Learn more about the fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry of the Paris Cat­a­combs here and begin your vir­tu­al vis­it here.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold Félix Nadar’s Pio­neer­ing Pho­tographs of the Paris Cat­a­combs (1861)

Notre Dame Cap­tured in an Ear­ly Pho­to­graph, 1838

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

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

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What Happened to U.S. Cities That Practiced–and Didn’t Practice–Social Distancing During 1918’s “Spanish Flu”

in Current Affairs, Health, History | March 25th, 2020

Amer­i­cans have long been accused of grow­ing social­ly dis­tant, bowl­ing alone, as Robert Put­nam wrote in 2000, or worse becom­ing rad­i­cal­ized as “lone wolves” and iso­lat­ed trolls. But we are see­ing how much we depend on each oth­er as social dis­tanc­ing becomes the painful nor­mal. Not quite quar­an­tine, social dis­tanc­ing involves a semi-vol­un­tary restric­tion of our move­ments. For many peo­ple, this is, as they say, a big ask. But no mat­ter what cer­tain world lead­ers tell us, if at all pos­si­ble, we should stay home, and stay a safe dis­tance away from peo­ple who don’t live with us.

Peo­ple in the U.S. have done this before, of course, just a lit­tle over a hun­dred years ago dur­ing the influen­za epi­dem­ic called the “Span­ish Flu,” though the buzzy term “social dis­tanc­ing” wasn’t used then. As the short VOA News video above explains, dur­ing the spread of the dis­ease, city offi­cials in St. Louis did what cities all over the coun­try are doing now: shut down schools, play­grounds, libraries, church­es, pub­lic offices, and parks and banned gath­er­ings of over 20 peo­ple. Philadel­phia, on the oth­er hand, refused to do the same. The city “allowed a major World War I sup­port parade to take place that attract­ed 20,000 peo­ple.”

The refusal to shut down large gath­er­ings cost thou­sands of lives. “Three days lat­er, every bed in Philadelphia’s 31 hos­pi­tals was filled with sick and dying Span­ish flu patients.” COVID-19 may be a far milder ill­ness in chil­dren and most healthy peo­ple, but this is exact­ly what makes it so insid­i­ous. One per­son can infect dozens before show­ing any symp­toms, if ever. Dur­ing the “Span­ish” flu pan­dem­ic, “the best approach­es were lay­ered,” writes Ger­man Lopez at Vox. “It wasn’t enough to just tell peo­ple to stay home, because they might feel the need to go to school or work, or they could just ignore guid­ance and go to events, bars, church or oth­er big gath­er­ings any­way.”

The com­par­i­son between St. Louis and Philadel­phia stress­es the need for city offi­cials to inter­vene in order for social dis­tanc­ing strate­gies to work. How­ev­er we might feel in ordi­nary cir­cum­stances about gov­ern­ments ban­ning pub­lic gath­er­ings, the glob­al spread of a dead­ly virus seems to war­rant a coor­di­nat­ed pub­lic response that best con­tains the spread. “In prac­ti­cal terms,” Lopez points out, “this meant advis­ing against or pro­hibit­ing just about every aspect of pub­lic life, from schools to restau­rants to enter­tain­ment venues (with some excep­tions for gro­cery stores and drug­stores).”

Lopez cites sev­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies of the 1918 influen­za out­break as evi­dence of the effec­tive­ness of social dis­tanc­ing. For even more data on our cur­rent pan­dem­ic, see Tomas Pueyo’s exten­sive Medi­um essay com­pil­ing data and sta­tis­tics on COVID-19’s spread and pre­ven­tion. And if you’re still hav­ing a lit­tle trou­ble fig­ur­ing out what exact­ly “social dis­tanc­ing” involves, see this excel­lent guide from Asaf Bit­ton, physi­cian, pub­lic health researcher, and direc­tor of the Ari­adne Labs at Brigham and Women’s Hos­pi­tal and the Har­vard T.H. Chan School of Pub­lic Health.

As Bit­ton tells Isaac Chotin­er in a recent New York­er inter­view, “social dis­tanc­ing isn’t some exter­nal con­cept that applies only to work and school. Social dis­tanc­ing is real­ly extreme. It is a con­cept that dis­con­nects us phys­i­cal­ly from each oth­er. It pro­found­ly reori­ents our dai­ly life habits. And it is very hard.” No mat­ter how polar­ized we become, or how glued to our var­i­ous screens, we are “social crea­tures” who need con­nec­tion and com­mu­ni­ty. When we make the tran­si­tion out of life at a dis­tance, maybe the mem­o­ry of that need will help us over­come some of our pre-virus social alien­ation.

Relat­ed Con­tent:   

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Watch “Coro­n­avirus Out­break: What You Need to Know,” and the 24-Lec­ture Course “An Intro­duc­tion to Infec­tious Dis­eases,” Both Free from The Great Cours­es

How to Pro­tect Your­self Against COVID-19/­Coro­n­avirus

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

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When Orson Welles Crossed Paths With Hitler (and Churchill): “He Had No Personality.… I Think There Was Nothing There.”

in History, Television | March 23rd, 2020

Dick Cavett excelled at turn­ing the late-night talk show for­mat into a show­case for gen­uine­ly reveal­ing con­ver­sa­tions (and the occa­sion­al wrestling match). Of the many riv­et­ing guests he had on through­out the 60s and 70s, some appear­ing mul­ti­ple times, few could match Orson Welles for sheer sto­ry­telling prowess. As if in a con­test to out­do him­self, Welles appeared on Cavett’s show three times in 1970, and once more in 1973, as an ami­able, gruff racon­teur who lived a life almost impos­si­ble to believe actu­al­ly hap­pened.

Welles met every­one. He even met Hitler, he says in the clip above from a July 1970 appear­ance on the show, his sec­ond that year. In those ear­ly days, he says, “the Nazis were just a very com­i­cal kind of minor­i­ty par­ty of nuts that nobody took seri­ous­ly at all” except Welles’ Aus­tri­an hik­ing instruc­tor, who brought the leg­endary actor and direc­tor to a Nazi din­ner with the future mass-mur­der­ing dic­ta­tor. Welles was seat­ed next to Hitler, who “made so lit­tle an impres­sion on me that I can’t remem­ber a sec­ond of it. He had no per­son­al­i­ty. He was invis­i­ble…. I think there was noth­ing there.”

By 1938, every­one knew who he was: Hitler was named “man of the year” by Time mag­a­zine, who wrote, “less­er men of the year seemed small indeed beside the Führer”—and Welles was named “Radio’s Man of the Year.” His “famous The War of the Worlds broad­cast, scared few­er peo­ple than Hitler,” the edi­tors wrote, “but more than had ever been fright­ened by radio before, demon­strat­ing that radio can be a tremen­dous force in whip­ping up mass emo­tion.” Welles’ nev­er met Stal­in, he tells Cavett, unprompt­ed, but knew Roo­sevelt “very well.”

In a lat­er appear­ance on the show, in Sep­tem­ber 1970, Welles claimed Roo­sevelt told him no one believed the Pearl Har­bor announce­ment because of the War of the Worlds hoax. Here, in this twelve-minute clip from July, he has many more sto­ries to tell and excel­lent ques­tions from Cavett to answer (if he went back to school, he says, and “real­ly want­ed to get good at a sub­ject,” he would study anthro­pol­o­gy). Towards the end, at 9:00, he talks about anoth­er world leader who did make a dis­tinct impres­sion on him: Win­ston Churchill. “He was quite anoth­er thing,” says Welles. “He had great humor and great irony.”

Welles tells a sto­ry of Churchill com­ing to see him play Oth­el­lo in Lon­don. “I heard a mur­mur­ing in the front row. I thought he was talk­ing to him­self.” Churchill lat­er came to vis­it Welles in his dress­ing room and began to recite all of Othello’s lines from mem­o­ry, “includ­ing the cuts which I had made.” Years lat­er, after the war, when Churchill was out of office, Welles ran into him once more in Venice, and their pri­or asso­ci­a­tion came very much in handy in the financ­ing of his next pic­ture. (He doesn’t name the film, but it might have been The Stranger.)

No one expe­ri­enced the 20th cen­tu­ry quite like Orson Welles, and no one left such a cre­ative lega­cy. Always enter­tain­ing, his Cavett appear­ances are more than oppor­tu­ni­ties for name dropping—they’re tele­vised mem­oirs, in extem­po­ra­ne­ous vignettes, from one of history’s most engag­ing sto­ry­tellers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Show with an Anteater, Then Talks About Dreams & Sur­re­al­ism, the Gold­en Ratio & More (1970)

Orson Welles Trash­es Famous Direc­tors: Alfred Hitch­cock (“Ego­tism and Lazi­ness”), Woody Allen (“His Arro­gance Is Unlim­it­ed”) & More

Alfred Hitch­cock Talks with Dick Cavett About Sab­o­tage, For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent & Lax­a­tives (1972)

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

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Watch AI-Restored Film of Laborers Going Through Life in Victorian England (1901)

in Film, History | March 20th, 2020

In these times, we need to keep at some kind of rou­tine. And so I’d like to doff my cloth worker’s cap to Denis Shiryaev, who once again has returned from the ear­ly days of cin­e­ma with anoth­er AI-restored clip of film from the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.

Ah, but there’s some­thing amiss this time, a glitch in the matrix of expec­ta­tions. Not all sources can be saved by tech­nol­o­gy. Fans of Shiryaev’s crys­tal clear jour­neys back in time (find them in the Relat­eds below) might find the footage rough. It doesn’t make this film any less fas­ci­nat­ing.

Sagar Mitchell and James Keny­on start­ed their film busi­ness to try to copy the suc­cess of sim­i­lar, ear­li­er film­mak­ers like the Lumiere Broth­ers in Paris. Audi­ences would pay to see short films of how peo­ple lived, worked, walked about, and just exist­ed. It was a win­dow into anoth­er real­i­ty, and by pure chance a hun­dred of Mitchell & Keny­on’s films were found pre­served in a Black­burn, UK base­ment near­ly a cen­tu­ry lat­er. This is a com­pi­la­tion of three of them, scored by Guy Jones with mild atmos­pher­ics.

More than any of the oth­er films that Shiryaev has “restored,” Mitchell & Keny­on don’t try to hide their cam­era or pre­tend it’s not there. Instead, these three films make a point of invit­ing their sub­jects to look direct­ly at us, and because of Shiryaev’s work these dozens and dozens of eyes real­ly seem to be watch­ing us from across time. The young boys are cheeky, the young girls shy, the old­er adults bemused or slight­ly irri­tat­ed. There is no par­tic­u­lar focus here–we can choose who we want to fol­low, which indeed was one of the rea­sons for these films pop­u­lar­i­ty. They were designed for repeat vis­its.

There are two par­tic­u­lar points of inter­est that hap­pen very quick­ly. One is at 1:09–the appear­ance of an Afro-Caribbean man as part of the work­force. Peo­ple of African descent had lived in Britain since the 12th cen­tu­ry, but this might be one of the ear­li­est films of such a per­son. The oth­er is lat­er at 4:24, which might be the first film of a bloke giv­ing the cam­era the rude two-fin­gered salute. This moment is why the British Film Insti­tute dubbed Mitchell & Keny­on “the acci­den­tal anthro­pol­o­gists.”

(You might also watch for the fight that breaks out near the end of the film. Real or not? You be the judge.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

Watch Scenes from Czarist Moscow Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (May 1896)

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Isaac Newton Conceived of His Most Groundbreaking Ideas During the Great Plague of 1665

in History, Physics | March 17th, 2020

Whether you’ve vol­un­teered to self-quar­an­tine, or have done so from neces­si­ty, health experts world­wide say home is the best place to be right now to reduce the spread of COVID-19. For some this means lay­offs, or remote assign­ments, or an anx­ious and indef­i­nite stay­ca­tion. For oth­ers it means a loss of safe­ty or resources. No mat­ter how much choice we had in the mat­ter, there are those among us who har­bor ambi­tious fan­tasies of using the time to final­ly fin­ish labors of love, whether they be cro­chet, com­pos­ing sym­phonies, or writ­ing a con­tem­po­rary nov­el about a plague.

Many life­sav­ing dis­cov­er­ies have been made in the wake of epi­demics, and many a nov­el writ­ten, such as Albert Camus’ The Plague, com­posed three years after an out­break of bubon­ic plague in Alge­ria. Offer­ing even more of a chal­lenge to house­bound writ­ers is the exam­ple of Shake­speare, who wrote some of his best works dur­ing out­breaks of plague in Lon­don, when “the­aters were like­ly closed more often than they were open,” as Daniel Pol­lack-Pelzn­er writes at The Atlantic, and when it was alleged that “the cause of plagues are plays.”

You can for­give your­self for tak­ing a few days to orga­nize your clos­ets, or—let’s be real—binge on snacks and Net­flix series. But if you’re still look­ing for a role mod­el of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in a time of quar­an­tine, you couldn’t aim high­er than Isaac New­ton. Dur­ing the years 1665–67, the time of the Great Plague of Lon­don, Newton’s “genius was unleashed,” writes biog­ra­ph­er Philip Steele. “The pre­cious mate­r­i­al that result­ed was a new under­stand­ing of the world.”

In Shakespeare’s case, only decades ear­li­er, the “plagues may have caused plays”—spurring poet­ry, fan­ta­sy, and the epic tragedies of King Lear, Mac­beth, and Antony and Cleopa­tra. New­ton too was appar­ent­ly inspired by cat­a­stro­phe.

These years of Newton’s life are some­times known in Latin as anni mirabilies, mean­ing “mar­velous years.” How­ev­er, they occurred at the same time as two nation­al dis­as­ters. In June 1665, the bubon­ic plague broke out in Lon­don…. As the plague spread out into the coun­try­side, there was pan­ic. Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty was closed. By Octo­ber, 70,000 peo­ple had died in the cap­i­tal alone.

New­ton left Cam­bridge for his home in Wool­sthor­pe. The fol­low­ing year, the Great Fire of Lon­don dev­as­tat­ed the city. As hor­ri­fy­ing as these events were for the thou­sands who lived through them, “some of those dis­placed by the epi­dem­ic,” writes Stephen Porter, “were able to put their enforced break from their nor­mal rou­tines to good effect.” But none more so than New­ton, who “con­duct­ed exper­i­ments refract­ing light through a tri­an­gu­lar prism and evolved the the­o­ry of colours, invent­ed the dif­fer­en­tial and inte­gral cal­cu­lus, and con­ceived of the idea of uni­ver­sal grav­i­ta­tion, which he test­ed by cal­cu­lat­ing the motion of the moon around the earth.”

Right out­side the win­dow of Newton’s Wool­sthor­pe home? “There was an apple tree,” The Wash­ing­ton Post writes. “That apple tree.” The apple-to-the-head ver­sion of the sto­ry is “large­ly apoc­ryphal,” but in his account, Newton’s assis­tant John Con­duitt describes the idea occur­ring while New­ton was “mus­ing in a gar­den” and con­ceived of the falling apple as a mem­o­rable illus­tra­tion. New­ton did not have Net­flix to dis­tract him, nor con­tin­u­ous scrolling through Twit­ter or Face­book to freak him out. It’s also true he prac­ticed “social dis­tanc­ing” most of his life, writ­ing strange apoc­a­lyp­tic proph­e­sies when he wasn’t lay­ing the foun­da­tions for clas­si­cal physics.

Maybe what New­ton shows us is that it takes more than extend­ed time off in a cri­sis to do great work—perhaps it also requires that we have dis­ci­pline in our soli­tude, and an imag­i­na­tion that will not let us rest. Maybe we also need the leisure and the access to take pen­sive strolls around the gar­den, not some­thing essen­tial employ­ees or par­ents of small chil­dren home from school may get to do. But those with more free time in this new age of iso­la­tion might find the changes forced on us by a pan­dem­ic actu­al­ly do inspire the work that mat­ters to them most.

via The Wash­ing­ton Post

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

Isaac Newton’s Recipe for the Myth­i­cal ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ Is Being Dig­i­tized & Put Online (Along with His Oth­er Alche­my Man­u­scripts)

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

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Spanish Flu: A Warning from History

in History | March 12th, 2020

Two years ago his­to­ri­ans marked the 100th anniver­sary of the Span­ish Flu, a world­wide pan­dem­ic that seemed to be dis­ap­pear­ing down the mem­o­ry hole. Not so fast, said his­to­ri­ans, we need to remem­ber the hor­ror. Hap­py belat­ed anniver­sary, said 2020, hold my beer. And so here we are. As I write this, the Pres­i­dent wheezed through an Address to the Nation which calmed no fears and sent Dow futures tum­bling. I scrolled down my news feed to see that Tom Han­ks and his wife both have it. Our god is an amoral one, and its nood­ly appendages touch all.

So let’s put our cur­rent moment into per­spec­tive with this 10+ minute his­to­ry on the Span­ish Flu from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty. Here are the num­bers: it killed 20 mil­lion peo­ple accord­ing to con­tem­po­rary accounts. Lat­er sci­en­tists and his­to­ri­ans revised that num­ber to some­where between 50 to 100 mil­lion.

“This virus killed more peo­ple in the first 25 weeks than HIV/AIDS has killed in 25 years,” says histo­ri­an of med­i­cine Dr. Mary Dob­son. And unlike our cur­rent COVID-19 strain, this strain of flu went after 20 to 40 year olds with a vengeance. The symp­toms were graph­ic and unpleasant–people drown­ing in their own phlegm, blood shoot­ing out of noses and ears, peo­ple drop­ping down dead in the street.

Where did it start? Cer­tain­ly not in Spain–it gained that nick­name because the first cas­es were record­ed in the Span­ish press. One the­o­ry is that it start­ed in Kansas and found its way over­seas, from bar­racks to the front­lines. It might has come from birds or pigs, but sci­en­tists still don’t know how it jumps from species to species and how it quick­ly evolves with­in humans to infect each oth­er.

Right now, it seems like COVID-19 can sub­side if coun­tries can work quick­ly, like in Chi­na. But his­to­ry has a warn­ing too. As Europe and Amer­i­ca cel­e­brat­ed Armistice Day at the end of the war, the flu seemed to be going away too. Instead it came roar­ing back in a sec­ond wave, dead­lier than the first.

Some famous folks who got the virus but sur­vived includ­ed movie stars Lil­lian Gish and Mary Pick­ford, right at the height of their fame; Pres­i­dent Woodrow Wil­son, who was so out of it (though recov­er­ing) that some his­to­ri­ans blame the weak­ness­es in the Treaty of Ver­sailles on him. Artist Edvard Munch con­tract­ed it (which seems fit­ting, con­sid­er­ing his obses­sions) and paint­ed sev­er­al self-por­traits dur­ing his ill­ness. Ray­mond Chan­dler, Walt Dis­ney, Gre­ta Gar­bo, Franz Kaf­ka, Geor­gia O’Keeffe, and Kather­ine Anne Porter all sur­vived.

Oth­ers weren’t so lucky: painter of sen­su­ous, gold leaf paint­ings Gus­tav Klimt died from it, as did poet and pro­to-sur­re­al­ist Guil­laume Apol­li­naire, and artist Egon Schiele. (And so did Don­ald Trump’s grand­pa).

The Span­ish Flu nev­er real­ly went away. There were still cas­es in the ‘50s, but we humans evolved with it and it became a sea­son­al type of flu like many oth­ers. Flu virus­es con­stant­ly evolve and mutate, and that’s why it is very dif­fi­cult to cre­ate vac­cines that can stop them.

If you’ve read this far, one last thing: GO WASH YOUR HANDS AND STOP TOUCHING YOUR FACE!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Gates Describes His Biggest Fear: “I Rate the Chance of a Wide­spread Epi­dem­ic Far Worse Than Ebo­la at Well Over 50 Per­cent” (2015)

Hear the Sounds of World War I: A Gas Attack Record­ed on the Front Line, and the Moment the Armistice End­ed the War

Peter Jackson’s New Film on World War I Fea­tures Incred­i­ble Dig­i­tal­ly-Restored Footage From the Front Lines: Get a Glimpse

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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The History of the Plague: Every Major Epidemic in an Animated Map

in Health, History, Maps | March 12th, 2020

All of us have tried to come to grips with the coro­n­avirus in dif­fer­ent ways. Here on Open Cul­ture we’ve fea­tured online cours­es to get you con­ver­sant in the sci­ence around the pan­dem­ic, but read­ers of this site will also have sought out the most per­ti­nent works of his­to­ry and lit­er­a­ture. That goes espe­cial­ly for those in need of read­ing mate­r­i­al while in states of quar­an­tine or lock­down (self-imposed or oth­er­wise), and any list of rec­om­mend­ed books must include Daniel Defoe’s A Jour­nal of the Plague Year and Albert Camus’ The Plague. (I recent­ly wrote about the expe­ri­ence of read­ing that last in Korea, where I live, for the Los Ange­les Review of Books.) Both fic­tion­al­ize local out­breaks of the bubon­ic plague, but how far and wide did that hor­rif­ic and much-mythol­o­gized dis­ease actu­al­ly spread?

You can see exact­ly how far and wide in the ani­mat­ed his­tor­i­cal map above, cre­at­ed by a Youtu­ber called Emper­or­Tiger­star. It main­ly cov­ers the peri­od of 431 BC to 1353 AD, dur­ing most of which the plague looks to have occurred in Europe, the Mid­dle East, and Africa with some reg­u­lar­i­ty. Up until the 1330s, the out­breaks stay small enough that you may have to view the map in fullscreen mode to ensure that you even see them.

But even the most casu­al stu­dents of his­to­ry know what hap­pened next: the best-known occur­rence of the Black Death, whose peak last­ed from 1347 to 1351 and which claimed some­where between 75 to 200 mil­lion lives (includ­ing rough­ly half of Europe’s entire pop­u­la­tion). Ren­dered, suit­ably, in black, the plague’s spread comes even­tu­al­ly to look on the map like a sea of ink splashed vio­lent­ly across mul­ti­ple con­ti­nents.

The plague hard­ly died with the 1350s, a fact this map acknowl­edges. It would, writes Emper­or­Tiger­star, “take years to go away, and even then there would be local out­breaks in indi­vid­ual cities for cen­turies.” These Black Death after­shocks, “big in their own right,” include the Great Plague of Milan in the 1630s, the Great Plague of Seville in the 1640s, and the Great Plague of Lon­don in the 1660s — the sub­ject of Defoe’s nov­el. When Camus wrote The Plague in 1947, the Alger­ian city of Oran in which he set its sto­ry had expe­ri­enced its last out­break of the dis­ease just three years before (at least the fifth such expe­ri­ence in its his­to­ry). Though har­row­ing sto­ries are even now com­ing out of places like mod­ern-day Milan, the coro­n­avirus has yet to match the grue­some dead­li­ness of the plagues fea­tured in either of these books. But unless we under­stand how epi­demics afflict­ed human­i­ty in the past, we can hard­ly han­dle them prop­er­ly in the present.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Bill Gates Describes His Biggest Fear: “I Rate the Chance of a Wide­spread Epi­dem­ic Far Worse Than Ebo­la at Well Over 50 Per­cent” (2015)

The 1855 Map That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Dis­ease Pre­ven­tion & Data Visu­al­iza­tion: Dis­cov­er John Snow’s Broad Street Pump Map

The Strange Danc­ing Plague of 1518: When Hun­dreds of Peo­ple in France Could Not Stop Danc­ing for Months

200,000 Years of Stag­ger­ing Human Pop­u­la­tion Growth Shown in an Ani­mat­ed Map

Ani­mat­ed Map Shows How the Five Major Reli­gions Spread Across the World (3000 BC – 2000 AD)

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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