Trivial Pursuit: The Shakespeare Edition Has Just Been Released: Answer 600 Questions Based on the Life & Works of William Shakespeare

in History, Literature, Theatre | April 26th, 2019

“The stan­dard thing to say is that each age makes a Shake­speare in its own image,” wrote The New York­er’s Adam Gop­nik on the the Bard’s 440th birth­day. But over the cen­turies, the bio­graph­i­cal and crit­i­cal por­tray­al of the play­wright of Ham­let, Romeo and Juli­et, Oth­el­lo, and King Lear has remained remark­ably con­sis­tent: “He was a genius at com­e­dy, a free-flow­ing nat­ur­al who would do any­thing for a joke or a pun, and whom life and abil­i­ty bent toward tragedy.” He evolved “a match­less all-sid­ed­ness and neg­a­tive capa­bil­i­ty, which could probe two ideas at once and nev­er quite come down on the ‘side’ of either: he was a man in whom a tem­pera­men­tal timid­i­ty and cau­tion blos­somed artis­ti­cal­ly into the near­est thing we have to uni­ver­sal­i­ty.”

But today, on Shake­speare’s 455th birth­day, we might still won­der how uni­ver­sal his work real­ly is. As luck would have it, the Shake­speare Birth­day Trust has just come up with a kind of test of that propo­si­tion: an all-Shake­speare edi­tion of the pop­u­lar board game Triv­ial Pur­suit.

“Devised by the Shake­speare Birth­place Trust, the inde­pen­dent and self-sus­tain­ing char­i­ty that cares for the world’s great­est Shake­speare her­itage sites in his home town of Strat­ford-upon-Avon, in part­ner­ship with games com­pa­ny, Win­ning Moves,” Triv­ial Pur­suit: The Shake­speare Edi­tion (which you can buy on the Shake­speare Birth­day Trust’s online shop) offers “600 ques­tions across six cat­e­gories — Come­dies, His­to­ries, Tragedies, Char­ac­ters, Biog­ra­phy and Lega­cy,” all “care­ful­ly craft­ed by Shake­speare schol­ars Dr Nick Wal­ton and Dr Anj­na Chouhan.”

One might assume that Shake­speare buffs and schol­ars will dom­i­nate this game. No doubt they will, but per­haps not as often as expect­ed, since its ques­tions give any­one with gen­er­al cul­tur­al aware­ness a fight­ing chance: “As well as ques­tions about Shakespeare’s life and works, there are oth­ers that link him to pop­u­lar cul­ture such as the Har­ry Pot­ter film series, TV shows Dr. Who and Upstart Crow, as well as actors Sir Patrick Stew­art, Sir Lau­rence Olivi­er, and Keanu Reeves, and the Bard’s less­er known influ­ence on the likes of Elvis Pres­ley and even the clas­sic car­toon Pop­eye.” As Wal­ton puts it, “there are all sorts of paths to Shake­speare,” not least because of his work’s still-unchal­lenged place as the most drawn-upon texts, delib­er­ate­ly or inad­ver­tent­ly, in the whole of the Eng­lish lan­guage. As for Shake­speare him­self, he remains “the reign­ing poet of the lan­guage,” in Gop­nik’s words, as well as “the ordi­nary poet of our com­pa­ny” — and now we have a game to play to keep him in our com­pa­ny.

Pick up your copy of the game here.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 55 Hours of Shakespeare’s Plays: The Tragedies, Come­dies & His­to­ries Per­formed by Vanes­sa Red­grave, Sir John Giel­gud, Ralph Fiennes & Many More

30 Days of Shake­speare: One Read­ing of the Bard Per Day, by The New York Pub­lic Library, on the 400th Anniver­sary of His Death

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre

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 Medieval City Plan Generator: A Fun Way to Create Your Own Imaginary Medieval Cities

in History, Technology | April 23rd, 2019

The Medieval City Plan Gen­er­a­tor. It’s the free online tool you’ve always want­ed. It does­n’t cre­ate maps of actu­al medieval cities–only nice look­ing maps of imag­i­nary cities, with the abil­i­ty to add plazas, cas­tles, rivers, city walls, and even shan­ty towns. Enter the Medieval City Plan Gen­er­a­tor here.

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:

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

How the Bril­liant Col­ors of Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made with Alche­my

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

The Aberdeen Bes­tiary, One of the Great Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts, Now Dig­i­tized in High Res­o­lu­tion & Made Avail­able Online

1,600-Year-Old Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script of the Aeneid Dig­i­tized & Put Online by The Vat­i­can

Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Illus­trat­ed in a Remark­able Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­script (c. 1450)

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!

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Here’s What Ancient Dogs Looked Like: A Forensic Reconstruction of a Dog That Lived 4,500 Years Ago

in History, Nature, Science | April 22nd, 2019

Images by His­toric Envi­ron­ment Scot­land

We’re pret­ty sure dogs aren’t obsessed with ances­try, despite the pro­lif­er­a­tion of canine DNA test­ing ser­vices.

That seems to be more of a human thing.

How­ev­er, with very lit­tle dig­ging, near­ly every dog on earth could claim to be descend­ed from a hand­some spec­i­men such as the one above.

This news must be grat­i­fy­ing to all those lap­dogs who fan­cy them­selves to be some­thing more wolfish than their exte­ri­ors sug­gest.

This beast is no 21st-cen­tu­ry pet, but rather, a recon­struc­tion, foren­sic science’s best guess as to what the own­er of a Neolith­ic skull dis­cov­ered dur­ing a 1901 exca­va­tion of the 5,000-year-old Cuween Hill cham­bered cairn on Orkney, Scot­land would have looked like in life.

About the size of a large col­lie, the “Cuween dog” has the face of a Euro­pean grey wolf and the rea­son­able gaze of a fam­i­ly pet.

(Kudos to the project’s orga­niz­ers for resist­ing the urge to bestow a nick­name on their cre­ation, or if they have, to resist shar­ing it pub­licly.)

Whether or not this good boy or girl had a name, it would’ve earned its keep, guard­ing a farm in the tomb’s vicin­i­ty.

Steve Far­rar, Inter­pre­ta­tion Man­ag­er at His­toric Envi­ron­ment Scot­land, the con­ser­va­tion orga­ni­za­tion that com­mis­sioned the recon­struc­tion, believes that the farm­ers’ esteem for their dogs went beyond mere util­i­tar­i­an appre­ci­a­tion:

Maybe dogs were their sym­bol or totem, per­haps they thought of them­selves as the ‘dog peo­ple’.

Radio­car­bon dat­ing of this dog’s skull and 23 oth­ers found on the site point to rit­u­al burial—the ani­mals were placed with­in more than 500 years after the pas­sage to the tomb was built. His­toric Envi­ron­ment Scot­land posits that the canine remains’ place­ment next to those of humans attest to the community’s belief in an after­life for both species.

The mod­el is pre­sum­ably more relat­able than the naked skull, which was scanned by Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty’s Roy­al (Dick) School of Vet­eri­nary Stud­ies, enabling His­toric Envi­ron­ment Scot­land to make the 3D print that foren­sic artist Amy Thorn­ton fleshed out with mus­cle, skin, and hair.

What a human geneal­o­gist wouldn’t give to trace their lin­eage back to 2000 BC, let alone have such a fetch­ing pic­ture.

via Live Sci­ence

Relat­ed Con­tent:

40,000-Year-Old Sym­bols Found in Caves World­wide May Be the Ear­li­est Writ­ten Lan­guage

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Dogs, Inspired by Kei­th Har­ing

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this May for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Paris in Beautiful Color Images from 1890: The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, The Panthéon, and More (1890)

in History, Photography | April 22nd, 2019

The 17th and 18th cen­turies in Eng­land marked a peri­od of osten­ta­tion for a grow­ing, and increas­ing­ly wealthy, landown­ing class. These were also times of inter­nal reli­gious wars between Catholics and Protes­tants, a peri­od that saw the regi­cide of Charles I, the restora­tion of Charles II to the throne, and William and Mary’s “Glo­ri­ous Rev­o­lu­tion,” depos­ing his suc­ces­sor, James II. All of this over the span of 28 years. Anti-Catholic sen­ti­ment ran high among the peo­ple, and it made a par­tic­u­lar­ly con­ve­nient polit­i­cal tool.

But there are two groups you might not have found at anti-Catholic ral­lies dur­ing the most heat­ed of polit­i­cal times, not, at least, dur­ing the final, for­ma­tive years of their edu­ca­tion. Both young scions of gen­try and nobil­i­ty on a gap year, and artists and poets seek­ing out the finest train­ing, took the Euro­pean Grand Tour, for sev­er­al months or sev­er­al years, a sojourn through the most­ly-Catholic con­ti­nent. No clas­si­cal edu­ca­tion was com­plete with­out a vis­it to Flo­rence, Milan, Rome, Vien­na, and, of course, Paris.

Here, gen­tle­man picked up the lat­est fash­ions and dance steps, bud­ding archi­tects stud­ied cathe­drals and Catholic art, and every­one, Catholic and Protes­tant alike, gawked at the tow­er­ing Notre Dame. The impor­tance of the Grand Tour, remarked his­to­ri­an E.P. Thomp­son, “showed that rul­ing class con­trol in the 18th cen­tu­ry was locat­ed pri­mar­i­ly in cul­tur­al hege­mo­ny.” Tour­ing gen­tle­men wrote mem­oirs and guide­books and com­mis­sioned paint­ings. Artists sent back draw­ings and poems, as both sou­venirs and proof of their cul­tur­al mas­tery.

Through these aris­to­crat­ic tourists the rest of the world came to see Europe as a suc­ces­sion of mon­u­ments, like the Greek and Roman cities of antiq­ui­ty. At the same time, an impe­ri­al­ist craze for Neo­clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture began to make Europe’s biggest cities resem­ble clas­si­cal mod­els more and more.

The last half of the 18th cen­tu­ry saw the con­struc­tion of the Pan­théon, La Made­line—the Catholic church first ded­i­cat­ed as a tem­ple to Napoleon—and the Lou­vre, all mon­u­ments to clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture.

The Grand Tour approach to look­ing at cities and the cor­re­spond­ing Neo­clas­si­cal wave of build­ing came togeth­er in the age of pho­tog­ra­phy, when prints of the great places could give their view­ers a sense of hav­ing been there, or at least hit all the major entries in the guide­book. Wan­der­ing gen­try and artists became entre­pre­neurs, using the new tech­nol­o­gy to not only sim­u­late a Grand Tour, but to sell prints for post­cards and the rare pho­to­graph­ic book.

By 1890, when the pho­tos of Paris here were tak­en, such prints were com­mon­place. They rep­re­sent­ed a democ­ra­ti­za­tion, in a way, of Europe’s great land­marks, and of the lit­er­ary and fine arts tech­niques once pri­mar­i­ly used to record them. No doubt some few peo­ple saw the devel­op­ment as a vul­gar one, but art his­to­ri­ans today can be grate­ful that Paris at the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry was so well-doc­u­ment­ed. In this dig­i­tal col­lec­tion from the Library of Con­gress, Beaux-Arts mas­ter­pieces like the Paris Opera House sit beside the Goth­ic Notre Dame and Neo-Clas­si­cal Pan­théon.

It is a shame these pho­tos do not let view­ers go inside to expe­ri­ence first­hand the build­ings that inspired The Phan­tom of the Opera and The Hunch­back of Notre Dame, and in which are buried such lit­er­ary roy­al­ty as Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile Zola, and Vic­tor Hugo him­self. But this rich archive of ear­ly col­or pho­tographs from just before the turn of the cen­tu­ry does capture—for all time, per­haps, now that they are online—the great­est feats of archi­tec­tur­al engi­neer­ing from the old Medieval  order, the Ancien Régime, the Repub­lic, and the Empire.

The col­lec­tion rep­re­sents yet anoth­er way of dig­i­tal­ly pre­serv­ing the mem­o­ries of these grand build­ings should they one day be lost, as Notre Dame near­ly was just a few days ago. It also shows the state of pho­tog­ra­phy at the dawn of the post­card boom, when Pho­tochrom prints like these could be pur­chased cheap­ly and mailed for a few cents or cen­times. See many more of these stun­ning pho­tos at the Library of Con­gress Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rome Comes to Life in Pho­tochrom Col­or Pho­tos Tak­en in 1890: The Colos­se­um, Tre­vi Foun­tain & More

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

Tsarist Rus­sia Comes to Life in Vivid Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Cir­ca 1905–1915

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

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Experience the Majesty of Notre Dame by Getting a Free Download of the Video Game Assassin’s Creed Unity (Free for a Limited Time)

in Games, History | April 20th, 2019

FYI: In the wake of the great Notre Dame fire, the French video game com­pa­ny Ubisoft has decid­ed to make its pop­u­lar video game Assas­s­in’s Creed Uni­ty free through April 25th, allow­ing gamers to “expe­ri­ence the majesty and beau­ty of the cathe­dral.” The goth­ic cathe­dral fig­ures cen­tral­ly in the game. Start your down­load (avail­able only for PC users) here. Once you down­load the game, you’ll own it for­ev­er in your Uplay games library.

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!

via Laugh­ing Squid

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9 Science-Fiction Authors Predict the Future: How Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, William Gibson, Philip K. Dick & More Imagined the World Ahead

in History, Sci Fi | April 18th, 2019

Pressed to give a four-word def­i­n­i­tion of sci­ence fic­tion, one could do worse than “sto­ries about the future.” That stark sim­pli­fi­ca­tion does the com­plex and var­ied genre a dis­ser­vice, as the defend­ers of sci­ence fic­tion against its crit­ics won’t hes­i­tate to claim. And those crit­ics are many, includ­ing most recent­ly the writer Ian McE­wan, despite the fact that his new nov­el Machines Like Me is about the intro­duc­tion of intel­li­gent androids into human soci­ety. Sci-fi fans have tak­en him to task for dis­tanc­ing his lat­est book from a genre he sees as insuf­fi­cient­ly con­cerned with the “human dilem­mas” imag­ined tech­nolo­gies might cause, but he has a point: set in an alter­nate 1982, Machines Like Me isn’t about the future but the past.

Then again, per­haps McE­wan’s nov­el is about the future, and the androids sim­ply haven’t yet arrived on our own time­line — or per­haps, like most endur­ing works of sci­ence fic­tion, it’s ulti­mate­ly about the present moment. The writ­ers in the sci-fi pan­theon all com­bine a height­ened aware­ness of the con­cerns of their own eras with a cer­tain gen­uine pre­science about things to come.

Writ­ing in the ear­ly 1860s, Jules Verne imag­ined a sub­ur­ban­ized 20th cen­tu­ry with gas-pow­ered cars, elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance, fax machines and a pop­u­la­tion at once both high­ly edu­cat­ed and crude­ly enter­tained. Verne also includ­ed a sim­ple com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem that can’t help but remind us of the inter­net we use today — a sys­tem whose promise and per­il Neu­ro­mancer author William Gib­son described on tele­vi­sion more than 130 years lat­er.

In the list below we’ve round­ed up Verne and Gib­son’s pre­dic­tions about the future of tech­nol­o­gy and human­i­ty along with those of sev­en oth­er sci­ence-fic­tion lumi­nar­ies. Despite com­ing from dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions and pos­sess­ing dif­fer­ent sen­si­bil­i­ties, these writ­ers share not just a con­cern with the future but the abil­i­ty to express that con­cern in a way that still inter­ests us, the denizens of that future. Or rather, some­thing like that future: when we hear Aldous Hux­ley pre­dict in 1950 that “dur­ing the next fifty years mankind will face three great prob­lems: the prob­lem of avoid­ing war; the prob­lem of feed­ing and cloth­ing a pop­u­la­tion of two and a quar­ter bil­lions which, by 2000 A.D., will have grown to upward of three bil­lions, and the prob­lem of sup­ply­ing these bil­lions with­out ruin­ing the planet’s irre­place­able resources,” we can agree with the gen­er­al pic­ture even if he low­balled glob­al pop­u­la­tion growth by half.

In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke pre­dict­ed not just the inter­net but 3D print­ers and trained mon­key ser­vants. In 1977, the more dystopi­an-mind­ed J.G. Bal­lard came up with some­thing that sounds an awful lot like mod­ern social media. Philip K. Dick­’s time­line of the years 1983 through 2012 includes Sovi­et satel­lite weapons, the dis­place­ment of oil as an ener­gy source by hydro­gen, and colonies both lunar and Mar­t­ian. Envi­sion­ing the world of 2063, Robert Hein­lein includ­ed inter­plan­e­tary trav­el, the com­plete cur­ing of can­cer, tooth decay, and the com­mon cold, and a per­ma­nent end to hous­ing short­ages. Even Mark Twain, despite not nor­mal­ly being regard­ed as a sci-fi writer, imag­ined a “ ‘lim­it­less-dis­tance’ tele­phone” sys­tem intro­duced and “the dai­ly doings of the globe made vis­i­ble to every­body, and audi­bly dis­cuss­able too, by wit­ness­es sep­a­rat­ed by any num­ber of leagues.”

As much as the hits impress, they tend to be out­num­bered in even sci­ence fic­tion’s great­est minds by the miss­es. But as you’ll find while read­ing through the pre­dic­tions of these nine writ­ers, what sep­a­rates sci­ence fic­tion’s great­est minds from the rest is the abil­i­ty to come up with not just inter­est­ing hits but inter­est­ing miss­es as well. Con­sid­er­ing why they got right what they got right and why they got wrong what they got wrong tells us some­thing about the work­ings of their imag­i­na­tions, but also about the eras they did their imag­in­ing in — and how their times led to our own, the future to which so many of them ded­i­cat­ed so much thought.

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:

Read Hun­dreds of Free Sci-Fi Sto­ries from Asi­mov, Love­craft, Brad­bury, Dick, Clarke & More

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion: 17,500 Entries on All Things Sci-Fi Are Now Free Online

Isaac Asi­mov Recalls the Gold­en Age of Sci­ence Fic­tion (1937–1950)

The Art of Sci-Fi Book Cov­ers: From the Fan­tas­ti­cal 1920s to the Psy­che­del­ic 1960s & Beyond

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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A 16th Century “Database” of Every Book in the World Gets Unearthed: Discover the Libro de los Epítomes Assembled by Christopher Columbus’ Son

in Books, History | April 17th, 2019

The 16th cen­tu­ry was a thrilling time for books, at least for those who could afford them: build­ing a respectable per­son­al library (even if it did­n’t include nov­el­ties like the books that open six dif­fer­ent ways and the wheels that made it pos­si­ble to rotate through many open books at once) took seri­ous resources. Her­nan­do Colón, the ille­git­i­mate son of Christo­pher Colum­bus, seems to have com­mand­ed such resources: as The Guardian’s Ali­son Flood writes, he “made it his life’s work to cre­ate the biggest library the world had ever known in the ear­ly part of the 16th cen­tu­ry. Run­ning to around 15,000 vol­umes, the library was put togeth­er dur­ing Colón’s exten­sive trav­els” and ulti­mate­ly con­tained every­thing from the works of Pla­to to posters pulled from tav­ern walls.

Alas, this ambi­tious library, meant to encom­pass all lan­guages, cul­tures, and forms of writ­ing, is now most­ly lost. “After Colón’s death in 1539, his mas­sive col­lec­tion ulti­mate­ly end­ed up in the Seville Cathe­dral, where neglect, sticky-fin­gered bib­lio­philes, and the occa­sion­al flood reduced the library to just 4,000 vol­umes over the cen­turies,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Jason Daley. But we now know what it con­tained, thanks to the dis­cov­ery just this year of the Libro de los Epí­tomes, or “Book of Epit­o­mes,” the library’s foot-thick cat­a­log that not only lists the vol­umes it con­tained but describes them as well. “Colón employed a team of writ­ers to read every book in the library and dis­till each into a lit­tle sum­ma­ry in Libro de los Epí­tomes,” Flood writes, “rang­ing from a cou­ple of lines long for very short texts to about 30 pages for the com­plete works of Pla­to.”

The Libro de los Epí­tomes turned up ear­li­er this year in anoth­er col­lec­tion, that of an Ice­landic schol­ar by the name of Árni Mag­nús­son who left his books to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Copen­hagen when he died in 1730. Few­er than 30 of the 3,000 texts in Mag­nús­son’s most­ly Ice­landic and oth­er Scan­di­na­vian-lan­guage col­lec­tion (detailed images of which you can see at Type­r­oom) are writ­ten in Span­ish, which per­haps explains why the Libro de los Epí­tomes went over­looked for more than 350 years. Redis­cov­ered, it now offers a wealth of infor­ma­tion on thou­sands and thou­sands of books from five-cen­turies ago, many of which have long since passed out of exis­tence.

Colón’s unique­ly exhaus­tive library cat­a­log opens a win­dow onto not just what 16th-cen­tu­ry Euro­peans were read­ing, but how they were read­ing — and how the very nature of read­ing was evolv­ing. “This was some­one who was, in a way, chang­ing the mod­el of what knowl­edge is,” Daley quotes Colón’s biog­ra­ph­er Edward Wil­son-Lee as observ­ing. “Instead of say­ing ‘knowl­edge is august, author­i­ta­tive things by some ven­er­a­ble old Roman and Greek peo­ple,’ he’s doing it induc­tive­ly: tak­ing every­thing that every­one knows and dis­till­ing it upwards from there.” The com­par­isons to “big data and Wikipedia and crowd­sourced infor­ma­tion” almost make them­selves, as do the ref­er­ences to a cer­tain 20th-cen­tu­ry Span­ish-lan­guage writer with an inter­est in his­to­ry, lan­guage, and knowl­edge as rep­re­sent­ed in books extant and oth­er­wise. If the Libro de los Epí­tomes did­n’t exist, Jorge Luis Borges would have had to invent it.

via the Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rise and Fall of the Great Library of Alexan­dria: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

What Does Jorge Luis Borges’ “Library of Babel” Look Like? An Accu­rate Illus­tra­tion Cre­at­ed with 3D Mod­el­ing Soft­ware

Vis­it The Online Library of Babel: New Web Site Turns Borges’ “Library of Babel” Into a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

A Medieval Book That Opens Six Dif­fer­ent Ways, Reveal­ing Six Dif­fer­ent Books in One

Behold the “Book Wheel”: The Renais­sance Inven­tion Cre­at­ed to Make Books Portable & Help Schol­ars Study (1588)

Watch Umber­to Eco Walk Through His Immense Pri­vate Library: It Goes On, and On, and On!

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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Animations Visualize the Evolution of London and New York: From Their Creation to the Present Day

in Data, History, Maps | April 17th, 2019

If you’ve ever lived in a metrop­o­lis like Lon­don or New York, you know the some­times-dis­ori­ent­ing feel­ing of expe­ri­enc­ing sev­er­al decades—or centuries—at once in the dizzy­ing accre­tions of archi­tec­ture, street, and park designs. Or, at least, if you’ve toured one of those cities with a long­time res­i­dent, you’ve heard them loud­ly com­plain about how every­thing has changed. Whether you study urban life as a his­to­ri­an or a city dweller, you know well that change is con­stant in the sto­ry of big cities.

The ani­ma­tions here illus­trate the point on a grand scale, with a satellite’s‑eye view of New York, above, from 1609 when the city was first built on Lenape land to its cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion of five bor­oughs, dense thick­ets of high-ris­es, a mas­sive, com­plex trans­porta­tion sys­tem, and 8,600,000 res­i­dents. It ends with a quote from E.B. White that sums up the geog­ra­phy and vibran­cy of Man­hat­tan: “The city is like poet­ry: it com­press­es all life, all races, and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accom­pa­ni­ment of inter­nal engines.”

The New York video “ani­mates the devel­op­ment of this city’s street grid and infra­struc­ture sys­tems,” writes its cre­ator Myles Zhang at Here Grows New York City, “using geo-ref­er­enced road net­work data, his­toric maps, and geo­log­i­cal sur­veys” to give us “car­to­graph­ic snap­shots” of every 20–30 years. Anoth­er project, the Lon­don Evo­lu­tion Ani­ma­tion, uses sim­i­lar tech­niques. But, of course, it reach­es much fur­ther back in time, to over 2000 years ago when the Romans built the first road sys­tem across Eng­land and the port of Lon­dini­um.

Cre­at­ed in 2014, the visu­al­iza­tion shows how the city evolved, “from its cre­ation as a Roman city in 43AD to the crowd­ed, chaot­ic megac­i­ty we see today.” As design­ers Flo­ra Roumpani and Pol­ly Hud­son describe at The Guardian, the project drew from sev­er­al sources, includ­ing the Muse­um of Lon­don Archae­ol­o­gy and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cambridge’s engi­neer­ing depart­ment. From these two insti­tu­tions came “datasets from the Roman and Medieval peri­ods as well as the 17th and ear­ly 18th cen­turies,” and “road net­work datasets from the late 18th cen­tu­ry to today.”

Oth­er archives offered infor­ma­tion on the city’s his­tor­i­cal build­ings and mon­u­ments. Cap­tions and a time­line pro­vide a handy guide through its long his­to­ry, as we watch more and more roads and build­ings appear (and dis­ap­pear after the Great Fire). These videos are use­ful ref­er­ences for stu­dents of urban­ism, and they might give some per­spec­tive to the New York­er or Lon­don­er in your life who can’t stop talk­ing about how much the city’s changed. Just imag­ine what these megac­i­ties could look like in anoth­er few hun­dred years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See New York City in the 1930s and Now: A Side-by-Side Com­par­i­son of the Same Streets & Land­marks

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

The Lon­don Time Machine: Inter­ac­tive Map Lets You Com­pare Mod­ern Lon­don, to the Lon­don Short­ly After the Great Fire of 1666

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

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