The Truth Behind Jane Austen’s Fight Club: Female Prize Fights Were a Thing During the 18th Century

in Gender, History, Literature, Sports | February 23rd, 2018

The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. 

The sec­ond rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! 

- Chuck Palah­niuk, Fight Club

Could it be a case of autho­r­i­al over­sight that all sub­se­quent rules are exclu­sive­ly con­cerned with such prac­ti­cal mat­ters as dress and fight dura­tion?

Giv­en the macho rep­u­ta­tion of both the book and the film adap­ta­tion, it seems like the third rule of Fight Club should be: you DO NOT talk about the fact that a fair num­ber of Edwar­dian ladies were badass bare knuck­le fight­ers.

Because doing so might dimin­ish Fight Club’s street cred just a bit­sy…

Film­mak­er (and pop­u­lar audio­book nar­ra­tor) Emi­ly Jan­ice Card has a good deal of fun in Jane Austen’s Fight Club, above, mar­ry­ing Palahniuk’s tropes to the social mores of England’s Regency peri­od.

“No corsets, no hat pins and no cry­ing,” Tyler Dur­den stand-in Lizzie instructs the eager young ladies in her cir­cle. Soon, they’re proud­ly sport­ing bruis­es beneath their bon­nets and stray blood spots on their tea dress­es.

While young women of the fic­tion­al Ben­net sis­ters’ social class refrained from bru­tal fisticuffs, there’s ample evi­dence of female com­bat­ants from the pro­le­tar­i­an ranks. They fought for mon­ey, and occa­sion­al­ly to set­tle a dis­agree­ment, train­ing hard for weeks in advance.

Their bouts drew spec­ta­tors to the amphithe­ater owned by box­ing pro­mot­er James Figg, and the mar­velous­ly named Hock­ley in the Hole, a seedy estab­lish­ment whose oth­er attrac­tions includ­ed bear­bait­ing, bull­bait­ing, and fight­ing with broadswords and cud­gels.

The female fist fight­ers chal­lenged each oth­er with paid notices in local papers, like this one from “cham­pi­oness and ass-dri­ver” Ann Field of Stoke New­ing­ton:

Where­as I, Ann Field, of Stoke New­ing­ton, ass-dri­ver, well known for my abil­i­ties, in box­ing in my own defense wher­ev­er it hap­pened in my way, hav­ing been affront­ed by Mrs. Stokes, styled the Euro­pean Cham­pi­oness, do fair­ly invite her to a tri­al of her best skill in Box­ing for 10 pounds, fair rise and fall; and ques­tion not but to give her such proofs of my judg­ment that shall oblige her to acknowl­edge me Cham­pi­oness of the Stage, to the sat­is­fac­tion of all my friends.

Mrs. Stokes prompt­ly announced her readi­ness to come out of retire­ment:

I, Eliz­a­beth Stokes, of the City of Lon­don, have not  fought in this way since I fought the famous box­ing- woman of Billings­gate 29 min­utes, and gained a com­plete vic­to­ry (which is six years ago); but as the famous Stoke New­ing­ton ass-woman dares me to fight her for the 10 pounds, I do assure her I will not fail meet­ing her for the said sum, and doubt not that the blows which I shall present her with will be more dif­fi­cult for her to digest than any she ever gave her ass­es.

Rather than keep­ing mum on Fight Club, these female pugilists shared Muham­mad Ali’s flare for drum­ming up inter­est with irre­sistibly cocky word­play.

Ref­er­ences to adver­saries fight­ing in “close jack­et, short pet­ti­coats, and hol­land draw­ers … with white stock­ings and pumps” sug­gest that the adver­saries played to the spec­ta­tors’ pruri­ence, though not always. Unlike the 20th-cen­tu­ry stunt of biki­ni clad jel­lo wrestling, sex appeal was not oblig­a­tory.

In a chap­ter devot­ed to pub­lic enter­tain­ments, sports and amuse­ments, Alexan­der Andrews, author of The Eigh­teenth Cen­tu­ry or Illus­tra­tions of the Man­ners and Cus­toms of Our Grand­fa­thers, doc­u­ments how the Mer­ry Wives of Wind­sor, a crew com­prised of “six old women belong­ing to Wind­sor town” took out an ad seek­ing “any six old women in the uni­verse to outscold them.”

On June 22nd, 1768, a woman called Bruis­ing Peg “beat her antag­o­nist in a ter­ri­ble man­ner” to win a new chemise, val­ued at half a guinea.

In 1722, Han­nah Hyfield of New­gate Mar­ket, resolved to give her chal­lenger, Eliz­a­beth Wilkin­son, “more blows than words,” promis­ing to deliv­er “a good thump­ing.” Both par­ties agreed to hold a half-crown in their fists for the dura­tion of the fight. William B. Boul­ton, author of 1901’s Amuse­ments of Old Lon­don, spec­u­lates that this was a prac­ti­cal mea­sure to min­i­mize scratch­ing and hair-pulling.

Time trav­el to an 18th-cen­tu­ry female bare knuck­les fight via Female Sin­gle Com­bat Club’s exhaus­tive cov­er­age,  Sarah Murden’s excel­lent analy­sis of John Collet’s paint­ing, The Female Bruis­ers, above, or Jere­my Freeston’s short doc­u­men­tary avail­able on YouTube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Author Chuck Palah­niuk Read Fight Club 4 Kids

Ste­vie Nicks “Shows Us How to Kick Ass in High-Heeled Boots” in a 1983 Women’s Self Defense Man­u­al

Ernest Hemingway’s Delu­sion­al Adven­tures in Box­ing: “My Writ­ing is Noth­ing, My Box­ing is Every­thing.”

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

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Google Digitizes and Puts Online a Vast Archive of Latino Artworks and Artifacts

in Art, History | February 22nd, 2018

You can’t under­stand human cul­ture in the 21st cen­tu­ry with­out under­stand­ing Amer­i­can cul­ture, and as any­one who’s spent time in most any major U.S. city knows, you cer­tain­ly can’t under­stand Amer­i­can cul­ture with­out under­stand­ing Lati­no cul­ture. I write this while trav­el­ing in Los Ange­les, a city that makes that point with par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive force, but just a few moments with an overview of Lati­no art will under­score the vital­i­ty it has pro­vid­ed Amer­i­ca, and thus the world. You could do lit­tle bet­ter for such an overview than the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute’s brand new Lati­no Cul­tures in the U.S. project, a siz­able free dig­i­tal archive of Lati­no art and arti­facts of Lati­no his­to­ry.

Forbes’ Veron­i­ca Vil­lafañe quotes Google and Youtube Head of His­pan­ic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Jesús Gar­cía as describ­ing the archive as “a labor of love for many Googlers and part­ner insti­tu­tions. It was a project that was more than a year in the mak­ing and took a small army to help dig­i­tize the 2,500 new art­works and curate 69 new exhibits.”

As a whole it offers “over 4,300 archives and art­works — includ­ing Diego Rivera murals — relat­ed to the Lati­no expe­ri­ence in the U.S., mul­ti­me­dia exhibits in Eng­lish and Span­ish and vir­tu­al tours of his­toric sites, as well as pro­files of key Lati­no fig­ures, such as Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huer­ta and Supreme Court Jus­tice Sonia Sotomay­or.”

Google Head of Lati­no Com­mu­ni­ty Engage­ment Lau­ra Mar­quez notes that it also allows you to “vis­it some of the most vibrant neigh­bor­hoods in the U.S. — the homes to and cen­ters of Lati­no cul­ture— by way of his­toric pho­tographs or unmiss­able loca­tions on Google Street View, all from your phone.” You’ll also find “ultra-high res­o­lu­tion images of icon­ic Lati­no murals, such as Diego Rivera’s Detroit Indus­try from the Detroit Insti­tute of Arts.” Using the for­mi­da­ble explorato­ry plat­form of Google Earth, the project has also cre­at­ed a whole Lati­no Murals in the U.S. sec­tion, from River­a’s work in Detroit to José Clemente Oroz­co’s Prometheus in Cal­i­for­nia to the Mia­mi Arti­sans’ Free­dom Tow­er mur­al at Mia­mi Dade Col­lege.

You can also browse the Lati­no Cul­tures in the U.S. Project’s offer­ings by form, includ­ing dance, film, music, and style. And though the designs of Oscar de la Renta, the songs of Glo­ria Este­fan, the paint­ings of Frank Romero (and, of course, lowrid­ers) have drawn the inter­est of many a non-Lati­no toward Lati­no cul­ture, what has done quite so much out­reach as the food? Google’s project even cov­ers that ter­ri­to­ry with con­tent like an edi­to­r­i­al fea­ture on “Fast Food, Tor­tillas, and the Art of Accept­ing Your­self” by Javier Cabral, a food crit­ic based, and well known, in — where else? — Los Ange­les.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bat­tle for LA’s Murals

Charles & Ray Eames’ Short Film on the Mex­i­can Day of the Dead (1957)

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

Google Lets You Take a 360-Degree Panoram­ic Tour of Street Art in Cities Across the World

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

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What the Map of the United States Would Look Like If All 50 States Had Equal Populations

in History, Politics | February 22nd, 2018

In the U.S., recent elec­toral events with which we’re all quite famil­iar have prompt­ed one par­tic­u­lar rad­i­cal re-eval­u­a­tion of the polit­i­cal sys­tem, among many oth­ers: we find every­one from high-pro­file Con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ars to anony­mous com­menters engaged in debates about the neces­si­ty, or demo­c­ra­t­ic legit­i­ma­cy, of the Elec­toral Col­lege. While the debate may not be new, it has reached an urgent inten­si­ty, and hap­pens to occur at a time when every­thing seems up for grabs. When Neil Free­man pro­posed redraw­ing state bor­ders on his pre­scient­ly-named design site Fake is the New Real back in 2012, he cre­at­ed the map above (view it in a larg­er for­mat here) to even­ly dis­trib­ute the country’s pop­u­la­tion. He did so with the dis­claimer, “this is an art project, not a seri­ous pro­pos­al.”

The idea might get a more seri­ous recep­tion these days. Nonethe­less, the iner­tia of tra­di­tion has­n’t less­ened any. Not only is it total­ly unlike­ly that states would ever be redrawn and renamed, but the Elec­toral Col­lege is also a found­ing insti­tu­tion, emerg­ing at the first Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion when James Madi­son first pro­posed it in 1787. Since then, PBS’s Kamala Kelkar wrote on Novem­ber 6th, 2016, “the Elec­toral Col­lege sys­tem has cost four can­di­dates the race after they received the pop­u­lar vote.” Two days lat­er that num­ber went up to five.

Still, whether one deems it nec­es­sary, super­flu­ous, or deeply per­ni­cious, it’s hard­ly con­tro­ver­sial to note that this elect­ing body comes from an era so unlike our own as to be unrec­og­niz­able. A time when, as some founders argued, writes Akhil Reed Amar at Time, “ordi­nary Amer­i­cans across a vast con­ti­nent [lacked] suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion to choose direct­ly and intel­li­gent­ly among lead­ing pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates.” This might still be the case for var­i­ous rea­sons. But putting aside man­u­fac­tured fil­ter bub­bles and vast dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, most Amer­i­cans now have instant access, if they want it, to more infor­ma­tion than they know what to do with.

When we look at the pri­ma­ry sources, we find the actu­al rea­son for the Elec­toral Col­lege: slav­ery. Madi­son, notes Kelkar, “now known as the ‘Father of the Con­sti­tu­tion,’” was a slave­hold­ing Vir­gin­ian who wor­ried vocal­ly that North­ern states would have a decid­ed advan­tage, since upwards of 40% of the pop­u­la­tion in South­ern states con­sist­ed of enslaved peo­ple, who, of course, would not be cast­ing votes. Madison’s propo­si­tion includ­ed the infa­mous and dehu­man­iz­ing “three-fifths com­pro­mise,” which his­to­ri­an Paul Finkel­man argues enabled Thomas Jef­fer­son to win over John Adams in 1800.

Despite this his­to­ry, most peo­ple are taught that the sys­tem arose sole­ly to “bal­ance the inter­ests,” Amar writes, “of high-pop­u­la­tion and low-pop­u­la­tion states.” This sounds like a polit­i­cal­ly neu­tral inten­tion. But Free­man doesn’t ques­tion the legit­i­ma­cy of the Elec­toral Col­lege, call­ing it “a time-hon­ored, log­i­cal sys­tem” that he thinks should be pre­served. And yet, he writes, “it’s obvi­ous that reforms are need­ed.”

“The fun­da­men­tal prob­lem of the elec­toral col­lege,” Free­man writes, “is that the states of the Unit­ed States are too dis­parate in size and influ­ence. The largest state is 66 times as pop­u­lous as the small­est and has 18 times as many elec­toral votes. This increas­es the chance for Elec­toral Col­lege results that don’t match the pop­u­lar vote.” This is hard­ly the only issue. But is Freeman’s pro­pos­al a more sta­ble solu­tion to major flaws in U.S. nation­al elec­tions than sim­ply scrap­ping the Elec­toral Col­lege alto­geth­er? He makes the fol­low­ing argu­ment, in a series of bul­let-point­ed advan­tages. His map:

  • Pre­serves the his­toric struc­ture and func­tion of the Elec­toral Col­lege.
  • Ends the over-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of small states and under-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of large states in pres­i­den­tial vot­ing and in the US Sen­ate by elim­i­nat­ing small and large states.
  • Polit­i­cal bound­aries more close­ly fol­low eco­nom­ic pat­terns, since many states are more cen­tered on one or two metro areas.
  • Ends vary­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the House. Cur­rent­ly, the pop­u­la­tion of House dis­tricts ranges from 528,000 to 924,000. After this reform, every House seat would rep­re­sent dis­tricts of the same size. (Since the cur­rent size of the House isn’t divis­i­ble by 50, the num­bers of seats should be increased to 450 or 500.)
  • States could be redis­trict­ed after each cen­sus — just like House seats are dis­trib­uted now.

Free­man based the map–featuring new states like “Mesabi,” “Ogal­lala,” “Big Thick­et,” “Chi­nati,” and “King”–on data from the 2010 Cen­sus, which, inci­den­tal­ly, actu­al­ly did change the dis­tri­b­u­tion of elec­tors in 2012. The Cen­sus “records a pop­u­la­tion of 308,745,538 for the Unit­ed States,” he notes, “which this map divides into 50 states, each with a pop­u­la­tion of about 6,175,000.”

He does seem to down­play the dis­ad­van­tages, list­ing only two con­cerns about dupli­cat­ed coun­ty names and a “shift in state laws and pro­ce­dures.” Free­man doesn’t men­tion the high like­li­hood of civ­il war or wide­spread social unrest if such a mas­sive redis­tri­b­u­tion of the country’s state pop­u­la­tions were ever attempt­ed. Giv­en the exam­ples of pitched legal bat­tle fought dai­ly over con­gres­sion­al redis­trict­ing of ger­ry­man­dered states, it’s also prob­a­ble noth­ing like this plan would ever make it through the courts. Con­sid­ered as an “art project” or thought exper­i­ment in civics, how­ev­er, who knows? It just might work….

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal Khan & the Mup­pets’ Grover Explain the Elec­toral Col­lege

Why Socrates Hat­ed Democ­ra­cies: An Ani­mat­ed Case for Why Self-Gov­ern­ment Requires Wis­dom & Edu­ca­tion

The “True Size” Maps Shows You the Real Size of Every Coun­try (and Will Change Your Men­tal Pic­ture of the World)

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

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Ditching the Lecture Hall for the Recording Studio: One Historian Is Using the Power of Podcasting to Inspire a Whole New Audience

in History, Podcasts | February 20th, 2018

His­to­ry is dying at U.S. col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties.  Enroll­ment in under­grad­u­ate his­to­ry cours­es is way down since 2010, and the num­ber of his­to­ry degrees award­ed annu­al­ly has like­wise been falling faster and faster.  The most recent data show a 9% nation­wide drop in his­to­ry degrees award­ed in 2014 com­pared to 2013, with an even sharp­er 13% decline at the nation’s top uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Yale, Har­vard, and Stan­ford. (1,2,3,4)  So, is his­to­ry just get­ting old?

On the con­trary.  At least out­side of acad­e­mia, his­to­ry has nev­er been more pop­u­lar.  Cul­tur­al icons includ­ing Barack Oba­ma and Bill Gates have cit­ed his­to­ry books such as Yuval Noah Harar­i’s Sapi­ens: A Brief His­to­ry of Mankind and Steven Pinker’s Enlight­en­ment Now: The Case for Rea­son, Sci­ence, Human­ism and Progress as among their favorite books of all time.  The His­to­ry Chan­nel has enjoyed a resur­gence in view­er­ship since 2013, and judg­ing by the recep­tion of more epic pro­duc­tions, from Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-win­ning movie Lin­coln in 2012 to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash hit musi­cal Hamil­ton in 2015, it’s clear that pub­lic hunger for his­to­ry is only grow­ing.  What, then, accounts for lack­lus­ter lec­ture hall atten­dance?

“Part of the prob­lem is that much of aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ry has become too eso­teric,” says pod­cast­er Brad Har­ris, who holds a PhD from Stan­ford in the his­to­ry of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.  “Course con­tent has been shift­ing away from big ideas like the rise of mod­ern sci­ence and democ­ra­cy to nar­row­er stud­ies of things like the pol­i­tics of emo­tion and cul­tur­al con­struc­tions, which many stu­dents find less rel­e­vant to their inter­ests.”  More­over, Har­ris con­tends that col­lege his­to­ry cours­es have nev­er been more cyn­i­cal.  “Too many pro­fes­sors dwell on what human­i­ty has done wrong–who we’ve oppressed, what we’ve destroyed–and not enough on what human­i­ty has done right–who we’ve lib­er­at­ed, what we’ve invent­ed.  Where’s the inspi­ra­tion?  It’s no won­der peo­ple are ditch­ing his­to­ry lec­tures.”  And now, so has Brad Har­ris.

Since leav­ing acad­e­mia in 2015, Har­ris has been work­ing full-time to offer an attrac­tive alter­na­tive for peo­ple who want to learn his­to­ry, pro­vid­ing con­tent that is as infor­ma­tive as a col­lege lec­ture but as enter­tain­ing as a cin­e­mat­ic pro­duc­tion: a pod­cast called How It Began: A His­to­ry of the Mod­ern World.  Avail­able every­where pod­casts are found, and also from his web­site, howitbegan.com, How It Began inter­prets a broad array of the most impor­tant sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, and cul­tur­al advance­ments in his­to­ry, from dog domes­ti­ca­tion to the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion.  Here is an excerpt from the show’s intro­duc­to­ry episode:

In each episode, we will fly through the cen­turies to fol­low the seeds of an inno­va­tion or dis­cov­ery as it blos­soms into one of the many fruits of moder­ni­ty.  Far from a cat­a­log of dead men and dates, How It Began offers a cin­e­mat­ic-like immer­sion into the sto­ries behind some of our species’ great­est achieve­ments.  The over­all theme?  Cel­e­bra­tion!  We are for­tu­nate to be descend­ed from men and women who dared to dream big and even die for the cause of progress.  Their work is unfin­ished, and some parts of moder­ni­ty are even worse than before.  But most are bet­ter, much bet­ter.  And we have more tools than ever to fix what’s still bro­ken.  

Brad Har­ris hopes his show’s focus on mod­ern progress will cap­ti­vate peo­ple who crave more inspir­ing explo­rations of his­to­ry, and judg­ing by How It Began’s recep­tion so far, he seems well on his way to achiev­ing exact­ly that.  

Episodes are between 30 and 60 min­utes long and released every month or so.  The pod­cast explores a wide range of top­ics, from the rise of mod­ern surgery and com­put­ers to the devel­op­ment of the Eng­lish lan­guage and the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion.  “Wolves to Dogs: The Ori­gin of our Alliance” was one of the most pop­u­lar episodes of Sea­son One.   In a more recent episode, Har­ris reveals the sur­pris­ing cor­re­la­tions between the spread of cof­fee con­sump­tion and the estab­lish­ment of mod­ern insti­tu­tions:

Sources:
1. “New Data Show Large Drop in His­to­ry Bach­e­lor’s Degrees,” Per­spec­tives on His­to­ry, Amer­i­can His­tor­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion, March 2016: https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/march-2016/new-data-show-large-drop-in-history-bachelors-degrees
2. “Sur­vey Finds Few­er Stu­dents Enrolling in Col­lege His­to­ry Cours­es,” Per­spec­tives on His­to­ry, Amer­i­can His­tor­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion, Sep­tem­ber 2016: https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2016/survey-finds-fewer-students-enrolling-in-college-history-courses
3. “The Rise and Decline of His­to­ry Spe­cial­iza­tions over the Past 40 Years,” Per­spec­tives on His­to­ry, Amer­i­can His­tor­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion, Decem­ber 2015: https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2015/the-rise-and-decline-of-history-specializations-over-the-past-40-years
4. “The Decline and Fall of His­to­ry,” Niall Fer­gu­son, pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Coun­cil of Trustees and Alum­ni, Octo­ber 2016: https://www.goacta.org/images/download/Ali-Ferguson-Merrill-Speech.pdf

 

This is a guest post by Mor­gan Stew­art, an edu­ca­tion­al con­sul­tant and founder of With­in Reach Edu­ca­tion­al Con­sul­tants.

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

in Art, Books, Chemistry, History | February 7th, 2018

Today the word “alche­my” seems used pri­mar­i­ly to label a vari­ety of crack­pot pur­suits, with their bogus premis­es and impos­si­ble promis­es. To the extent that alchemists long strove to turn lead mirac­u­lous­ly into gold, that sounds like a fair enough charge, but the field of alche­my as a whole, whose his­to­ry runs from Hel­lenis­tic Egypt to the 18th cen­tu­ry (with a revival in the 19th), chalked up a few last­ing, real­i­ty-based accom­plish­ments as well. Take, for instance, medieval illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts: with­out alche­my, they would­n’t have the vivid and var­ied col­or palettes that con­tin­ue to enrich our own vision of that era.

Many of the illu­mi­na­tors’ most bril­liant pig­ments “did­n’t come straight from nature but were made through alche­my,” says the video from the Get­ty above, pro­duced to accom­pa­ny the muse­um’s exhi­bi­tion “The Alche­my of Col­or in Medieval Man­u­scripts.”

Alchemists “explored how mate­ri­als inter­act­ed and trans­formed,” and “dis­cov­er­ing paint col­ors was a prac­ti­cal out­come.” The col­ors they devel­oped includ­ed “mosa­ic gold,” a fusion of tin and sul­fur; verdi­gris, “made by expos­ing cop­per to fumes of vine­gar, wine, or even urine”; and ver­mil­lion, a mix­ture of sul­fur and mer­cury that made a bril­liant red “asso­ci­at­ed with chem­i­cal change and with alche­my itself.”

The very nature of books, specif­i­cal­ly the fact that they spend most of the time closed, has per­formed a degree of inad­ver­tent preser­va­tion of illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, keep­ing their alchem­i­cal col­ors rel­a­tive­ly bold and deep. (Although, as the Get­ty video notes, some pig­ments such as verdi­gris have a ten­den­cy to eat through the paper — one some­how wants to blame the urine.) Still, that hard­ly means that preser­va­tion­ists have noth­ing to do where illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts are con­cerned: keep­ing the win­dows they pro­vide onto the his­to­ries of art, the book, and human­i­ty clear takes work, some of it based on an ever-improv­ing under­stand­ing of alche­my. Lead may nev­er turn into gold, but these cen­turies-old illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts may sur­vive cen­turies into the future, a fact that seems not entire­ly un-mirac­u­lous itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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)

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

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

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

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NASA Puts 400+ Historic Experimental Flight Videos on YouTube

in History, Science, Technology | February 6th, 2018

“Video,” as we now say on the inter­net, “or it did­n’t hap­pen,” artic­u­lat­ing a prin­ci­ple to which the ever-for­ward-think­ing Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (NASA) has adhered for about 70 years now, start­ing with film in the time before the inven­tion of video itself. Even set­ting aside the won­ders of voy­ag­ing into out­er space, NASA has done a few things right here on Earth that you would­n’t believe unless you saw them with your own eyes. And now you eas­i­ly can, thanks to the agen­cy’s com­mit­ment to mak­ing the fruits of its research avail­able to all on its YouTube Chan­nel. Take for exam­ple this recent­ly-uploaded col­lec­tion of 400 his­toric flight videos.

Here we have just a sam­pling of the hun­dreds of videos avail­able to all: the M2-F1, a pro­to­type wing­less air­craft, towed across a lakebed by a mod­i­fied 1963 Pon­ti­ac Catali­na con­vert­ible; a mid-1960s test of the Lunar Lan­der Research Vehi­cle, also known as the “fly­ing bed­stead,” that will sure­ly remind long-mem­o­ried gamers of their many quar­ters lost to Atar­i’s Lunar Lan­der; a spin tak­en in the Mojave Desert, forty years lat­er, by the Mars Explo­ration Rover; and, most explo­sive­ly of all, a “con­trolled impact demon­stra­tion” of a Boe­ing 720 air­lin­er full of crash-test dum­mies meant to test out a new type of “anti-mist­ing kerosene” as well as a vari­ety of oth­er inno­va­tions designed to increase crash sur­viv­abil­i­ty.

These his­toric test videos were all shot back when the Arm­strong Flight Research Cen­ter (re-named in 2014 for Neil Arm­strong, whose lega­cy stands as a tes­ta­ment to the cumu­la­tive effec­tive­ness of all these NASA tests) was known as the Hugh L. Dry­den Flight Research Cen­ter: you can watch the 418 clips just from that era on this playlist.

Rest assured that the exper­i­men­ta­tion con­tin­ues and that NASA still push­es the bound­aries of avi­a­tion right here on Earth, a project con­tin­u­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed in the chan­nel’s newest videos. As aston­ish­ing as we may find mankind’s for­ays up into the sky and beyond so far, the avi­a­tion engi­neer’s imag­i­na­tion, it seems, has only just got­ten start­ed.

via Pale­o­Fu­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

NASA Releas­es 3 Mil­lion Ther­mal Images of Our Plan­et Earth

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

NASA Releas­es a Mas­sive Online Archive: 140,000 Pho­tos, Videos & Audio Files Free to Search and Down­load

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

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Slow Burn: An Eight-Episode Podcast Miniseries on the Unfolding of the Watergate Scandal

in History, Podcasts | February 5th, 2018

A crime was com­mit­ted dur­ing a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Then came a cov­er up and oth­er skull­dug­gery. Final­ly, there was a res­ig­na­tion. Nope, we’re not talk­ing about the tra­jec­to­ry of the Mueller inves­ti­ga­tion. We’re talk­ing about Watergate–the sub­ject of Slow Burn, a new, eight-episode pod­cast minis­eries from Slate.

Avail­able on iTunes, the web, and oth­er pod­cast play­ers, Slow Burn zeroes in on the ques­tions: “What did it feel like to live through the scan­dal that brought down a pres­i­dent? What was that strange, wild ride like?” Below, you can read the intro­duc­to­ry words from the pod­cast’s host, Leon Ney­fakh. And then stream the first episode called “Martha,” as in Martha Mitchell, wife of John Mitchell, the Attor­ney Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States under Pres­i­dent Nixon.

One day at the end of April 1973, Richard Nixon stood on a porch at Camp David and told John Ehrlich­man he want­ed to die. Nixon had sum­moned Ehrlich­man, his long-serv­ing domes­tic pol­i­cy advis­er, to tell him he was being fired from the White House.

Nixon had been dread­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, but he knew it had to be done. The Depart­ment of Jus­tice had recent­ly informed the pres­i­dent that Ehrlich­man could be fac­ing crim­i­nal charges. Nixon felt the walls clos­ing in.

Lat­er, Nixon would tell the jour­nal­ist David Frost how he gave his old friend the news: “I said, ‘You know, John, when I went to bed last night … I hoped—I almost prayed—I wouldn’t wake up this morn­ing.’ ” Accord­ing to Ehrlich­man, the pres­i­dent then began to sob. It would be 15 months before he resigned from office.

So, that’s how Richard Nixon felt as the Water­gate sto­ry went from a curi­ous bur­glary to a nation­al obses­sion. What was it like for every­one else? That’s the ani­mat­ing ques­tion behind my new eight-episode pod­cast series for Slate, Slow Burn.

Episode 1: Martha

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Werner’s Nomenclature of Colour, the 19th-Century “Color Dictionary” Used by Charles Darwin (1814)

in Art, Books, History, Science | February 5th, 2018

Before Pan­tone invent­ed “a uni­ver­sal col­or lan­guage” or big box hard­ware stores arose with pro­pri­etary dis­plays of col­or­ful­ly-named paints—over a cen­tu­ry before, in fact—a Ger­man min­er­al­o­gist named Abra­ham Got­t­lob Wern­er invent­ed a col­or sys­tem, as detailed and thor­ough a guide as an artist might need. But rather than only cater to the needs of painters, design­ers, and man­u­fac­tur­ers, Werner’s Nomen­cla­ture of Colours also served the needs of sci­en­tists. “Charles Dar­win even used the guide,” writes This is Colos­sal, “dur­ing his voy­age to the Madeira, Canary, and Cape Verde islands on the H.M.S. Bea­gle.”

Werner’s is one of many such “col­or dic­tio­nar­ies” from the 19th cen­tu­ry, “designed to give peo­ple around the world a com­mon vocab­u­lary,” writes Daniel Lewis at Smith­son­ian, “to describe the col­ors of every­thing from rocks and flow­ers to stars, birds, and postage stamps.” These guides appealed espe­cial­ly to nat­u­ral­ists.

Indeed, the book began—before Scot­tish painter Patrick Syme updat­ed the sys­tem in Eng­lish, with swatch­es of exam­ple colors—as a naturalist’s guide to the col­ors of the world, nam­ing them accord­ing to Werner’s poet­ic fan­cy. “With­out an image for ref­er­ence,” the orig­i­nal text “pro­vid­ed immense hand­writ­ten detail describ­ing where each spe­cif­ic shade could be found on an ani­mal, plant, or min­er­al. Many of Wern­er’s unique col­or names still exist in com­mon usage, though they’ve detached from his scheme ages ago.

Pruss­ian Blue, for instance, which can be locat­ed “in the beau­ty spot of a mallard’s wing, on the sta­mi­na of a bluish-pur­ple anemone, or in a piece of blue cop­per ore.” Oth­er exam­ples, notes Fast Company’s Kelsey Camp­bell-Dol­laghan, include “’Skimmed Milk White,’” or no. 7… found in ‘the white of the human eye’ or in opals,” and no. 67, or “’Wax Yel­low’… found in the lar­vae of large Water Bee­tles or the green­ish parts of a Non­pareil Apple.” It would have been Syme’s 1814 guide that Dar­win con­sult­ed, as did sci­en­tists, nat­u­ral­ists, and artists for two cen­turies after­ward, either as a tax­o­nom­ic col­or ref­er­ence or as an admirable his­toric artifact—a painstak­ing descrip­tion of the col­ors of the world, or those encoun­tered by two 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry Euro­pean observers, in an era before pho­to­graph­ic repro­duc­tion cre­at­ed its own set of stan­dards.

The book is now being repub­lished in an afford­able pock­et-size edi­tion by Smith­son­ian Books, who note that the Edin­burgh flower painter Syme, in his illus­tra­tions of Werner’s nomen­cla­ture, “used the actu­al min­er­als described by Wern­er to cre­ate the col­or charts.” This degree of fideli­ty to the source extends to Syme’s use of tables to neat­ly orga­nize Werner’s pre­cise descrip­tions. Next to each color’s num­ber, name, and swatch, are columns with its loca­tion on var­i­ous ani­mals, veg­eta­bles and min­er­als. “Orpi­ment Orange,” named after a min­er­al, though none is list­ed in its col­umn, will be found, Wern­er tells us, on the “neck ruff of the gold­en pheas­ant” or “bel­ly of the warty newt.” Should you have trou­ble track­ing these down, sure­ly you’ve got some “Indi­an cress” around?

While its ref­er­ences may not be those your typ­i­cal indus­tri­al design­er or graph­ic artist is like­ly to find help­ful, Werner’s Nomen­cla­ture of Colours will still find a trea­sured place in the col­lec­tions of design­ers and visu­al artists of all kinds, as well as his­to­ri­ans, writ­ers, poets, and the sci­en­tif­ic inher­i­tors of 19th cen­tu­ry nat­u­ral­ism, as a “charm­ing arti­fact from the gold­en age of nat­ur­al his­to­ry and glob­al explo­ration.” Flip through a scanned ver­sion of the 1821 sec­ond edi­tion just above, includ­ing Wern­er’s intro­duc­tion and care­ful lists of col­or prop­er­ties, or read it in a larg­er for­mat at the Inter­net Archive. The new edi­tion is now avail­able for pur­chase here.

via This Is Colos­sal/Fast Co

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Vibrant Col­or Wheels Designed by Goethe, New­ton & Oth­er The­o­rists of Col­or (1665–1810)

Goethe’s Col­or­ful & Abstract Illus­tra­tions for His 1810 Trea­tise, The­o­ry of Col­ors: Scans of the First Edi­tion

How Tech­ni­col­or Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Cin­e­ma with Sur­re­al, Elec­tric Col­ors & Changed How We See Our World

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

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