Almost all of us have read the sto­ry of Anne Frank, but we sure­ly all pic­ture it quite dif­fer­ent­ly. Most of us have seen the pho­tos used on the var­i­ous cov­ers of The Diary of a Young Girl, and some of us have even gone to Ams­ter­dam and walked through the home in which she wrote it. But now, thanks to the inter­net, we have access to his­tor­i­cal imagery that can help every­one envi­sion the life of Anne Frank a bit more clear­ly.

Many years ago, we fea­tured the only exist­ing film of Frank, a 20-sec­ond clip from July 22, 1941 in which she looks on as a bride and groom pass below her win­dow. Though short, the invalu­able footage breathes a sur­pris­ing amount of life into the cul­tur­al image of per­haps the 20th cen­tu­ry’s most impor­tant diarist.

Even more comes from the 3D tour of her house and hid­ing place more recent­ly made avail­able online. The tour’s inter­face, with which any­one who played 1990s graph­ic adven­ture games like Myst will feel imme­di­ate­ly famil­iar, gives you a first-per­son view behind the book­case which for two years kept the Frank fam­i­ly’s liv­ing quar­ters a secret from Ams­ter­dam’s Nazi occu­piers.

The tour’s cre­ators have loaded the dig­i­tal recre­ation of the house with dif­fer­ent spots that, when clicked, tell in audio of a cer­tain aspect of the Franks’ expe­ri­ence there. The far­ther we get from the Sec­ond World War, the more these events might seem, to stu­dents read­ing about them for the first time, like a piece of capital‑H His­to­ry dis­con­nect­ed from their own expe­ri­ence. But resources like these keep the sto­ry of Anne Frank and its lessons feel­ing as imme­di­ate as they should.

You can enter the tour here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mem­o­ry of the Camps (1985): The Holo­caust Doc­u­men­tary that Trau­ma­tized Alfred Hitch­cock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

Did Hol­ly­wood Movies Stu­dios “Col­lab­o­rate” with Hitler Dur­ing WW II? His­to­ri­an Makes the Case

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

How Alice Herz-Som­mer, the Old­est Holo­caust Sur­vivor, Sur­vived the Hor­rif­ic Ordeal with Music

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Even those who paid next to no atten­tion to their his­to­ry teach­ers know about Magna Car­ta — or at least they know it first came about in 1215. To deliv­er all the oth­er rel­e­vant details, we now have a new teacher in the form of Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones, who, on the occa­sion of this great char­ter’s 800th anniver­sary, pro­vides the nar­ra­tion for these two short ani­ma­tions, “Magna Car­ta: Medieval” and “Magna Car­ta: Lega­cy,” that tell the rest of its sto­ry.

These videos come as part of a whole web site put togeth­er by the British Library meant to help us all “dis­cov­er the his­to­ry and lega­cy of one of the world’s most cel­e­brat­ed doc­u­ments.” To this end, they’ve put up an intro­duc­tion to Magna Car­ta by Claire Breay and Julian Har­ri­son, which sum­ma­rizes both its ori­gins and its rel­e­vance today:

Orig­i­nal­ly issued by King John of Eng­land (r.1199–1216) as a prac­ti­cal solu­tion to the polit­i­cal cri­sis he faced in 1215, Magna Car­ta estab­lished for the first time the prin­ci­ple that every­body, includ­ing the king, was sub­ject to the law.

[ … ]

Three claus­es of the 1225 Magna Car­ta remain on the statute book today. Although most of the claus­es of Magna Car­ta have now been repealed, the many diver­gent uses that have been made of it since the Mid­dle Ages have shaped its mean­ing in the mod­ern era, and it has become a potent, inter­na­tion­al ral­ly­ing cry against the arbi­trary use of pow­er.

These ani­ma­tions, of course, add a great deal of visu­al, nar­ra­tive, and comedic vivid­ness to this impor­tant piece of West­ern polit­i­cal his­to­ry, fol­low­ing it from the reign of King John (“one of the worst kings in his­to­ry”), through civ­il war, the cre­ation of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, strug­gles for vot­ing rights and the free­dom of the press, right up to the writ­ing of the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights, in a sense Magna Car­ta’s mod­ern descen­dant. “Although very few of Magna Car­ta’s orig­i­nal claus­es remain valid in Eng­lish law,” says Jones, “it con­tin­ues to inspire peo­ple world­wide. Not a bad lega­cy for an 800-year-old doc­u­ment.”

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Online Gallery of 30,000 Items from The British Library, Includ­ing Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books And Mozart’s Diary

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

The British Library Puts Online 1,200 Lit­er­ary Trea­sures From Great Roman­tic & Vic­to­ri­an Writ­ers

Free Online Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A few years ago, we fea­tured Rome Reborn, which is essen­tial­ly “a 3D dig­i­tal mod­el of the Eter­nal City at a time when Ancient Rome’s pop­u­la­tion had reached its peak (about one mil­lion) and the first Chris­t­ian church­es were being built.” Rome Reborn offers, declared Matthias Rasch­er, “a tru­ly stun­ning bird’s‑eye view of ancient Rome that makes you feel as if you were actu­al­ly there.” You may also remem­ber our posts on video analy­ses of great works of art by Khan Acad­e­my’s Smarthis­to­ry. Today, the two come togeth­er in the video above, “A Tour Through Ancient Rome in 320 C.E.”

In it, we not only see and move through ancient Rome recon­struct­ed, we have our extend­ed tour guid­ed by renowned “vir­tu­al archae­ol­o­gist” and over­seer of the Rome Reborn project Dr. Bernard Frisch­er, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia. He picks 320 C.E. as the year of the tour, “the peak of Rome’s devel­op­ment, cer­tain­ly in terms of pub­lic archi­tec­ture, for the sim­ple rea­son that the Emper­or at this time was Con­stan­tine the Great.” Short­ly after this year, Con­stan­tine would move the cap­i­tal from Rome to his city, Con­stan­tino­ple.

We hear Frisch­er in dia­logue with Dr. Steven Zuck­er, whose voice you may rec­og­nize from pre­vi­ous Smarthis­to­ry videos. Zuck­er’s ques­tions ensure that, while we take in the spec­ta­cle of Rome’s impres­sive archi­tec­ture (to say noth­ing of its equal­ly impres­sive aque­ducts) as it looked back in 320, we also think about what the real flesh-and-blood peo­ple who once lived there actu­al­ly did there: the jobs they did, the char­i­ot races they watched. “When I was study­ing ancient Rome,” admits Zuck­er, “one of the most dif­fi­cult things for me to under­stand was how all these ancient ruins fit togeth­er.” Now, with Frischer’s exper­tise, he and we can final­ly under­stand how the Forum, the Basil­i­ca, the Col­i­se­um, the Pan­theon and more all fit onto this ear­ly but still majes­tic urban fab­ric.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy

Rome Reborn – An Amaz­ing Dig­i­tal Mod­el of Ancient Rome

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

Vis­it Pom­peii (also Stone­henge & Ver­sailles) with Google Street View

Ani­ma­tion Gives You a Glimpse of What Life Was Like for Teenagers in Ancient Rome

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

Dis­cov­er 100 Great Works of Art with Videos Cre­at­ed by Khan Acad­e­my & Google Art Project

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.