New York Public Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Download and Use

in History, Maps, Technology | March 31st, 2014

1863CentralPark

When I was a kid, my father brought home from I know not where an enor­mous col­lec­tion of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic mag­a­zines span­ning the years 1917 to 1985. I found, tucked in almost every issue, one of the magazine’s gor­geous maps—of the Moon, St. Peters­burg, the Himalayas, East­ern Europe’s ever-shift­ing bound­aries. I became a car­tog­ra­phy enthu­si­ast and geo­graph­i­cal sponge, por­ing over them for years just for the sheer enjoy­ment of it, a plea­sure that remains with me today. Whether you’re like me and sim­ply love the imag­i­na­tive exer­cise of trac­ing a map’s lines and con­tours and absorb­ing infor­ma­tion, or you love to do that and you get paid for it, you’ll find innu­mer­able ways to spend your time on the new Open Access Maps project at the New York Pub­lic Library. The NYPL announces the release with the expla­na­tion below:

The Lionel Pin­cus & Princess Firyal Map Divi­sion is very proud to announce the release of more than 20,000 car­to­graph­ic works as high res­o­lu­tion down­loads. We believe these maps have no known US copy­right restric­tions.* To the extent that some juris­dic­tions grant NYPL an addi­tion­al copy­right in the dig­i­tal repro­duc­tions of these maps, NYPL is dis­trib­ut­ing these images under a Cre­ative Com­mons CC0 1.0 Uni­ver­sal Pub­lic Domain Ded­i­ca­tion. The maps can be viewed through the New York Pub­lic Library’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions page, and down­loaded (!), through the Map Warp­er.

What does this mean? Sim­ply put, “it means you can have the maps, all of them if you want, for free, in high res­o­lu­tion.” Maps like that above, of New York’s Cen­tral Park, issued in 1863, ten years before Fred­er­ick Law Olm­st­ed and Calvert Vaux com­plet­ed their his­toric re-design.

Can you—as I did with my neat­ly fold­ed, yel­low­ing archive—have all the maps in full-col­or print? Well, no, unless you’re pre­pared to bear the cost in ink and paper and have some spe­cial­ized print­ing equip­ment that can ren­der each map in its orig­i­nal dimen­sions. But you can access some­thing worlds away from what I could have imagined—a dig­i­tal enhance­ment tech­nol­o­gy called “warp­ing,” also known as “geo­rec­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

nypl map

This, explains the NYPL, “is the process where dig­i­tal images of maps are stretched, plac­ing the maps them­selves into their geo­graph­ic con­text, ren­dered either on the web­site or with tools such as Google Earth.” For exam­ple, below see a “warp­ing” of the 1916 Redraft of the 1660 “Castel­lo Plan” for then-New Ams­ter­dam over a cur­rent-day Google Earth image of low­er Man­hat­tan (and note how much the island has been expand­ed past its 17th cen­tu­ry shores). The “warp­ing” tech­nol­o­gy is open access, mean­ing that “any­body with a com­put­er can cre­ate an account, log in, and begin warp­ing and trac­ing maps.” User con­tri­bu­tions remain, “a la Wikipedia,” and add “one more piece to this new his­tor­i­cal geo­graph­ic data mod­el.”

Castello_Plan_Warp

The “warp­er” is a spe­cial fea­ture that helps place his­tor­i­cal maps in a mod­ern visu­al field, but it in no way ruins the enjoy­ment of those maps as archival pieces or art objects. You can see car­tog­ra­ph­er John Wol­cott Adams orig­i­nal 1916 Castel­lo Plan redraft below, and vis­it NYPL’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions for a high res­o­lu­tion image, ful­ly zoomable and, yes, print­able. For more on the incred­i­ble warp­ing tech­nol­o­gy NYPL makes avail­able to us, see this extend­ed blog post, “Unbind­ing the Atlas: Work­ing with Dig­i­tal Maps.” Over ten thou­sand of the collection’s maps are of New York and New Jer­sey, dat­ing from 1852 to 1922, includ­ing prop­er­ty, zon­ing, and topo­graph­ic maps. In addi­tion, over one thou­sand of the maps depict Mid-Atlantic cities from the 16th to the 19th cen­turies, and over 700 are topo­graph­ic maps of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire between 1877 and 1914. That should be enough to keep any ama­teur or pro­fes­sion­al map-lover busy for a good long while. Start dig­ging into the maps here.

1660CastelloPlan

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Down­load Over 250 Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

14,000 Free Images from the French Rev­o­lu­tion Now Avail­able Online

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

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Thomas Edison & His Trusty Kinetoscope Create the First Movie Filmed In The US (c. 1889)

in Film, History | March 25th, 2014

Thomas Edi­son is undoubt­ed­ly America’s best-known inven­tor. Nick­named “The Wiz­ard of Men­lo Park” for his pro­lif­ic cre­ativ­i­ty, Edi­son amassed a whop­ping 1093 patents through­out his life­time. His most impor­tant inven­tions, such as the incan­des­cent light bulb and the phono­graph, were not mere­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary in and of them­selves: they led direct­ly to the estab­lish­ment of vast indus­tries, such as pow­er util­i­ties and the music busi­ness. It is one of his less­er known inven­tions, how­ev­er, that led to the pro­duc­tion of the first film shot in the Unit­ed States, which you can view above.

The film, called Mon­keyshines, No. 1, was record­ed at some point between June 1889 and Novem­ber 1890. Its cre­ation is the work of William Dick­son, an employ­ee of Edison’s, who had been in charge of devel­op­ing the inventor’s idea for a new film-view­ing device. The machine that Edi­son had con­ceived and Dick­son engi­neered was the Kine­to­scope: a large box that housed a sys­tem that quick­ly moved a strip of film over a light source. Users watched the film whiz by from a hole in the top of the box, and by using sequen­tial images, like those in a flip-book, the Kine­to­scope gave the impres­sion of move­ment.

kinematografidisona

In the film, which Dick­son and anoth­er Edi­son employ­ee named William Heise cre­at­ed, a blur­ry out­line of an Edi­son labs employ­ee moves about, seem­ing­ly danc­ing. The above clip con­tains both Mon­keyshines, No. 1, and its sequel, appar­ent­ly filmed to con­duct fur­ther equip­ment tests, known as Mon­keyshines, No. 2. HD video, this is not. Despite hav­ing the hon­or of being the first films to be shot in the US, the Mon­keyshines series has gar­nered an unen­thu­si­as­tic reac­tion from present-day crit­ics: the orig­i­nal received a rat­ing of 5.5/10 stars at IMDB. The sequel? A 5.4.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thomas Edi­son and Niko­la Tes­la Face Off in “Epic Rap Bat­tles of His­to­ry”

Magi­cian Mar­co Tem­pest Daz­zles a TED Audi­ence with “The Elec­tric Rise and Fall of Niko­la Tes­la”

A Brief, Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Thomas Edi­son (and Niko­la Tes­la)

Thomas Edi­son Recites “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in Ear­ly Voice Record­ing

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Titanic: The Nazis Create a Mega-Budget Propaganda Film About the Ill-Fated Ship … and Then Banned It (1943)

in Film, History | March 24th, 2014

James Cameron’s Titan­ic appeared in 1997 as the most expen­sive film ever made. Wern­er Klin­gler and Her­bert Selpin’s Titan­ic appeared in 1943 as the most expen­sive Ger­man film ever made. And the two share even more than their bud­gets’ record-break­ing sta­tus, their famous­ly “unsink­able” sub­ject, and their title in com­mon: both endured trou­bled pro­duc­tions, both fea­ture a late scene where their male hero con­vinces his lover to just get on a lifeboat already, and both set out to make strong state­ments indeed. The lat­er, Amer­i­can Titan­ic has much to say about the cin­e­mat­ic tri­umph of late-20th-cen­tu­ry visu­al effects, where­as the ear­li­er, Ger­man Titan­ic takes a more neg­a­tive tack, mount­ing an indict­ment of the sup­pos­ed­ly sav­age avarice and thor­ough cor­rup­tion of that coun­try’s bit­ter wartime ene­my, Great Britain. In its ill-fat­ed tit­u­lar ship, the huge-scale pro­pa­gan­da film found what must have seemed like the per­fect­ly opu­lent illus­tra­tion of its argu­ment.

But things worked out no bet­ter for this Titan­ic than for the actu­al Titan­ic — and indeed, for Ger­many in the Sec­ond World War. “Nev­er shown in Nazi Ger­many, its direc­tor was found hanged  by his own braces and is sus­pect­ed of hav­ing been mur­dered by the Gestapo,” writes David Ger­rie in the Dai­ly Mail. “And the ship that took the role of the Titan­ic, the Cap Arcona, was lat­er sunk with 5,000 con­cen­tra­tion camp pris­on­ers on board, a vast­ly greater loss of life than the 1,517 who died in the Titan­ic dis­as­ter.” For all the time, ener­gy, and mon­ey the regime piled into it, the film turned out “far from the mas­ter­piece [Nazi Min­is­ter of Pro­pa­gan­da Joseph] Goebbels had wait­ed two years to see. Fear­ing Nazi cit­i­zens under attack by Allied bombers would be fright­ened by the sink­ing, he banned its release in Ger­many.” Just as Cameron’s Titan­ic shocked the indus­try-watch­ers who had solemn­ly pre­dict­ed a megaflop by cre­at­ing one of the most suc­cess­ful movies of all time, Klin­gler and Selpin’s Titan­ic must have giv­en the Nazis quite a start when it emerged as a tes­ta­ment not to Britain’s hubris, but, inad­ver­tent­ly, to their own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Lam­beth Walk—Nazi Style: The Ear­ly Pro­pa­gan­da Mash Up That Enraged Joseph Goebbels

The Nazi’s Philis­tine Grudge Against Abstract Art and The “Degen­er­ate Art Exhi­bi­tion” of 1937

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

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

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Electric Photo of Nikola Tesla, 1899

in History | March 21st, 2014

tesla lab

Quite the shot: Niko­la Tes­la appears in a mul­ti­ple-expo­sure pho­to in 1899, while a Tes­la coil dis­charges mil­lions of volts.

Want to see more old sparks fly­ing? Here we have an image of Mark Twain, the lit­er­ary giant, tin­ker­ing in More Tes­la’s lab­o­ra­to­ry in 1894.

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Plays With Elec­tric­i­ty in Niko­la Tesla’s Lab (Pho­to, 1894)

Thomas Edi­son and Niko­la Tes­la Face Off in “Epic Rap Bat­tles of His­to­ry”

“Sweet Home Alaba­ma” Played on Tes­la Coils

How the Tes­la Mod­el S is Made: A Behind-the-Scenes Tour

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Aleister Crowley: The Wickedest Man in the World Documents the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Mountaineer

in History, Literature, Religion | March 20th, 2014

Per­haps no one sin­gle per­son has had such wide­spread influ­ence on the coun­ter­cul­tur­al turns of the 20th cen­tu­ry as Cam­bridge-edu­cat­ed occultist and inven­tor of the reli­gion of Thele­ma, Aleis­ter Crow­ley. And accord­ing to Crow­ley, he isn’t fin­ished yet. “1000 years from now,” Crow­ley once wrote, “the world will be sit­ting in the sun­set of Crowlian­i­ty.” The self-aggran­diz­ing Crow­ley called him­self “the Great Beast 666” and many oth­er tongue-in-cheek apoc­a­lyp­tic titles. The British press dubbed him “The Wickedest Man in the World,” also the title of the above doc­u­men­tary, one of a four-part BBC 4 series on famous­ly sin­is­ter fig­ures called “Mas­ters of Dark­ness.” Crow­ley is per­haps most famous for his dic­tum “Do what thou wilt,” which, tak­en out of its con­text, seems to be a phi­los­o­phy of absolute, unfet­tered lib­er­tin­ism.

It’s no sur­prise that the par­tic­u­lar treat­ment of Crowley’s life above adopts the tabloid descrip­tion of the magi­cian. The documentary—with its omi­nous music and visu­al effects rem­i­nis­cent of Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ry’s jar­ring open­ing cred­its—takes the sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic tone of true crime TV mixed with the dim light­ing and hand-held cam­er­a­work of para­nor­mal, post-Blair Witch enter­tain­ments. And it may indeed take some lib­er­ties with Crow­ley’s biog­ra­phy. When we’re told by the voice-over that Crow­ley was a “black magi­cian, drug fiend, sex addict, and trai­tor to the British peo­ple,” we are not dis­posed to meet a very lik­able char­ac­ter. Crow­ley would not wish to be remem­bered as one any­way. But despite his pro­nounced dis­dain for all social con­ven­tions and pieties, his sto­ry is much more com­pli­cat­ed and inter­est­ing than the card­board cutout vil­lain this descrip­tion sug­gests.

Born Edward Alexan­der Crow­ley in 1875 to wealthy British Ply­mouth Brethren brew­ers, Crow­ley very ear­ly set about replac­ing the reli­gion of his fam­i­ly and his cul­ture with a vari­ety of extreme endeav­ors, from moun­taineer­ing to sex mag­ic and all man­ner of prac­tices derived from a syn­the­sis of East­ern reli­gions and ancient and mod­ern demonolo­gy. The results were mixed. All but the most adept find most of his occult writ­ing incom­pre­hen­si­ble (though it’s laced with wit and some pro­fun­di­ty). His raunchy, hys­ter­i­cal poet­ry is fre­quent­ly amus­ing. Most peo­ple found his over­bear­ing per­son­al­i­ty unbear­able, and he squan­dered his wealth and lived much of life pen­ni­less. But his biog­ra­phy is inar­guably fascinating—creepy but also hero­ic in a Faus­t­ian way—and his pres­ence is near­ly every­where inescapable. Crow­ley trav­eled the world con­duct­ing mag­i­cal rit­u­als, writ­ing text­books on mag­ic (or “Mag­ick” in his par­lance), found­ing eso­teric orders, and inter­act­ing with some of the most sig­nif­i­cant artists and occult thinkers of his time.

Aleister_Crowley_1902_K2

As a moun­taineer, Crow­ley co-lead the first British expe­di­tion to K2 in 1902 (the pho­to above shows him dur­ing the trek). As a poet, he pub­lished some of the most scan­dalous verse yet print­ed, under the name George Archibald Bish­op in 1898. Dur­ing his brief sojourn in the occult soci­ety Her­met­ic Order of the Gold­en Dawn, he exert­ed some influ­ence on William But­ler Yeats, if only through their mutu­al antipa­thy (Crow­ley may have inspired the “rough beast” of Yeats’ “The Sec­ond Com­ing”). He’s indi­rect­ly con­nect­ed to the devel­op­ment of the jet propul­sion system—through his Amer­i­can pro­tégée, rock­et sci­en­tist Jack Par­sons—and of Sci­en­tol­ogy, through Par­sons’ part­ner in mag­ic (and lat­er betray­er), L. Ron Hub­bard.

Though accused of betray­ing the British dur­ing the First World War, it appears he actu­al­ly worked as a dou­ble agent, and he had many ties in the British intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. Crow­ley rubbed elbows with Aldous Hux­ley, Alfred Adler, Roald Dahl, and Ian Flem­ing. After his death in 1947, his life and thought played a role in the work of William S. Bur­roughs, The Bea­t­les, Led Zep­pelin, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Ozzy Osbourne, Robert Anton Wil­son, Tim­o­thy Leary, Gen­e­sis P‑Orridge, and count­less oth­ers. Crow­ley pops up in Hem­ing­way’s A Mov­able Feast and he has inspired a num­ber of lit­er­ary char­ac­ters, in for exam­ple Som­er­set Maugham’s The Magi­cian and Christo­pher Isherwood’s A Vis­it to Anselm Oakes.

472px-Aleister_Crowley,_Magus

So who was Aleis­ter Crow­ley? A sex­u­al­ly lib­er­at­ed genius, a spoiled, ego­ma­ni­a­cal dilet­tante, a campy char­la­tan, a skep­ti­cal trick­ster, a cru­el and abu­sive manip­u­la­tor, a racist misog­y­nist, a Niet­zschean super­man and “icon of rebel­lion” as the nar­ra­tor of his sto­ry above calls him? Some part of all these, per­haps. A 1915 Van­i­ty Fair pro­file put it well: “a leg­end has been built up around his name. He is a myth. No oth­er man has so many strange tales told of him.”

As with all such noto­ri­ous, larg­er-than-life fig­ures, who Crow­ley was depends on whom you ask. The evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians I was raised among whis­pered his name in hor­ror or pro­nounced it with a sneer as a staunch and par­tic­u­lar­ly insid­i­ous ene­my of the faith. Var­i­ous New Age groups utter his name in rev­er­ence or men­tion it as a mat­ter of course, as physi­cists ref­er­ence New­ton or Ein­stein. In some coun­ter­cul­tur­al cir­cles, Crow­ley is a hip sig­ni­fi­er, like Che Gue­vara, but not much more. Dig into almost any mod­ern occult or neo-pagan sys­tem of thought, from Theos­o­phy to Wic­ca, and you’ll find Crowley’s name and ideas. Whether one’s inter­est in “The Great Beast” is of the pruri­ent vari­ety, as in the inves­ti­ga­tion above, or of a more seri­ous or aca­d­e­m­ic bent, his lega­cy offers a boun­ti­ful plen­ty of bizarre, repul­sive, intrigu­ing, and com­plete­ly absurd vignettes that can beg­gar belief and com­pel one to learn more about the enig­mat­ic, pan-sex­u­al black magi­cian and self-appoint­ed Antichrist.

The Wickedest Man in the World will be added to our col­lec­tion of 200 Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion of 635 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare 1930s Audio: W.B. Yeats Reads Four of His Poems

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

How to Oper­ate Your Brain: A User Man­u­al by Tim­o­thy Leary (1993)

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

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Explosive Cats Imagined in a Strange, 16th Century Military Manual

in History | March 7th, 2014

catpigeon

Paw prints and feline urine stains on a medieval scribe’s man­u­script, per­haps they weren’t entire­ly out of the ordi­nary in the 15th cen­tu­ry. But cats strapped to mini-pow­der kegs, bound­ing off to burn down a town — now that’s pret­ty unusu­al.

The incen­di­ary feline fea­tured above (and else­where on this page) comes from a dig­i­tized ver­sion of an ear­ly 16th cen­tu­ry mil­i­tary man­u­al writ­ten by Franz Helm. An artillery mas­ter, Helm wrote about a broad and imag­i­na­tive set of destruc­tive ideas for siege war­fare. Although my Ger­man is some­what rusty, I got the sense that he was awful­ly fond of explod­ing sacks, bar­rels, and var­i­ous oth­er recep­ta­cles, and even­tu­al­ly decid­ed to com­bine these ideas with an unwit­ting ani­mal deliv­ery sys­tem. These ani­mals, accord­ing to Helm’s guide, would allow a com­man­der to “set fire to a cas­tle or city which you can’t get at oth­er­wise.”

runningcat1

The text was orig­i­nal­ly dig­i­tized by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, and a UPenn his­to­ri­an named Mitch Fraas decid­ed to take a clos­er look at this strange explod­ing cat busi­ness. Accord­ing to Fraas, the accom­pa­ny­ing text reads:

“Cre­ate a small sack like a fire-arrow … if you would like to get at a town or cas­tle, seek to obtain a cat from that place. And bind the sack to the back of the cat, ignite it, let it glow well and there­after let the cat go, so it runs to the near­est cas­tle or town, and out of fear it thinks to hide itself where it ends up in barn hay or straw it will be ignit­ed.”

That’s the mil­i­tary strat­e­gy in a nut­shell. Seems like a great idea, apart from the fact that cats are noto­ri­ous­ly unpre­dictable. In any case, it’s Fri­day, so here are more illus­tra­tions of weaponized cats to round out your work week.

runningcat2

For more of Helm’s work, head on over to Penn in Hand: Select­ed Man­u­scripts.

via Nation­al Post

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

How to Pot­ty Train Your Cat: A Handy Man­u­al by Charles Min­gus

Humans Fall for Opti­cal Illu­sions, But Do Cats?

Thomas Edison’s Box­ing Cats (1894), or Where the LOL­Cats All Began

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Get Ancient Advice on Losing Weight, Sobering Up, Removing a Tattoo & More at Ask The Past

in History | March 5th, 2014

recto

It may seem that we live in an era so tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced that our dai­ly con­cerns dif­fer vast­ly from those of our ances­tors. Noth­ing could be far­ther from the truth: we still won­der about the best ways to talk to the oppo­site sex, still devise out­landish hang­over cures, and still obsess over how to lose weight. Con­sid­er­ing that our fore­bears have, by now, repeat­ed­ly faced these nig­gling prob­lems, would it not be wise to con­sult their wis­dom? If you’re more inclined to take the advice of an ancient monk than write Dear Abby, you’re in luck. Ask The Past is here to help.

Run by Johns Hop­kins’ Eliz­a­beth Archibald, Ask The Past is a com­pendi­um of wis­dom from the his­to­ry books. Below, we’ve select­ed sev­er­al pieces of ancient wis­dom that may (or may not) help our read­ers over­come some com­mon prob­lems:

How To Remove A Tat­too (c. 500)

 “They call stig­ma­ta things inscribed on the face or some oth­er part of the body, for exam­ple on the hands of sol­diers… In cas­es where we wish to remove such stig­ma­ta, we must use the fol­low­ing prepa­ra­tion… When apply­ing, first clean thes­tig­ma­ta with niter, smear them with resin of tere­binth, and ban­dage for five days… The stig­ma­ta are removed in twen­ty days, with­out great ulcer­a­tion and with­out a scar.”

Aetius of Ami­da, Tetra­bib­lion (c. 500)

How To Sober Up (1628)

“That one shall not be drunke. Drink the iuyce of Yer­row fast­ing, and ye shall not be drunke, for no drinke; and if you were drunke it will make you sober: or else take the mar­row of porke fast­ing, and ye shall not be drunke; and if you be drunke annoint your priv­ie mem­bers in vineger, and ye shall waxe sober.” 

The Booke of Pret­ty Con­ceits (1628)

The 16th Cen­tu­ry “How To Lose That Bel­ly In 14 Days!” (1595)

“An excel­lent and approved thing to make them slen­der, that are grosse. Let them eate three or foure cloves of Gar­lick, with as much of Bread and but­ter every morn­ing and evening, first and last, nei­ther eat­ing nor drink­ing of three or foure howres after their tak­ing of it in the morn­ing for the space of four­teene days at the least: and drinke every day three draughts of the decoc­tion of Fen­nell: that is, of the water where­in Fen­nell is sod, and well strained, four­teene dayes after the least, at morn­ing, noone and night. I knewe a man that was mar­veilous grosse, & could not go a quar­ter of a mile, but was enforst to rest him a dosen times at the least: that with this med­i­cine tooke away his grosse­nesse, and after could iour­ney verye well on foote.”

Thomas Lup­ton, A Thou­sand Notable Things (1595)

How To Grow A Beard (1539)

 “To make hair and beard grow. Take hon­ey­bees in quan­ti­ty and dry them in a bas­ket by the fire, then make a pow­der of them, which you thin out with olive oil, and with this oint­ment, dab sev­er­al times the place where you would like to have hair, and you will see mir­a­cles.” 

 Traic­té nou­veau, inti­t­ulé, bas­ti­ment de receptes (1539)

How to Make Some­one Die of Laugh­ter (13th cen­tu­ry) 

“Beneath the armpits are cer­tain veins called “tick­lish” which, if they are cut, cause a man to die of laugh­ter.” 

Richardus Saler­ni­tanus (13th c.?)

For more pearls of wis­dom, includ­ing How To Walk On Water, How To Gar­den With Lob­sters, and How To Tell Jokes, head over to Ask The Past.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Washington’s 110 Rules for Civil­i­ty and Decent Behav­ior

Lewis Car­rol­l’s 8 Still-Rel­e­vant Rules For Let­ter-Writ­ing

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

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Louis Armstrong Plays Historic Cold War Concerts in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

in History, Music | March 4th, 2014

In its effort to under­mine the Sovi­et Union’s claims to cul­tur­al suprema­cy dur­ing the Cold War, the CIA found­ed the Con­gress of Cul­tur­al Free­dom (CCF), which spon­sored lit­er­ary jour­nals, bal­let and mod­ernist musi­cal per­for­mances, and mod­ern art exhi­bi­tions. The CCF also sent jazz musi­cians like Ben­ny Good­man, Dizzy Gille­spie, Dave Brubeck, and Duke Elling­ton to Europe, Latin Amer­i­ca, and Africa. Fore­most among the “Good­will Jazz Ambas­sadors” was Louis Arm­strong.

From 1955 on, Arm­strong trav­eled the world, per­form­ing with his All Stars in sup­port of U.S. inter­ests abroad. Arm­strong and his All Stars began their tours in Europe, where he became known as “Ambas­sador Satch.” His pop­u­lar­i­ty among sol­diers and civil­ians on both sides of the Berlin wall was leg­endary: “No bound­ary was closed to Louis,” said bassist Arvell Shaw. In a 1955 inter­view, Arm­strong recalled that dur­ing a con­cert in West Berlin fans “slipped over the Iron Cur­tain” to hear him play.

Arm­strong and the All Stars returned to Berlin sev­er­al times in the fol­low­ing years. Ten years after their first Euro­pean tour, they appeared in East Berlin in March of 1965, play­ing two sets, includ­ing pop­u­lar tunes like “Hel­lo, Dol­ly,” “How High the Moon,” and “Mack the Knife.” Jazz his­to­ri­an Ricky Ric­car­di observes that this was “a his­toric tour as it marked the first—and only—time Louis cracked the Iron Cur­tain.” Ric­car­di also calls Armstrong’s ensem­ble “one of the finest edi­tions of Armstrong’s All Stars.” See the full East Berlin per­for­mance at the top of the post.

That same year, Arm­strong and band brought their jazz diplo­ma­cy to Budapest, con­tribut­ing to the long­stand­ing love of Amer­i­can jazz in the Hun­gar­i­an city, which now hosts a Louis Arm­strong Fes­ti­val in the near­by town of Vác (and once had its own “Satch­mo Jazz Café”). You can hear a record­ing of the Budapest con­cert in two parts, above and below.

Despite the last­ing impres­sion Arm­strong left all over the world, his tours involved some con­tro­ver­sy. He faced crit­i­cism from African-Amer­i­can press at home when, dur­ing his 1965 East Berlin appear­ance, he “refused to be drawn into a dis­cus­sion of the race prob­lem in the Unit­ed States.” He is quot­ed as say­ing “I’ve got no griev­ances… I have been treat­ed fine in the South.” The cen­sure was per­haps a lit­tle unfair. Accord­ing to Ric­car­di, Arm­strong react­ed angri­ly to the vio­lent abuse of pro­test­ers in Sel­ma ear­li­er that month, mak­ing head­lines with the com­ment “They would beat Jesus if he was black and marched.” Nev­er­the­less, once on the oth­er side of the wall, Arm­strong stayed mum on racial con­flict in the Deep South.

Arm­strong also took a very point­ed stand for civ­il rights a few years ear­li­er. In 1957, furi­ous over Arkansas gov­er­nor Orval Faubus’ use of Nation­al Guard troops to block the inte­gra­tion of Cen­tral High School in Lit­tle Rock, Arm­strong famous­ly can­celed a tour to the Sovi­et Union and only resumed his ambas­sador tours after Eisen­how­er inter­vened. At first, learn­ing of events in Lit­tle Rock, Arm­strong told Lar­ry Lubenow, a 21-year-old jour­nal­ism stu­dent, “it’s get­ting almost so bad a col­ored man hasn’t got any coun­try.” Eisen­how­er, he said, was “two faced” and had “no guts.”

It was in part this protest—and the hyp­o­crit­i­cal U.S. deploy­ment of black per­form­ers abroad as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of rights they were denied at home—that inspired Dave Brubeck and his wife Iola to write a satir­i­cal jazz musi­cal called The Real Ambas­sadors, fea­tur­ing Louis Arm­strong as a per­former and main char­ac­ter of the dra­ma (hear an excerpt above). In the musi­cal “Pops,” Armstrong’s nick­name in the busi­ness, trav­els to a fic­tion­al African coun­try to spread the gospel of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy, well aware of the irony of his sit­u­a­tion: “though he rep­re­sents the gov­ern­ment, the gov­ern­ment don’t rep­re­sent him.” Arm­strong saw the musical—which had only one live per­for­mance, at the Mon­terey Jazz Fes­ti­val in 1962—as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to address the com­plex racial issues sur­round­ing his role as an ambas­sador for a seg­re­gat­ed nation.

The set­ting of the Brubecks’ musical—where “Pops” the char­ac­ter is made “king or a day”—came from Armstrong’s tours in Africa, par­tic­u­lar­ly his 1956 trip to Ghana as a guest of Kwame Nkrumah. As you can see in the film above—shot by CBS and Edward R. Murrow—Armstrong was indeed treat­ed like a king on his arrival to the new­ly-inde­pen­dent West African coun­try. Audi­ences, includ­ing Prime Min­is­ter Nkrumah, to whom Arm­strong ded­i­cates “Black and Blue,” sit rapt as the All Stars per­form at the Opera House in Accra.

On his flight home after the tour, Arm­strong rubbed elbows with anoth­er world leader, then-vice pres­i­dent Richard Nixon. Nixon, writes KCRW’s Tom Schn­abel, “was a big fan, and chat­ted with Satch­mo through­out the flight back.” Oth­er ver­sions of the sto­ry have Nixon meet­ing Arm­strong at Dulles Air­port, and some say the two met in Paris. In each ver­sion, how­ev­er, Armstrong—who “loved mar­i­jua­na and smoked it everyday”—gets Nixon to unwit­ting­ly car­ry a trum­pet case full of “fine Ghana­ian weed” through cus­toms. The sto­ry may well be apoc­ryphal, but it speaks to Arm­strong’s can­ny, sub­ver­sive role as America’s fore­most “good­will jazz ambas­sador.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Louis Arm­strong Plays Trum­pet at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids; Dizzy Gille­spie Charms a Snake in Pak­istan

Dizzy Gille­spie Runs for US Pres­i­dent, 1964. Promis­es to Make Miles Davis Head of the CIA

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

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

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