Harry Houdini’s Great Rope Escape (Circa 1920)

in History | January 9th, 2012

Har­ry Hou­di­ni (né Erik Weisz) emi­grat­ed from Hun­gary to the Unit­ed States as a young­ster, set­tling first in Wis­con­sin, then lat­er in New York City. Cap­ti­vat­ed by mag­ic from an ear­ly age, Hou­di­ni (1874–1926) began per­form­ing small-time mag­ic shows and exper­i­ment­ing with escape acts, even­tu­al­ly hon­ing his abil­i­ty to escape from hand­cuffs. Then he nev­er looked back:

Arriv­ing in a new town, Hou­di­ni would claim the abil­i­ty to escape from any hand­cuffs pro­vid­ed by the local police. His easy escapes pro­vid­ed excel­lent pub­lic­i­ty for his shows. Hou­di­ni offered $100 to any­one who pro­vid­ed hand­cuffs from which he could not escape, but he nev­er had to pay. Through his increas­ing­ly com­plex escapes and his shrewd use of pub­lic­i­ty, Hou­di­ni became a head­lin­er on the vaude­ville cir­cuit, play­ing in cities across the coun­try. Not sat­is­fied with that low lev­el of fame, how­ev­er, Hou­di­ni decid­ed to gam­ble by tak­ing his act to Europe.

When he returned from Europe, Hou­di­ni per­formed increas­ing­ly high-pro­file stunts — e.g., free­ing him­self from chains after jump­ing into Boston’s Charles Riv­er, escap­ing from a strait jack­et while hang­ing upside down in Times Square, break­ing out of a prison cell that held the assas­sin of Pres­i­dent James Garfield. Today, we have Hou­di­ni per­form­ing a more straight­for­ward escape — from a sim­ple chair and rope. Below, in an image appear­ing in Ladies’ Home Jour­nal (1918), Hou­di­ni tells you a lit­tle about how he made his great rope escape. He offers more details here. The video above was shot cir­ca 1920.

houdiniropes2

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Hou­di­ni Escape From a Strait Jack­et, Then See How He Did It (Cir­ca 1917)

Inven­tor of a Wear­able Para­chute Takes a Fly­ing Leap Off of the Eif­fel Tow­er in 1912, and It Doesn’t End Well

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Crowded House: How the World’s Population Grew to 7 Billion People

in Current Affairs, History, Video - Politics/Society | December 6th, 2011

This fall, the world’s pop­u­la­tion reached sev­en bil­lion. A sober­ing thought. How did we get to this point? Pro­duc­er Adam Cole and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mag­gie Star­bard of Nation­al Pub­lic Radio have put the world’s accel­er­at­ing pop­u­la­tion growth in per­spec­tive in a two-and-a-half minute video, above.

In those two and a half min­utes, 638 babies will be born world­wide, accord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the Unit­ed States Cen­sus Bureau, and 265 peo­ple will die. That’s a net gain of 373 peo­ple, just while you watch the film. The biggest growth, accord­ing to NPR,  is hap­pen­ing in sub-Saha­ran Africa, where access to fam­i­ly plan­ning is low and infant mor­tal­i­ty rates are high.

It may seem counter-intu­itive that pop­u­la­tion growth rates are high where infant sur­vival rates are low, but as Swedish glob­al health expert Hans Rosling put it dur­ing a recent TED talk, “Only by child sur­vival can we con­trol pop­u­la­tion growth.” Because pop­u­la­tion growth and infant mor­tal­i­ty rates are both cor­re­lat­ed to pover­ty rates, he argues, elim­i­nat­ing pover­ty is the key to achiev­ing a sus­tain­able world pop­u­la­tion. You can learn more in our Novem­ber 1 fea­ture,  “Hans Rosling Uses IKEA Props to Explain World of 7 Bil­lion Peo­ple.”

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A 3D Tour of Picasso’s Guernica

in Art, History | November 21st, 2011

In June 1937 Pablo Picas­so paint­ed Guer­ni­ca, a mur­al that memo­ri­al­ized the events of April 27, 1937, the date when Ger­many sup­port­ed its fas­cist ally Fran­cis­co Fran­co and bombed Guer­ni­ca, a rather remote town in the Basque region of north­ern Spain. For the Nazis, the mil­i­tary strike was an excuse to try out their lat­est mil­i­tary hard­ware, estab­lish a blue­print for ter­ror bomb­ings of civil­ian pop­u­la­tions, and pull Spain into the fas­cist fold. After the bomb­ing, the repub­li­can gov­ern­ment on the oth­er side of the Span­ish Civ­il War com­mis­sioned Picas­so to cre­ate the mur­al for dis­play at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris.

You can learn more about the famous anti-war paint­ing, now housed at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, by check­ing out the Smarthis­to­ry primer post­ed below. In the mean­time, we’re high­light­ing today a dig­i­tal­ly-ren­dered 3D tour of Picas­so’s land­mark work. It’s the cre­ation of Lena Gieseke, a visu­al effects artist who, once upon a time, was mar­ried to the film­mak­er Tim Bur­ton. Some will con­sid­er the idea of putting Guer­ni­ca in 3D down­right blas­phe­mous. Oth­ers will find it instruc­tive, a chance to see parts of the mur­al from a new per­spec­tive. The video above runs three min­utes.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

The Gestapo Points to Guer­ni­ca and Asks Picas­so, “Did You Do This?;” Picas­so Replies “No, You Did!”

Guer­ni­ca: Alain Resnais’ Haunt­ing Film on Picasso’s Paint­ing & the Crimes of the Span­ish Civ­il War

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

Dear Mon­sieur Picas­so: A Free eBook

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How Many U.S. Marines Could Bring Down the Roman Empire?

in History | November 15th, 2011

It all start­ed as a thought exper­i­ment on Reddit.com when a user posed the ques­tion: “Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire dur­ing the reign of Augus­tus if I trav­eled back in time with a mod­ern U.S. Marine infantry bat­tal­ion or MEU?”

Then the Red­dit user offered a more pre­cise sce­nario:

Let’s say we go back in time with a Marine Expe­di­tionary Unit (MEU) … could we destroy all 30 of Augus­tus’ legions?

We’d be up against near­ly 330,000 men since each legion was com­prised of 11,000 men. These men are typ­i­cal­ly equipped with limb and tor­so armor made of met­al, and for weapon­ry they car­ry swords, spears, bows and oth­er stab­bing imple­ments. We’d also encounter siege weapons like cat­a­pults and crude incen­di­ary weapons.

We’d be made up of about 2000 mem­bers, of which about half would be par­tic­i­pat­ing in ground attack oper­a­tions. We can use our mech­a­nized vehi­cles (60 Humvees, 16 armored vehi­cles, etc), but we can­not use our attack air sup­port, only our trans­port air­craft.

We also have medics with us, mod­ern med­ical equip­ment and drugs, and engi­neers, but we no longer have a mag­i­cal time-trav­el­ing sup­ply line (we did have but the timelords frowned upon it, sad­ly!) that pro­vides us with all the ammu­ni­tion, equip­ment and sus­te­nance we need to sur­vive. We’ll have to suc­ceed with the stuff we brought with us.

So, will we be vic­to­ri­ous?

The ques­tion touched off a fren­zy of dis­cus­sion. One user, James Erwin, wrote a short sto­ry, Rome Sweet Rome, imag­in­ing how the bat­tles might play out, and Warn­er Bros. came along and bought the movie rights to the sto­ry.

And now pro­fes­sion­al his­to­ri­ans are weigh­ing in. Inter­viewed in Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics, his­to­ri­an Adri­an Goldswor­thy, an expert on the Roman army, offered these thoughts:

Obvi­ous­ly, there is a mas­sive dif­fer­ence in fire­pow­er. Not only would Roman armor be use­less against a rifle round—let alone a grenade launch­er or a .50 cal­iber machine gun—it would prob­a­bly dis­tort the bullet’s shape and make the wound worse.

But here comes the dif­fi­cul­ty:

In the short term and in the open, mod­ern infantry could mas­sacre any ancient sol­diers at lit­tle risk to them­selves. But you could not sup­port mod­ern infantry. So all of these weapons and vehi­cles could make a brief, dra­mat­ic, and even dev­as­tat­ing appear­ance, but would very quick­ly become use­less. Prob­a­bly in a mat­ter of days.… Marines are the best war­riors ever trained. But they can’t fight an end­less wave of sol­diers. No one can.

You can find the rest of Goldswor­thy’s thoughts here, and sev­er­al good Roman his­to­ry cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

via Andrew Sul­li­van

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Social Media in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution

in History, Stanford, Technology | November 8th, 2011

As the French like to say, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Before there was Twit­ter, Face­book and Google+ (click to fol­low us), Euro­peans liv­ing in the sev­en­teenth and eigh­teenth cen­turies had to deal with their own ver­sion of infor­ma­tion over­load. Emerg­ing postal sys­tems, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of short let­ters called bil­lets, and the birth of news­pa­pers and pam­phlets all pumped unprece­dent­ed amounts of infor­ma­tion — valu­able infor­ma­tion, gos­sip, chat­ter and the rest — through new­ly-emerg­ing social net­works, which even­tu­al­ly played a crit­i­cal role in the French Rev­o­lu­tion, much like Twit­ter and Face­book proved instru­men­tal in orga­niz­ing the Arab Spring.

These his­tor­i­cal social net­works are being care­ful­ly mapped out by schol­ars at Stan­ford. Above, we have Anaïs Saint-Jude paint­ing the his­tor­i­cal pic­ture for us. Below Dan Edel­stein gives you a clos­er look at Stan­ford’s Map­ping the Repub­lic of Let­ters project.

via Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty News

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Marshall McLuhan on the Stupidest Debate in the History of Debating (1976)

in History, Music, Politics, Television | October 13th, 2011

In Sep­tem­ber 1976, Jim­my Carter and Ger­ald Ford squared off in a pres­i­den­tial debate, and the fol­low­ing day, the leg­endary com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­rist Mar­shall McLuhan appeared on the TODAY show, then host­ed by Tom Brokaw, to offer some almost real-time analy­sis of the debate. The first tele­vised pres­i­den­tial debate was famous­ly held in 1960, and it pit­ted John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon. Six­teen years lat­er, pun­dits and cit­i­zens were still try­ing to make sense of the for­mat. Was the tele­vised debate a new and vital part of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy? Or was it a care­ful­ly con­trolled act of polit­i­cal per­for­mance? For McLuhan, there was still some ide­al­is­tic sense that tele­vised debates could enhance our democ­ra­cy, assum­ing the mes­sage was suit­ed to the medi­um. But McLuhan came away dis­il­lu­sioned, call­ing the Carter/Ford spec­ta­cle “the most stu­pid arrange­ment of any debate in the his­to­ry of debat­ing” and chalk­ing up tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties (watch them here) to the medi­um rag­ing against the mes­sage.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­shall McLuhan Debate the Elec­tron­ic Age

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

Mar­shall McLuhan’s 1969 Deck of Cards, Designed For Out-of-the-Box Think­ing

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How the King James Bible Forever Changed English: 400th Anniversary Celebrated with Fun Videos

in English Language, History, Religion | October 10th, 2011

This year marks the 400th anniver­sary of the King James Bible, a trans­la­tion that influ­enced the devel­op­ment of the Eng­lish lan­guage as much as it did the Chris­t­ian faith. Right along­side many oth­er anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions tak­ing place this year, Glen Scriven­er, a min­is­ter in the Church of Eng­land, has start­ed a blog about the lin­guis­tic impact of the text, focus­ing on 365 phras­es that have passed in com­mon par­lance. A lot of this gets art­ful­ly dis­tilled by Scriven­er’s short video, The King’s Eng­lish — 100 phras­es in 3 Min­utes (above).

Scriven­er’s work is nice­ly com­ple­ment­ed by a wit­ty ani­mat­ed video tak­en from The His­to­ry of Eng­lish in 10 Min­utes, a sequence cre­at­ed by The Open Uni­ver­si­ty ear­li­er this year.

H/T Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Puts the Dead Sea Scrolls Online

Intro­duc­tion to the New and Old Tes­ta­ments

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Steven Pinker on the History of Violence: A Happy Tale

in History, Psychology | September 29th, 2011

In July, the Edge.org held its annu­al “Mas­ter Class” in Napa, Cal­i­for­nia and brought togeth­er some influ­en­tial thinkers to talk about “The Sci­ence of Human Nature.” The high­lights includ­ed:

Prince­ton psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Kah­ne­man on the mar­vels and the flaws of intu­itive think­ing; Har­vard math­e­mat­i­cal biol­o­gist Mar­tin Nowak on the evo­lu­tion of coop­er­a­tion; Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist Steven Pinker on the his­to­ry of vio­lence; UC-San­ta Bar­bara evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gist Leda Cos­mides on the archi­tec­ture of moti­va­tion; UC-San­ta Bar­bara neu­ro­sci­en­tist Michael Gaz­zani­ga on neu­ro­science and the law; and Prince­ton reli­gious his­to­ri­an Elaine Pagels on The Book of Rev­e­la­tions.

The Edge.org has now start­ed mak­ing videos from the class avail­able online, includ­ing, this week, Steven Pinker’s talk on the his­to­ry of vio­lence. You can watch Pinker’s full 86 minute talk here (sor­ry, we could­n’t embed it on our site.) Or, if you want the quick gist of Pinker’s think­ing, then watch the short clip above. In five min­utes, Pinker tells you why vio­lence is steadi­ly trend­ing down, and why some things are actu­al­ly going right in our momentarily/monetarily trou­bled world.

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