On Sep­tem­ber 26, 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon appeared in Amer­i­ca’s first nation­al­ly tele­vised pres­i­den­tial debate, an event wit­nessed by some 70 mil­lion Amer­i­cans. Although radio lis­ten­ers thought that Nixon hand­i­ly won the debate (48% v. 21%), tele­vi­sion view­ers gave the edge to Kennedy (30% v. 29%) – the even­tu­al win­ner of the elec­tion. On that Sep­tem­ber night, pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics entered the tele­vi­sion age and nev­er looked back.

Thanks to the YouTube Chan­nel spon­sored by the JFK Pres­i­den­tial Library, you can now revis­it this his­tor­i­cal moment, along with oth­er key footage from the Kennedy pres­i­den­cy. Tak­ing a tour of the chan­nel, you will find Kennedy giv­ing his inau­gur­al address, mak­ing the strong case for civ­il rights, con­fronting the real­i­ty of nuclear war, and urg­ing Amer­i­ca to win the race to the moon.  The JFK video col­lec­tion now appears on our grow­ing list of Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels.

Long ago, in the ancient civ­i­liza­tion of Mesopotamia, Akka­di­an was the dom­i­nant lan­guage. And, for cen­turies, it remained the lin­gua fran­ca in the Ancient Near East. But then it was grad­u­al­ly squeezed out by Ara­ma­ic, and it fad­ed into obliv­ion once Alexan­der the Great Hel­l­enized (Greek­i­fied) the region.

Now, 2,000+ years lat­er, Akka­di­an is mak­ing a small come­back. At Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, Dr. Mar­tin Wor­thing­ton, an expert in Baby­lon­ian and Assyr­i­an gram­mar, has start­ed record­ing read­ings of poems, myths and oth­er texts in Akka­di­an, includ­ing The Epic of Gil­gamesh. This clip gives you a taste of what Gil­gamesh, one of the ear­li­est known works of lit­er­a­ture, sounds like in its moth­er tongue. Or, you can jump into the full col­lec­tion of read­ings right here.

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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 Her­itage Key

Relat­ed Con­tent:

World Lit­er­a­ture in 13 Parts: From Gil­gamesh to Gar­cía Márquez

The Ancient His­to­ry Learn­ing Guide

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

This new video from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, fea­tur­ing archae­ol­o­gist John Robb, gives you a quick and visu­al­ly appeal­ing intro­duc­tion to how humans have under­stood some­thing we take for grant­ed – our own bod­ies. Cov­er­ing 10,000 years in six min­utes, Robb takes us from the “Ani­mal Body” and “Sex­u­al­ized Body” of the Mesolith­ic and Neolith­ic Ages, to the “Politi­cized Body” of the Clas­si­cal Age, “God’s Body” of the Mid­dle Ages, and final­ly “The Body as Machine,” the metaphor we have been liv­ing with since 1500. And we wrap up with the “Body Dig­i­tal,” the body of the future, and “Mul­ti­ple Bod­ies.” This video comes from the Cam­bridge Ideas series avail­able on Cam­bridge’s YouTube chan­nel.

Leon Trot­sky, one of the fathers of the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, sec­ond only to to Lenin, was assas­si­nat­ed in Mex­i­co 70 years ago today (August 21, 1940). Dur­ing the ear­ly years of the Rev­o­lu­tion, Trot­sky head­ed up for­eign affairs for Rus­sia and found­ed the Red Army. Fol­low­ing Lenin’s death (1924), he looked primed to take con­trol of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary state. But Stal­in had oth­er thoughts about the mat­ter, and, before too long, Trot­sky found him­self in exile again. Pre­vi­ous exiles took him to Siberia, Kaza­khstan, Aus­tria, Switzer­land, Spain and the Unit­ed States. This time, he went to France, Nor­way, Turkey (see the film Vanes­sa Red­grave nar­rates on his stint in Istan­bul) and lat­er Mex­i­co (1936), where he lived with painter Diego Rivera and his wife/fellow painter, Fri­da Kahlo. Even­tu­al­ly, Kahlo and Trot­sky would have a famous affair.

Above, we have some grainy footage of Trot­sky from his Mex­i­co years. The footage dates back to 1937, and it shows Trot­sky, speak­ing in bro­ken Eng­lish, giv­ing thanks to Mex­i­co for pro­vid­ing sanc­tu­ary and defend­ing him­self against the show tri­als that Stal­in orches­trat­ed back in Rus­sia. Trot­sky was sen­tenced to death in absen­tia. Three years lat­er, he would be assas­si­nat­ed by an under­cov­er agent while still liv­ing in Mex­i­co. YouTube has more on the assas­si­na­tion here. A big thanks goes to Mike S. for unearthing this great lit­tle clus­ter of videos.

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!