She Was the One: An Animated 9/11 Remembrance

in History, Life, Media | September 9th, 2011

The first day was all smoke, debris, orga­nized may­hem, and pure dis­be­lief. The next day, real­i­ty hit home. That’s when you walked out in the streets (in my case, Brook­lyn), and saw your first miss­ing per­son sign, one of hun­dreds you’d see over the com­ing months in Man­hat­tan and the out­er bor­oughs. The num­bers you heard on TV, the body count, became real faces — real peo­ple.

In Octo­ber 2003, Sto­ryCorps, a non­prof­it ded­i­cat­ed to record­ing oral his­to­ries of every kind, got under­way with a small Sto­ry­Booth in Grand Cen­tral Ter­mi­nal. Eight years lat­er, it has record­ed and archived more than 35,000 inter­views from 70,000 par­tic­i­pants. And, more recent­ly, it has turned its focus to 9/11 and the days that fol­lowed. The goal: to memo­ri­al­ize in sound every per­son lost on that day. You can vis­it the emerg­ing audio archive here.

The poignant clip above, which tells the per­son­al sto­ry of Richie Pecorel­la and Karen Juday, appears in a larg­er series of Sto­ryCorps ani­mat­ed videos, all avail­able here. You can sup­port the Sto­ryCorps project by mak­ing a dona­tion, large or small today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Archive of 9/11 TV Cov­er­age Launch­es with 3,000+ Hours of Video

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The Making of a Nazi: Disney’s 1943 Animated Short

in Animation, Film, History | September 9th, 2011

Dur­ing World War II, Walt Dis­ney entered into a con­tract with the US gov­ern­ment to devel­op 32 ani­mat­ed shorts. Near­ly bank­rupt­ed by Fan­ta­sia (1940), Dis­ney need­ed to refill its cof­fers, and mak­ing Amer­i­can pro­pa­gan­da films did­n’t seem like a bad way to do it. On numer­ous occa­sions, Don­ald Duck was called upon to deliv­er moral mes­sages to domes­tic audi­ences (see The Spir­it of ’43 and Der Fuehrer’s Face). But that was­n’t the case with Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of Nazi, a film shown in U.S. movie the­aters in 1943.

Based on a book writ­ten by Gre­gor Ziemer, this ani­mat­ed short–stream­able over at Archive.org–used a dif­fer­ent line­up of char­ac­ters to show how the Nazi par­ty turned inno­cent youth into Hitler’s cor­rupt­ed chil­dren. Unlike oth­er top­ics addressed in Dis­ney war films (e.g. tax­es and the draft), this theme, the cul­ti­va­tion of young minds, hit awful­ly close to home. And it’s per­haps why it’s one of Dis­ney’s bet­ter wartime films. (Spiegel Online has more on Dis­ney’s WW II pro­pa­gan­da films here.)

You will find Edu­ca­tion for Death per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era

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Archive of 9/11 TV Coverage Launches with 3,000+ Hours of Video

in History, Media, Television | August 25th, 2011

The dra­ma of 9/11 unfold­ed before the world on TV. Even many New York­ers, myself includ­ed, watched the trau­mat­ic events on CNN rather than wit­ness­ing them first­hand. Dur­ing the days that fol­lowed, we were bom­bard­ed with end­less replays — the planes hit­ting the build­ings, the tow­ers aflame and col­laps­ing, the piles of smok­ing debris left behind. Then, mer­ci­ful­ly, the cov­er­age dis­ap­peared.

Almost a decade lat­er, the Inter­net Archive has launched a 9/11 Tele­vi­sion News Archive, a resource for schol­ars, jour­nal­ists, and any­one inter­est­ed in the his­tor­i­cal record cre­at­ed by tele­vi­sion. The archive brings togeth­er more than 3,000 hours of tele­vi­sion cov­er­age from 20 US and inter­na­tion­al broad­cast­ers, and the cov­er­age can be seg­ment­ed by day, time and news provider.

Yet one more rea­son why we con­sid­er the Inter­net Archive one of the most valu­able sites on the web.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Hiroshima After the Atomic Bomb in 360 Degrees

in History | August 17th, 2011

In ear­ly August 1945, the world offi­cial­ly entered the atom­ic age when the Unit­ed States dropped two dev­as­tat­ing bombs on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, killing 200,000 peo­ple. The destruc­tion is hard to put to words. But when words fail, images begin to fill the void.

Last week, 360Cities gave view­ers one very stark reminder of what hap­pened 66 years ago when the site post­ed a panoram­ic view of Hiroshi­ma. When you click here, you can look north, south, east and west at the wide­spread destruc­tion. Noth­ing was left untouched. This panora­ma is the byprod­uct of sev­er­al images tak­en by dif­fer­ent pho­tog­ra­phers — three from the Unit­ed States and one from Japan. The 360Cities blog tells you more about the project here. H/T Giz­mo­do

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Bomb­ing Remem­bered with Google Earth

Way of Life: Rare Footage of the Hiroshi­ma After­math, 1946

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Bed Peace Revisits John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Vietnam Protests: Watch the Documentary Online

in Film, History | August 13th, 2011

Briefly not­ed: Yoko Ono has post­ed on YouTube a 70 minute doc­u­men­tary that revis­its John and Yoko’s famous 1969 Bed-Ins, which amount­ed to a peace­ful protest against the Viet­nam War. The film has been added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Below, you can find Yoko’s let­ter to view­ers and a sum­ma­ry of the film.

Dear Friends,

In 1969, John and I were so naïve to think that doing the Bed-In would help change the world.
Well, it might have. But at the time, we did­n’t know.

It was good that we filmed it, though.
The film is pow­er­ful now.
What we said then could have been said now.

In fact, there are things that we said then in the film, which may give some encour­age­ment and inspi­ra­tion to the activists of today. Good luck to us all.

Let’s remem­ber WAR IS OVER if we want it.
It’s up to us, and nobody else.
John would have want­ed to say that.

Love, yoko

Yoko Ono Lennon
Lon­don, UK
August 2011

Film Syn­op­sis

1969 was the year that John & Yoko inten­si­fied their long run­ning cam­paign for World Peace. They approached the task with the same entre­pre­neur­ial exper­tise as an adver­tis­ing agency sell­ing a brand of soap pow­der to the mass­es. John & Yoko’s prod­uct how­ev­er was PEACE, not soft soap, and they were deter­mined to use any slo­gan, event and gim­mick in order to per­suade the World to buy it.

BED PEACE (direct­ed by Yoko & John and filmed by Nic Know­land) is a doc­u­ment of the Mon­tre­al events and fea­tures John & Yoko in con­ver­sa­tion with, amongst oth­ers, The World Press, satirist Al Capp, activist Dick Gre­go­ry, come­di­an Tom­my Smoth­ers, pro­test­ers at Berke­ley’s Peo­ple’s Park, Rab­bi Abra­ham L. Fein­berg, quilt­mak­er Chris­tine Kemp, psy­chol­o­gists Tim­o­thy Leary & Rose­mary Leary, CFOX DJs Charles P. Rod­ney Chan­dler & Roger Scott, pro­duc­er André Per­ry, jour­nal­ist Ritchie York, DJ & Pro­mot­er Mur­ray The K, film­mak­er Jonas Mekas, pub­li­cist Derek Tay­lor & per­son­al assis­tant Antho­ny Faw­cett.

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Harry Partch’s Kooky Orchestra of DIY Musical Instruments

in History, Music, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | August 9th, 2011

Com­pos­er and instru­ment inven­tor Har­ry Partch (1901–1974) is one of the pio­neers of 20th-cen­tu­ry exper­i­men­tal instru­men­ta­tion, known for writ­ing and play­ing music on incred­i­ble cus­tom-made instru­ments like the Boo II and the Quad­ran­gu­laris Rever­sum, and lay­ing the foun­da­tions for many of today’s most cre­ative exper­i­men­tal musi­cal instru­ments.

In this Uni­ver­sal News­reel footage from the 1950s, Partch con­ducts a stu­dent music per­for­mance on his instru­ments, built with insights from atom­ic research and Partch’s 30-year obses­sion with find­ing the elu­sive tones that exist between the tones of a reg­u­lar piano. The set­ting is Mills Col­lege in Oak­land, CA. The unortho­dox orches­tra per­forms music tuned to the 43-tone scale Partch invent­ed, rather than the usu­al 12-tone, even though indi­vid­ual instru­ments can only play sub­sets of the scale.

For more on Partch’s genius and sem­i­nal inno­va­tion, see his excel­lent 1949 med­i­ta­tion, Gen­e­sis of a Music: An Account of a Cre­ative Work, its Roots, and its Ful­fill­ments.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

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The Last Surviving Witness of the Lincoln Assassination Appears on a Game Show (1956)

in History, Television | August 4th, 2011

Let’s rewind the video­tape to 1956, to Samuel James Sey­mour’s appear­ance on the CBS tele­vi­sion show, “I’ve Got a Secret.” At 96 years of age, Sey­mour was the last sur­viv­ing per­son present at Ford’s The­ater the night Abra­ham Lin­coln was assas­si­nat­ed by John Wilkes Booth (April 14, 1865).

Only five years old at the time, Mr. Sey­mour trav­eled with his father to Wash­ing­ton D.C. on a busi­ness trip, where they attend­ed a per­for­mance of Our Amer­i­can Cousin. The young­ster caught a quick glimpse of the pres­i­dent, the play began, and the rest … as they say … is his­to­ry.

A quick foot­note: Samuel Sey­mour died two months after his TV appear­ance. His longevi­ty had some­thing to do, I’d think, with declin­ing those Win­stons over the years.

Find cours­es on the Civ­il War in our list of Free His­to­ry Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

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Hear Voices from the 19th Century: Tennyson, Gladstone & Tchaikovsky

in History, Media, Technology | August 3rd, 2011


Head over to Sound­Cloud, and you’ll find 10 audio files that span three cen­turies. It’s a fair­ly ran­dom col­lec­tion, we’ll admit. But two record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry imme­di­ate­ly stand out.

First we have Alfred Lord Ten­nyson (1809 – 1892), Poet Lau­re­ate of the Unit­ed King­dom dur­ing Queen Vic­to­ri­a’s reign, read­ing “The Charge of the Light Brigade” on the wax cylin­der in 1890.

And then we get to hear echoes of the voice of William Glad­stone, the four-time Prime Min­is­ter of Great Britain (1809 — 1898). Here, Glad­stone’s voice was record­ed by Thomas Edis­on’s phono­graph cylin­der (1888), the same device that lets us lis­ten to Tchaikovsky (The Nut­crack­er, the 1812 Over­ture, etc.) chat­ting with his friends. Some have doubt­ed the authen­tic­i­ty of the Glad­stone record­ing, but it still remains gen­er­al­ly accept­ed.

For more on record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry, we’d rec­om­mend spend­ing some time with a five-part BBC series called Gramo­phones & Grooves. It takes you into the ear­ly record­ing indus­try and lets you hear count­less oth­er voic­es.

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