How Nashville Became Home to a Full-Scale Replica of the Parthenon

in Architecture, History, Travel | July 7th, 2026

Asked to iden­ti­fy “the Athens of the South,” many Amer­i­cans might well point to Athens, Geor­gia, espe­cial­ly if they hap­pen to be fans of REM, the B‑52s, or Of Mon­tre­al. In fact, that title was claimed by Nashville, Ten­nessee as ear­ly as the eigh­teen-fifties, when the city put into action its ambi­tious plans for a pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem. By the end of that cen­tu­ry, Nashville boast­ed not just more than 20 col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties (Van­der­bilt being the best known today), but also a full-scale repli­ca of the Parthenon, the ancient tem­ple to the god­dess Athena. It was built for the state’s Cen­ten­ni­al Exhi­bi­tion in 1897, when no dis­play of local grandeur was too much.

Near­ly 130 years lat­er, the Nashville Parthenon remains a major local attrac­tion along­side the likes of the Grand Ole Opry, the Coun­try Music Hall of Fame, and the Honky Tonk High­way. The struc­ture cur­rent­ly sit­u­at­ed in Cen­ten­ni­al Park (also the home of that mod­ern site of pil­grim­age, the Tay­lor Swift Bench) isn’t the same one at which vis­i­tors mar­veled in 1897.

After a cou­ple of decades of dete­ri­o­ra­tion, writes Art­sy’s Isaac Kaplan, “mas­sive ren­o­va­tions were under­tak­en in 1920, over­seen by an archi­tect named Rus­sell Hart, who com­mit­ted to mak­ing the build­ing both endur­ing and as his­tor­i­cal­ly true to the orig­i­nal Parthenon as pos­si­ble,” an exten­sive rebuild that even entailed mak­ing casts of the orig­i­nal mar­bles.

Unlike the bombed-out ruin in the Athens of Greece, the Nashville Parthenon stands proud­ly intact. But does it pass muster with seri­ous enthu­si­asts of clas­si­cal civ­i­liza­tion? In the video at the top of the post, Gar­rett Ryan of ancient-his­to­ry YouTube chan­nel Told in Stone makes the trip. He notes that, though it does con­tain a gold-plat­ed (or rather, gold-leaf plat­ed) stat­ue of Athena much like the one orig­i­nal­ly sculpt­ed by Phidias, the build­ing is “not an exact repli­ca. It’s made of con­crete, not mar­ble, it has no frieze, the col­ors are all wrong, and the inte­ri­or is very dif­fer­ent from the orig­i­nal. But it gives a sense of the scale of the Parthenon,” and “cap­tures the expe­ri­ence of vis­it­ing a tem­ple of this size.” The park­ing lot right along­side it does some harm to the illu­sion, grant­ed, but it does encour­age the vis­i­tor to reflect upon the nature of civ­i­liza­tion: Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion, that is.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The City of Nashville Built a Full-Scale Repli­ca of the Parthenon in 1897, and It’s Still Stand­ing Today

A Tour of Athens’ Acrop­o­lis, Explained with 3D Recon­struc­tions

A 3D Mod­el Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Inte­ri­or Looked Like 2,500 Years Ago

How the Ancient Greeks Built Their Mag­nif­i­cent Tem­ples: The Art of Ancient Engi­neer­ing

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Athens: Fly Over Clas­si­cal Greek Civ­i­liza­tion in All Its Glo­ry

How the Parthenon Mar­bles End­ed Up In The British Muse­um

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Thai Beef Noodle Soup That Has Been Continuously Simmering for 52 Years

in Food & Drink, Travel | July 1st, 2026

As Bangkok ris­es into the ranks of the world’s great culi­nary des­ti­na­tion cities, its restau­rant scene caters to ever more well-heeled trav­el­ers. There, you can now vis­it estab­lish­ments with not just one, and not just two, but three Miche­lin stars. Even so, many a Bangkok habitué will sure­ly tell you that the city’s best food is still served in the same hum­ble places as always, or at least whose rent has­n’t been hiked too bad­ly. Even in as hip­ster­ized an area as Ekka­mai Road, though, some have been around long enough to own their real estate. Take Wat­tana Panich, which has been serv­ing beef noo­dle soup in its own build­ing for more than 50 years — and indeed, using the same broth the whole time.

You can have a look at the process in the Great Big Sto­ry video at the top of the post. “For­ev­er soup, also known as per­pet­u­al stew or hunter’s pot, is enjoy­ing a moment as adven­tur­ous cooks and intre­pid din­ers redis­cov­er the old method in which a broth can sim­mer for weeks, months or even years,” writes Shan Li in a recent Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle.

Third-gen­er­a­tion Wat­tana Panich own­er Nat­tapong Kawee­nunta­wong “has tend­ed the broth from morn­ing until night since gain­ing cus­tody two decades ago. By day, it bub­bles in a giant stain­less-steel pot about 5 feet across and one foot deep, encased in lava-like con­crete and heat­ed by gas. He tweaks the fla­vor by adding fresh ingre­di­ents, includ­ing fish sauce, soy sauce, chunks of beef and sachets of Chi­nese herbs.”

Per­haps you feel you can taste it already. But its reg­u­lar vis­i­tors may insist that you’ll nev­er real­ly know the fla­vor of the shop’s epony­mous broth, con­tin­u­ous­ly refined while being rolled over night after night for five decades, until you try it for your­self. The prospect may put cer­tain West­ern­ers, uncom­fort­able con­sum­ing even last night’s left­overs, ill at ease. But they should rest assured that the sol­id ingre­di­ents are always fresh. It’s just the broth itself, rig­or­ous­ly strained each night and boiled each day, that has been kept in use, tying the estab­lish­ment to its own past in the same man­ner as its inher­it­ed own­er­ship. As with any fam­i­ly busi­ness, of course, each gen­er­a­tion gets com­plete­ly dis­placed soon­er or lat­er, just as every mol­e­cule of “for­ev­er soup” at one time will, in the­o­ry, have been con­sumed by some lat­er time. Is the broth Wat­tana Panich uses today real­ly iden­ti­cal to the one it start­ed with in 1974? That’s a philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion best saved for after the meal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chow­da!: Three Cen­turies of Recipes Reveal the Rise of New England’s Finest Culi­nary Export

When Al Capone Opened a Soup Kitchen Dur­ing the Great Depres­sion: Anoth­er Side of the Leg­endary Mobster’s Oper­a­tion

Allen Ginsberg’s Per­son­al Recipe for Cold Sum­mer Borscht

How to Make the Old­est Recipe in the World: A Recipe for Net­tle Pud­ding Dat­ing Back 6,000 BC

The Old­est Restau­rant in the World: How Madrid’s Sobri­no de Botín Has Kept the Oven Hot Since 1725

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Take a Random Walk Around the Berlin Wall Just Months Before Its Sudden Fall (Summer 1989)

in History, Travel | May 27th, 2026

Offi­cial­ly, the Berlin Wall fell on Novem­ber 9, 1989. Demo­li­tion would take more than four years, and a few sec­tions remain for memo­r­i­al pur­pos­es, but it was on that date that pas­sage between East and West Berlin — and thus East and West Ger­many — opened to all cit­i­zens of both coun­tries. To say that it came as a sur­prise would be a seri­ous under­state­ment. Ear­li­er that year, even the best informed observers were pre­dict­ing that the wall would stand for at least a few more decades. Ear­li­er that day, for that mat­ter, the offi­cials involved in the open­ing did­n’t fore­see that Social­ist Uni­ty Par­ty of Ger­many Sec­re­tary of Infor­ma­tion Gün­ter Sch­abows­ki would, that evening, mis­tak­en­ly declare on nation­al tele­vi­sion that the lib­er­al­iza­tion of bor­der trav­el was effec­tive “imme­di­ate­ly, with­out delay.”

When the bor­der guards final­ly gave up their attempts to hold the line around 11:00 that night, the sur­round­ing scene in both Berlins had turned into what atten­dees now remem­ber, 36 years lat­er, as the biggest street fes­ti­val of their lives. To those of us unable to join in the cel­e­bra­tion at the time, it may seem unlike­ly that such an event could real­ly have occurred with no inti­ma­tions what­so­ev­er.

Yet the footage shot by a trav­el­er in Berlin dur­ing the sum­mer of 1989, right there in the vicin­i­ty of the wall, depicts a city where events seem to be frozen. Though the built envi­ron­ment isn’t with­out touch­es of fad­ed grandeur here and there (and as many West Berlin­ers were soon to dis­cov­er, the real urban state­li­ness was over East), the over­all impres­sion giv­en by what was then the red hot cen­ter of Cold War geopol­i­tics is that of a dullsville.

The most out­ward­ly inter­est­ing fea­ture in these parts of Berlin at the very end of the nine­teen-eight­ies is, of course, the wall itself: the brutish­ness of its form, the hum­drum men­ace of its guards, the accu­mu­la­tion of graf­fi­ti both polit­i­cal and apo­lit­i­cal. At one point, the tourist’s cam­corder cap­tures the memo­ri­als for fall­en wall jumpers, the most recent of which, a cer­tain Chris Guef­froy, had made his fate­ful escape attempt from the East that past Feb­ru­ary. His­to­ry would soon immor­tal­ize him as the last per­son to be shot try­ing to get over the wall, though not the last to die doing so. That title belongs to Win­fried Freuden­berg, who in March of 1989 fell from a bal­loon he’d rigged up to fly across the bor­der. At this point, when the rapid urban evo­lu­tion of the reuni­fied Ger­man cap­i­tal has long since made it one of the most pop­u­lar cities in Europe, nei­ther she nor Guef­froy would rec­og­nize the for­mer East Berlin they were des­per­ate to escape — nor, for that mat­ter, the West Berlin of which they dreamed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Berlin Wall Worked: The Engi­neer­ing & Struc­tur­al Design of the Wall That For­mi­da­bly Divid­ed East & West

See Berlin Before and After World War II in Star­tling Col­or Video

The Gold­en Age of Berlin Comes to Life in the Clas­sic, Avant-Garde Film, Berlin: Sym­pho­ny of a Metrop­o­lis (1927)

The Dos & Don’ts of Dri­ving to West Berlin Dur­ing the Cold War: A Weird Piece of Ephemera from the 1980s

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

Watch Samuel Beck­ett Walk the Streets of Berlin Like a Boss, 1969

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Revisit Daily Life in China in 1917 Through Footage Enhanced and Colorized by AI

in Film, Travel | May 25th, 2026

Even for Amer­i­cans, keep­ing up with the geopo­lit­i­cal entan­gle­ments of the Unit­ed States has nev­er been an easy task. More than a cen­tu­ry ago, just a few months after their coun­try got involved in what’s now known as World War I, they got word that the mil­i­tary of a dis­tant nation had joined their side: Chi­na, whose image would have been both opaque and for­bid­ding­ly vast. A dozen years before they’d even heard the name Pearl S. Buck, what impres­sions of that coun­try they had would have come from scat­tered sources like post-Opi­um Wars mis­sion­ary pub­li­ca­tions, news­pa­per cov­er­age of com­pli­cat­ed events like the Box­er Rebel­lion and the fall of the Qing dynasty, and silent-film genre stereo­types. (Per­haps the rare read­er got ahold of John Thom­son’s Through Chi­na with a Cam­era.) Most could live a life­time with­out a glimpse of “the real Chi­na.”

By the end of 1917, how­ev­er, “there were at least 10 doc­u­men­taries avail­able to sat­is­fy curios­i­ty about America’s new ally in the Far East,” accord­ing to the Nation­al Film Preser­va­tion Foun­da­tion. Most were shorts that played along­side fea­tures, but A Trip Through Chi­na was dif­fer­ent. At least five years in the mak­ing, “the doc­u­men­tary was the brain­child of Ben­jamin Brod­sky, a wide­ly trav­eled Russ­ian-born busi­ness­man who claimed to speak 11 lan­guages. Accord­ing to a 1912 Mov­ing Pic­ture World pro­file, the young entre­pre­neur had moved to Chi­na from San Fran­cis­co after the 1906 Earth­quake and set up shop as a film exhibitor. Soon, as the Amer­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Vari­ety Film Exchange, he had a hand in dis­tri­b­u­tion and by 1909 branched into film pro­duc­tion in Shang­hai and Hong Kong. While jug­gling busi­ness inter­ests, he filmed his trav­els,” all of which took place not just before Chi­na’s eco­nom­ic rise, but before even the Com­mu­nist Rev­o­lu­tion.

Brod­sky brought 20,000 feet of neg­a­tives with him back to San Fran­cis­co, even­tu­al­ly cut­ting it down to ten reels, which would have run around one hour and 50 min­utes. Of this fea­ture-length trav­el­ogue film only cer­tain sec­tions sur­vive, but you can see them enhanced and col­orized with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in the video at the top of the post. (Some of an un-enhanced black-and-white print appears just above.) Bear in mind that col­ors you see are not, of course, the col­ors Brod­sky would have seen; there’s also some dis­cus­sion about whether the AI ren­dered cer­tain com­plex­ions unre­al­is­ti­cal­ly dark for the regions in which he shot these scenes. For Chi­na is quite a diverse place, not just in region­al land­scapes, cli­mates, and cul­tures, but also in the faces of its peo­ple: some­thing many West­ern­ers would­n’t have guessed in the nine­teen-tens — and for that mat­ter, some­thing a fair few of them don’t real­ize even today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold the Pho­tographs of John Thom­son, the First West­ern Pho­tog­ra­ph­er to Trav­el Wide­ly Through Chi­na (1870s)

A Trip Around the World in 1900: See Restored Footage Show­ing Life in New York, Lon­don, India, Japan, Chi­na & Beyond

Footage of Cities Around the World in the 1890s: Lon­don, Tokyo, New York, Venice, Moscow & More

Watch Life on the Streets of Tokyo in Footage Record­ed in 1913: Caught Between the Tra­di­tion­al and the Mod­ern

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

The Pho­to That Trig­gered China’s Dis­as­trous Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion (1966)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Rome in 1890 Captured in Color Photographs: The Colosseum, Forum, Trevi Fountain & More

in History, Photography, Travel | March 3rd, 2026

1890 Colosseum

For almost two hun­dred years, Eng­lish gen­tle­men could not con­sid­er their edu­ca­tion com­plete until they had tak­en the “Grand Tour” of Europe, usu­al­ly cul­mi­nat­ing in Naples, “raga­muf­fin cap­i­tal of the Ital­ian south,” writes Ian Thom­son at The Spec­ta­tor. Italy was usu­al­ly the pri­ma­ry focus, such that Samuel John­son remarked in 1776, per­haps with some irony, “a man who has not been to Italy is always con­scious of an infe­ri­or­i­ty.” The Roman­tic poets famous­ly wrote of their Euro­pean sojourns: Shel­ley, Byron, Wordsworth… each has his own “Grand Tour” sto­ry.

1890 Trevi Fountain

Shel­ley, who trav­eled with his wife Mary God­win and her step­sis­ter Claire Clair­mont, did not go to Italy, how­ev­er. And Byron sailed the Mediter­ranean on his Grand Tour, forced away from most of Europe by the Napoleon­ic wars. But in 1817, he jour­neyed to Rome, where he wrote the Fourth Can­to of Childe Harold’s Pil­grim­age:

Oh Rome! my coun­try! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone moth­er of dead empires! And con­trol
In their shut breasts their pet­ty mis­ery.

For the trav­el­ing artist and philoso­pher, “Italy,” Thom­son writes, “pre­sent­ed a civ­i­liza­tion in ruins,” and we can see in all Roman­tic writ­ing the tremen­dous influ­ence visions of Rome and Pom­peii had on gen­tle­men poets like Byron. The Grand Tour, and jour­neys like it, per­sist­ed until the 1840s, when rail­roads “spelled the end of soli­tary aris­to­crat­ic trav­el.”

But even decades after­ward, we can see Rome (and Venice) the way Byron might have seen it—and almost, even, in full col­or. As we step into the vis­tas of these post­cards from 1890, we are far clos­er to Byron than we are to the Rome of our day, before Mussolini’s mon­u­ments, noto­ri­ous snarls of Roman traf­fic, and throngs of tourists.

1890 Trumphal Arch

“These post­cards of the ancient land­marks of Rome,” writes Mash­able, “were pro­duced… using the Pho­tochrom process, which adds pre­cise gra­da­tions of arti­fi­cial col­or to black and white pho­tos.” Invent­ed by Swiss print­er Orell Gess­ner Fus­sli, the process involved cre­at­ing lith­o­graph­ic stone from the negatives—“Up to 15 dif­fer­ent tint­ed stones could be involved in the pro­duc­tion of a sin­gle pic­ture, but the result was remark­ably life­like col­or at a time when true col­or pho­tog­ra­phy was still in its infan­cy.”

temple rome

The Library of Con­gress hosts forty eight of these images in their online cat­a­log, all down­load­able as high qual­i­ty jpegs or tiffs, and many, like the stun­ning image of the Colos­se­um at the top (see the inte­ri­or here), fea­tur­ing a pre-Pho­tocrom black and white print as well.

1890 San Lorenzo

Aside from a rare street scene, with an urban milieu look­ing very much from the 1890s, the pho­tographs are void of crowds. In the fore­ground of the Tri­umphal Arch fur­ther up we see a soli­tary woman with a bas­ket of pro­duce on her head. In the image of San Loren­zo, above, a tiny fig­ure walks away from the cam­era.

forum rome 1890

In most of these images—with their dream­like coloration—we can imag­ine Rome the way it looked not only in 1890, but also how it might have looked to bored aris­to­crats in the 17th and 18th centuries—and to pas­sion­ate Roman­tic poets in the ear­ly 19th, a place of raw nat­ur­al grandeur and sub­lime man-made decay. See the Library of Con­gress online cat­a­log to view and down­load all forty-eight of these post­cards.

1890 Great Cascade

 

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

Bring­ing Tsarist Rus­sia to Life: Vivid Col­or Images from 1905–1915

Beau­ti­ful, Col­or Pho­tographs of Paris Tak­en a Cen­tu­ry Ago—at the Begin­ning of World War I & the End of La Belle Époque

Behold the Very First Col­or Pho­to­graph (1861): Tak­en by Scot­tish Physi­cist & Poet James Clerk Maxwell

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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Mark Twain Makes a List of 60 American Comfort Foods He Missed While Traveling Abroad (1880)

in Food & Drink, Literature, Travel | October 8th, 2025

Think­ing of tak­ing a trip abroad? Or maybe relo­cat­ing for good? Amer­i­cans would do well, even 150 years hence, to attend to Mark Twain’s satir­i­cal account of U.S. trav­el­ers jour­ney­ing through Europe and Pales­tine, The Inno­cents Abroad. The “Amer­i­cans who are paint­ed to pecu­liar advan­tage by Mr. Clements” (sic), as fel­low Amer­i­can satirist William Dean How­ells wrote at the time, still roam the Earth—including trav­el­ers like one who “told the Eng­lish offi­cers that a cou­ple of our gun­boats could come and knock Gibral­tar into the Mediter­ranean Sea.” The tact­less­ness and bel­liger­ence Twain skew­ered do not feel his­tor­i­cal­ly so far from home.

Twain’s portraits—“somewhat car­i­ca­tured… or care­ful­ly and exact­ly done”—proved so pop­u­lar with read­ers that he fol­lowed up with an unof­fi­cial sequel, 1880s A Tramp Abroad, a some­what more seri­ous fic­tion­al­ized trav­el­ogue of Amer­i­cans jour­ney­ing through Europe; this time but two, Twain and his friend “Har­ris.” In the pre­vi­ous book, com­plained How­ells, the read­er learns “next to noth­ing about the pop­u­la­tion of the cities and the char­ac­ter of the rocks in the dif­fer­ent local­i­ties.” Here, with­out his com­e­dy troupe of trav­el­ing com­pan­ions, Twain directs his focus out­ward with minute descrip­tions of his sur­round­ings. He is, as usu­al, supreme­ly curi­ous, often per­plexed, but most­ly delight­ed by his expe­ri­ences. Except when it comes to the food.

Grow­ing “increas­ing­ly tired of an abun­dance of what he described as ‘fair-to-mid­dling’ food,” writes Lists of Note, Twain com­ments: “The num­ber of dish­es is suf­fi­cient; but then it is such a monot­o­nous vari­ety of UNSTRIKING dish­es […] Three or four months of this weary same­ness will kill the robustest appetite.” Hav­ing nev­er spent so long a time away, I can­not speak to Twain’s gus­ta­to­ry ennui, but I can relate, as no doubt can you, read­er, to miss­ing one or two famil­iar com­fort foods (as well as “sin­cere and capa­ble” ice water). Twain, per­haps not as adven­tur­ous an eater as he was a traveler—and in that sense also very much a mod­ern American—made “an enor­mous list of the foods he’d missed the most, of which were to be con­sumed when he arrived home.”

The list, below, is itself a kind of trav­el­ogue, through the vari­eties of 19th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can cui­sine, East, West, North, and South, includ­ing such del­i­ca­cies as “’Pos­sum” “Can­vas-back-duck from Bal­ti­more,” “Vir­ginia bacon, broiled,” “Prairie hens, from Illi­nois,” and “Brook trout, from Sier­ra Nevadas.” While we might pine for a region­al del­i­ca­cy or favorite processed food, Twain con­jured up in his mind’s gut a whole con­ti­nent of food to come home to. What kinds of food do you find your­self miss­ing when you trav­el? And how long a list might you find your­self mak­ing after sev­er­al months tramp­ing around in for­eign lands? Tell us in the com­ments sec­tion below. For now, here’s Twain’s list:

Radish­es. Baked apples, with cream
Fried oys­ters; stewed oys­ters. Frogs.
Amer­i­can cof­fee, with real cream.
Amer­i­can but­ter.
Fried chick­en, South­ern style.
Porter-house steak.
Sarato­ga pota­toes.
Broiled chick­en, Amer­i­can style.
Hot bis­cuits, South­ern style.
Hot wheat-bread, South­ern style.
Hot buck­wheat cakes.
Amer­i­can toast. Clear maple syrup.
Vir­ginia bacon, broiled.
Blue points, on the half shell.
Cher­ry-stone clams.
San Fran­cis­co mus­sels, steamed.
Oys­ter soup. Clam Soup.
Philadel­phia Ter­apin soup.
Oys­ters roast­ed in shell-North­ern style.
Soft-shell crabs. Con­necti­cut shad.
Bal­ti­more perch.
Brook trout, from Sier­ra Nevadas.
Lake trout, from Tahoe.
Sheep-head and croak­ers, from New Orleans.
Black bass from the Mis­sis­sip­pi.
Amer­i­can roast beef.
Roast turkey, Thanks­giv­ing style.
Cran­ber­ry sauce. Cel­ery.
Roast wild turkey. Wood­cock.
Can­vas-back-duck, from Bal­ti­more.
Prairie hens, from Illi­nois.
Mis­souri par­tridges, broiled.
‘Pos­sum. Coon.
Boston bacon and beans.
Bacon and greens, South­ern style.
Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips.
Pump­kin. Squash. Aspara­gus.
But­ter beans. Sweet pota­toes.
Let­tuce. Suc­co­tash. String beans.
Mashed pota­toes. Cat­sup.
Boiled pota­toes, in their skins.
New pota­toes, minus the skins.
Ear­ly rose pota­toes, roast­ed in the ash­es, South­ern style, served hot.
Sliced toma­toes, with sug­ar or vine­gar. Stewed toma­toes.
Green corn, cut from the ear and served with but­ter and pep­per.
Green corn, on the ear.
Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, South­ern style.
Hot hoe-cake, South­ern style.
Hot egg-bread, South­ern style.
Hot light-bread, South­ern style.
But­ter­milk. Iced sweet milk.
Apple dumplings, with real cream.
Apple pie. Apple frit­ters.
Apple puffs, South­ern style.
Peach cob­bler, South­ern style
Peach pie. Amer­i­can mince pie.
Pump­kin pie. Squash pie.
All sorts of Amer­i­can pas­try.
Fresh Amer­i­can fruits of all sorts, includ­ing straw­ber­ries which are not to be doled out as if they were jew­el­ry, but in a more lib­er­al way. 
Ice-water—not pre­pared in the inef­fec­tu­al gob­let, but in the sin­cere and capa­ble refrig­er­a­tor.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore an Online Archive of 12,700 Vin­tage Cook­books

The Only Footage of Mark Twain: The Orig­i­nal & Dig­i­tal­ly Restored Films Shot by Thomas Edi­son

Mark Twain Drafts the Ulti­mate Let­ter of Com­plaint (1905)

Mark Twain Cre­ates a List of His Favorite Books For Adults & Kids (1887)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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Why Are the Names of British Towns & Cities So Hard to Pronounce?: A Humorous But Informative Primer

in History, Language, Travel | February 18th, 2025

When they make their first transocean­ic voy­age, more than a few Amer­i­cans choose to go to Eng­land, on the assump­tion that, what­ev­er cul­ture shock they might expe­ri­ence, at least none of the dif­fi­cul­ties will be lin­guis­tic. Only when it’s too late do they dis­cov­er the true mean­ing of the old line about being sep­a­rat­ed by a com­mon lan­guage. Take place names, not just in Eng­land but even more so across the whole of Great Britain. How would you pro­nounce, for instance, Beaulieu, Ramp­isham, Mouse­hole, Tow­ces­ter, Gotham, Quern­more, Alnwick, or Frome?

There’s a good chance that you got most of those wrong, even if you’re not Amer­i­can. But as explained in the Map Men video above, bona fide Brits also have trou­ble with some of them: a few years ago, the decep­tive­ly straight­for­ward-look­ing Frome came out on top of a domes­tic sur­vey of the most mis­pro­nounced names. If you’re keen on mak­ing your expe­ri­ence in Great Britain some­what less embar­rass­ing, what­ev­er your nation­al­i­ty, the Map Men have put togeth­er a humor­ous guide to the rules of “prop­er” place-name pro­nun­ci­a­tion — such as they exist — as well as an expla­na­tion of the his­tor­i­cal fac­tors that orig­i­nal­ly made it so coun­ter­in­tu­itive.

The evo­lu­tion of the Eng­lish lan­guage itself has some­thing to do with it, involv­ing as it does “a base of Ger­man­ic Anglo-Sax­on,” a “healthy dash of Old Norse,” a “huge dol­lop of Nor­man French,” and “just a fair­ly detectable hint of Celtic.” British place names reflect its his­to­ry of set­tle­ment and inva­sion, the old­est of them being Celtic in ori­gin (the dread­ed Frome, for exam­ple), fol­lowed by Latin, then Ger­man­ic Anglo-Sax­on (result­ing in cities with names like Nor­wich, whose silent W I nev­er seem to pro­nounce silent­ly enough to sat­is­fy an Eng­lish­man), then Norse.

After cen­turies and cen­turies of sub­se­quent shifts in pro­nun­ci­a­tion with­out cor­re­spond­ing changes in spelling, you arrive in a coun­try “lit­tered with pho­net­ic boo­by traps.” It could all seem like a reflec­tion of the char­ac­ter­is­tic British anti-log­ic diag­nosed, not with­out a note of pride, by George Orwell. But trav­el­ing Amer­i­cans gassed up on their per­cep­tions of their own rel­a­tive prac­ti­cal­i­ty should take a long, hard look at a map of the Unit­ed States some time. Hav­ing grown up in Wash­ing­ton State, I ask this: who among you dares to pro­nounce the names of towns like Marysville, Puyallup, Yaki­ma, or Sequim?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wel­come to Llan­fair­p­wll­gwyn­gyll­gogerych­wyrn­drob­wl­l­l­lan­tysil­i­o­gogogoc, the Town with the Longest Name in Europe

The Growth of Lon­don, from the Romans to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

How Lon­dini­um Became Lon­don, Lute­tia Became Paris, and Oth­er Roman Cities Got Their Mod­ern Names

Hear the Evo­lu­tion of the Lon­don Accent Over 660 Years: From 1346 to 2006

The Entire His­to­ry of the British Isles Ani­mat­ed: 42,000 BCE to Today

The Atlas of True Names Restores Mod­ern Cities to Their Mid­dle Earth-ish Roots

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The 63 Cuisines of China Explained in 40 Minutes: A Complete Primer

in Food & Drink, Travel | December 6th, 2024

Wher­ev­er in the world you grew up, you prob­a­bly grew up with an inac­cu­rate idea of Chi­nese food. For Amer­i­cans, it can come as a shock to hear that such famil­iar dish­es as chop suey and Gen­er­al Tso’s chick­en are unknown in Chi­na itself. By the same token, almost every coun­try in the world has devel­oped its own con­cept of “Chi­nese food” geared, some­times out­landish­ly, to local tastes. But it could be said that the aver­age Chi­nese per­son in Chi­na also has a skewed idea of their nation­al cui­sine, because they see it through the lens of their own region­al cui­sine — of which, accord­ing to the Chi­nese Cook­ing Demys­ti­fied video above, there are at least 63.

In just 40 min­utes, the chan­nel’s co-host Chris Thomas broad­ly explains all of those cuisines, from the six eat­en in Guang­dong alone to the var­i­ous fusions avail­able in the vast-unto-itself region of Inner Mon­go­lia.

Along the way, he high­lights such rep­re­sen­ta­tive dish­es as beer fish, blood duck, “steamed dou­ble stinky,” lion’s head meat­ball, braised don­key sand­wich, “ol’ bud­dy noo­dles,” lamp-shaped rice cake, hairy tofu, and “every­body’s favorite, penis fish.” Of course, quite a few of the items in between will seem more famil­iar to view­ers who’ve nev­er delib­er­ate­ly sought out “authen­tic” Chi­nese food: even Peking duck, it turns out, belongs in that cat­e­go­ry.

Still, the fla­vors of the Peking duck you can get in Bei­jing sure­ly beat out those of the ver­sions avail­able in, say, Den­ver.  If you want to taste them, as Thomas explains at the video’s end, “you should trav­el to main­land Chi­na. Is it the eas­i­est place in the world to trav­el to? No. If you don’t know Chi­nese, the lan­guage bar­ri­er can get intense” (though you might con­sid­er start­ing to learn it with the resources we’ve round­ed up here on Open Cul­ture). But “if you want easy, go to Dis­ney­land”; if you want to expe­ri­ence “mind-numb­ing culi­nary diver­si­ty,” it’s time to start plan­ning your eat­ing jour­ney through the Mid­dle King­dom — and there are hun­dreds more Chi­nese Cook­ing Demys­ti­fied videos avail­able to make you hun­gry.

Note: Chi­nese Cook­ing Demys­ti­fied has a relat­ed post on their Sub­stack. Titled “63 Chi­nese Cuisines: the Com­plete Guide,” the post fea­tures help­ful maps and com­men­tary. It’s worth check­ing out.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

China’s 8,000 Ter­ra­cot­ta War­riors: An Ani­mat­ed & Inter­ac­tive Intro­duc­tion to a Great Archae­o­log­i­cal Dis­cov­ery

The First Amer­i­can Cook­book: Sam­ple Recipes from Amer­i­can Cook­ery (1796)

Bob Dylan Pota­to Chips, Any­one?: What They’re Snack­ing on in Chi­na

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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