The Story of The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” the Boozy Ballad That Became a Beloved Christmas Song

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Note: With the recent pass­ing of Shane Mac­gowan, we’re bring­ing back a post from 2018 and revis­it­ing The Pogues’ song “Fairy­tale of New York.” The off­beat Christ­mas clas­sic is cur­rent­ly #5 on the Bill­board Sin­gles Chart in the UK.

Drug­store Cow­boy, Barfly, Leav­ing Las Vegas, even Bon­nie and Clyde… we love a good…

How Pantone Became the Global Authority on Color

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Pan­tone has declared “Peach Fuzz” the Col­or of the Year. This selec­tion, how­ev­er, rais­es the ques­tion: How did Pan­tone become the glob­al author­i­ty on col­or? Above, the Wall Street Jour­nal describes how Pan­tone began as a com­mer­cial print­ing com­pa­ny dur­ing the 1950s. Then, in the ear­ly 60s, it evolved into some­thing quite dif­fer­ent. Rec­og­niz­ing…

Hear the Haunting Aztec “Death Whistle,” the Instrument That Made Sounds Resembling a Human Scream

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The received image of the Aztecs, with their sav­age bat­tles and fre­quent acts of human sac­ri­fice, tends to imply a vio­lence-sat­u­rat­ed, death-obsessed cul­ture. Giv­en that, it will hard­ly come as a sur­prise to learn of an Aztec musi­cal instru­ment dis­cov­ered in the hands of a sac­ri­ficed human body, or that the instru­ment has come to…

Why Abel Gance’s 1927 Napoléon Is “the Most Creative Film Ever Made”

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Since it came out this past Novem­ber, Rid­ley Scot­t’s Napoleon has drawn a vari­ety of crit­i­cal reac­tions. What­ev­er else can be said about it, it cer­tain­ly takes a dif­fer­ent tack from past depic­tions of that par­tic­u­lar French Emper­or. It was, per­haps, Scot­t’s good luck not to have to go up against the Napoleon…

The History of Cartography, the “Most Ambitious Overview of Map Making Ever,” Is Free Online

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FYI: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press has made avail­able online — at no cost –five vol­umes of The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy. Or what Edward Roth­stein, of The New York Times, called “the most ambi­tious overview of map mak­ing ever under­tak­en.” He con­tin­ues:

Peo­ple come to know the world the way they…