How Toilets Worked in Ancient Rome and Medieval England

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How­ev­er detailed they may be in oth­er respects, many accounts of dai­ly life cen­turies and cen­turies ago pass over the use of the toi­let in silence. Even if they did­n’t, they would­n’t involve the kind of toi­lets we would rec­og­nize today, but rather cham­ber pots, out­hous­es, and oth­er kinds of spe­cial­ized rooms with chutes emp­ty­ing…

When The Who Blew Up The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967

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From 1967 to 1969, Tom and Dick Smoth­ers host­ed The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour, a polite­ly edgy com­e­dy show that test­ed the bound­aries of main­stream tele­vi­sion and the patience of CBS exec­u­tives. Play­ing to a younger demo­graph­ic, the show took posi­tions against the Viet­nam War and for the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, while fea­tur­ing musi­cal…

Behold the “Double Helix” Staircase Often Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci: It Features Two Intertwined Spiral Staircases That Let People Ascend & Descend Without Obstructing Each Other

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Image by Zairon, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Among the non-wine-relat­ed points of inter­est in the Loire Val­ley, the Château de Cham­bord stands tall — or rather, both tall and wide, being eas­i­ly the largest château in the region. “A Unesco World Her­itage site with more than 400 rooms, includ­ing recep­tion halls, kitchens,…

Two Ways To Shoot The Same Scene: A Comparison of The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and You’ve Got Mail (1998) Shows How Filmmaking Changed Over the Decades

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Some years ago, the Guardian’s Anne T. Don­ahue rec­om­mend­ed, as an alter­na­tive Christ­mas movie, Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail from 1998. “Admit­ted­ly, You’ve Got Mail takes place from Octo­ber to spring,” she writes, “but what mat­ters most is that the movie’s most com­pelling scenes — when Joe Fox (Tom Han­ks) dis­cov­ers that Kath­leen Kel­ly…

For 500 Years, Every Student Who Attained a BA from Oxford Had to Swear Enmity Towards a Person Named Henry Symeonis

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Image via The Bodleian Library

If you were to ask a cer­tain kind of Eng­lish­man what sets his home­land apart from the rest of the world, he might point to the strength of its tra­di­tions. And what holds true for Eng­land itself holds even truer for its most renowned insti­tu­tions, espe­cial­ly its…