The Open Culture Email: How Jackie Chan Filmed the Best Fight Scene in Cinema History

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How Jackie Chan Filmed the Best Fight Scene in Cinema History

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Though now in his seventies, Jackie Chan continues to appear on the big screen with regularity. For most world-famous actors, that’s hardly notable, but it’s not as if Sir John Gielgud, say, had spent decades filming scenes of hand-to-hand combat and sustaining severe injuries in the performance of elaborate stunts. Viewers of New Police Story…

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The First Photograph Ever Taken (1826)

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In histories of early photography, Louis Daguerre faithfully appears as one of the fathers of the medium. His patented process, the daguerreotype, in wide use for nearly twenty years in the early 19th century, produced so many of the images we associate with the period, including famous photographs of Abraham…

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The Story Told on the Famous Bayeux Tapestry Explained from Start to Finish

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They say that history is written by the victors, but that isn’t always true: sometimes it’s embroidered by the victors. Such was the case with the Bayeux Tapestry, which commemorates the build-up to and successful execution of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Created not long after the events it depicts in…

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A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert

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Back in 2008, Bob Boilen (host of All Songs Considered) and NPR music critic Stephen Thompson attended a noisy concert where they struggled to hear Laura Gibson perform. Jokingly, Thompson suggested that Gibson perform at Boilen’s office desk instead. She did. And, with that, the NPR Tiny Desk Concert was born. Since then,…

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The Entire History of English in 22 Minutes

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When we speak English, we might say we’re speaking the language of Samuel Johnson, the man who wrote its first dictionary. Or we could say we’re speaking the language of Shakespeare, who coined more English terms than any other individual in history. It would make just as much sense to describe ourselves as speaking the…

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