The Earliest Known Appearance of the F‑Word (1310)

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Pho­to by Paul Booth

You val­ue deco­rum, pro­pri­ety, elo­quence, you trea­sure le mot juste and ago­nize over dic­tion as you com­pose polite but strong­ly-word­ed let­ters to the edi­tor. But alas, my lit­er­ate friend, you have the mis­for­tune of liv­ing in the age of Twit­ter, Tum­blr, et al., where the favored means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion…

The Technology That Brought Down Medieval Castles and Changed the Middle Ages

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Civ­i­liza­tion moved past the use of cas­tles long ago, but their imagery endures in pop­u­lar cul­ture. Even young chil­dren here in the twen­ty-twen­ties have an idea of what cas­tles look like. But why do they look like that? Admit­ted­ly, that’s a bit of a trick ques­tion: the pop­u­lar con­cept of cas­tles tends to be inspired…

How Erik Satie Invented Modern Music: A Visual Explanation

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Once you hear Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, you nev­er for­get it. Not that pop­u­lar cul­ture would let you for­get it: the piece has been, and con­tin­ues to be, rein­ter­pret­ed and sam­pled by musi­cians work­ing in a vari­ety of gen­res from pop to elec­tron­ic to met­al. In ver­sions that sound close to what Satie would…

Browse Thousands of Free Vintage Cocktail Recipes Online (1705–1951)

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Where do the hip­ster mixol­o­gists of Tokyo, Mex­i­co City and Brook­lyn take their inspi­ra­tion?

If not from the Expo­si­tion Uni­verselle des Vins et Spir­itueux’ free col­lec­tion of dig­i­tized vin­tage cock­tail recipe books, per­haps they should start.

An ini­tia­tive of the Muse­um of Wine and Spir­its on the Ile de Ben­dor in South­east­ern France, the col­lec­tion is a boon…

The Advanced Technology of Ancient Rome: Automatic Doors, Water Clocks, Vending Machines & More

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Ancient Rome nev­er had an indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion. Grant­ed, cer­tain his­to­ri­ans have object­ed now and again to that once-set­tled claim, ges­tur­ing toward large heaps of pot­tery dis­cov­ered in garbage dumps and oth­er such arti­facts clear­ly pro­duced in large num­bers. Still, the fact remains that Ancient Rome nev­er had an indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion of the kind that fired…