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

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From today’s van­tage, the first decade of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry can look like an even more dis­tant peri­od of his­to­ry than it is. In many cor­ners of urban civ­i­liza­tion, the cabarets, tea­rooms, and oth­er near-par­a­lyt­i­cal­ly man­nered insti­tu­tions of the Belle Époque were very much going con­cerns. To those who lived in that era, it must…

Hermann Rorschach’s Original Rorschach Test: What Do You See? (1921)

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There is a well-known scene in Woody Allen’s Take The Mon­ey And Run (1969) when Vir­gil Stark­well (Allen) takes a psy­cho­log­i­cal test to join the Navy, but is thwart­ed by his las­civ­i­ous uncon­scious. The psy­cho­log­i­cal mea­sure that proves to be Starkwell’s undoing—rejected, he turns to a life of crime—is the Rorschach inkblot test, devised a…

When CBS Canceled The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour for Criticizing the American Establishment and the Vietnam War (1969)

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Rig­or­ous­ly clean-cut, com­pe­tent on the acoustic gui­tar and dou­ble bass, and sel­dom dressed in any­thing more dar­ing than cher­ry-red blaz­ers, Tom and Dick Smoth­ers looked like the antithe­sis of nine­teen-six­ties rebel­lion. When they first gained nation­al recog­ni­tion with their vari­ety show The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour, they must have come off to many young…

Explore the Fascinating Map of Fungi: An Introduction to the Vast Mushroom Kingdom

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Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Domain of Sci­ence’s elab­o­rate info­graph­ic maps of such vast fields of intel­lec­tu­al endeav­or as math­e­mat­ics, physics, com­put­er sci­ence, quan­tum physics, quan­tum com­put­ing, chem­istry, biol­o­gy, and med­i­cine. Over time, the series’ cre­ator Dominic Wal­li­man has branched out, as it were,…

How to Write in Cuneiform, the Oldest Writing System in the World: A Short Introduction

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Teach­ing child vis­i­tors how to write their names using an unfa­mil­iar or antique alpha­bet is a favorite activ­i­ty of muse­um edu­ca­tors, but Dr. Irv­ing Finkel, a cuneiform expert who spe­cial­izes in ancient Mesopotami­an med­i­cine and mag­ic, has grander designs.

His employ­er, the British Muse­um, has over 130,000 tablets span­ning Mesopotamia’s Ear­ly Dynas­tic…