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Hunter S. Thompson Sets His Christmas Tree on Fire, Nearly Burning His House Down (1990), A Visual Timeline of World History: Watch the Rise & Fall of Civilizations Over 5,000 Years ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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Who doesn’t treasure a handmade present?
As the years go by, we may begin to offload the ill-fitting sweaters, the never lit sand cast candles, and the Styrofoam ball snowmen. But a present made of words takes up very little space, and it has the Ghost of Christmas Past’s power to instantly…
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It was something of a Christmas ritual at Hunter S. Thompson’s Colorado cabin, Owl Farm. Every year, his secretary Deborah Fuller would take down the Christmas tree and leave it on the front porch rather than dispose of it entirely. That’s because Hunter, more often than not, wanted to set it on fire. In…
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In the video above, UsefulCharts creator Matt Baker suggests that we not refer to the period spanning the fifth and the late fifteenth centuries as the “dark ages.” In justification, he doesn’t put forth the argument, now fairly common, that the time in question was actually full of subtle innovation occluded by modern prejudice.…
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A century ago, the great French composer Claude Debussy sat down at a contraption called a Welte-Mignon reproducing piano and recorded a series of performances for posterity. The machine was designed to encode the nuances of a pianist’s playing, including pedaling and dynamics, onto piano rolls for later reproduction.
Debussy recorded 14 pieces onto…
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When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they declared the beginning of a “Thousand-Year Reich” that ultimately came up about 988 years short. Fascism in Italy managed to hold on to power for a couple of decades, which was presumably still much less time than Benito Mussolini imagined he’d get on the throne. History shows…
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