An Introduction to the Codex Seraphinianus, the Strangest Book Ever Published

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Imag­ine you could talk to Hierony­mus Bosch, the authors of the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, or of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script—a bizarre 15th cen­tu­ry text writ­ten in an uncrack­able code; that you could solve cen­turies-old mys­ter­ies by ask­ing them, “what were you think­ing?” You might be dis­ap­point­ed to hear them say, as…

Thomas Jefferson’s Handwritten Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe

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Here’s anoth­er thing you can cred­it Thomas Jef­fer­son with: being the first known Amer­i­can to record an ice cream recipe. It’s one of 10 sur­viv­ing recipes writ­ten by the found­ing father.

Accord­ing to Monticello.org, ice cream began appear­ing “in French cook­books start­ing in the late 17th cen­tu­ry, and in Eng­lish-lan­guage cook­books…

A Tour Inside the Chelsea Hotel: Once Home to Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen & More

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We’ve all stayed at the Chelsea Hotel, though most of us have done so only in our minds, through such cul­tur­al arti­facts as Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” Bob Dylan’s “Sara,” Nico’s “Chelsea Girls,” Andy Warhol’s epony­mous film that includes the Nico song, or Pat­ti Smith’s Just Kids, which tells of the…

How the Golden Gate Bridge Was Built: A 3D Animated Introduction

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Built dur­ing the depths of the Great Depres­sion (from 1933 to 1937), the Gold­en Gate Bridge became the longest and tallest sus­pen­sion bridge in the world. Dur­ing its con­struc­tion, work­ers bat­tled harsh con­di­tions — strong winds, thick fog, and the risk of plung­ing into the San Fran­cis­co Bay. 11 souls per­ished. Like­wise, the

The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead: A Guidebook for Surviving the Afterlife

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The say­ing “You can’t take it with you” may be a cliché to all of us here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, but it would hard­ly have made sense to an ancient Egypt­ian. One of the most wide­ly known qual­i­ties of that civ­i­liza­tion’s upper crust, after all, is that its mem­bers spared no expense try­ing to…