Behold the First Realistic Depiction of the Human Face (Circa 25,000 BCE)

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In 1894, archae­ol­o­gist Édouard Piette dis­cov­ered the “Venus of Brassem­pouy,” oth­er­wise known as the “Lady with the Hood.” Unearthed in south­west­ern France and dat­ing to around 25,000 BCE, this carv­ing rep­re­sents the ear­li­est real­is­tic depic­tion of a human face. The figure’s fore­head, nose, and brows are care­ful­ly carved in relief, as is the hair,…

The Greatest Double Agent Ever: How a Spanish Chicken Farmer Became the Most Important Double Agent in WWII

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Juan Pujol Gar­cía was one of the rare indi­vid­u­als whose par­tic­i­pa­tion in World War II made him a Mem­ber of the Order of the British Empire and earned him the Iron Cross. He gained that unlike­ly dis­tinc­tion in per­haps the riski­est of all roles in espi­onage, that of a dou­ble agent. Despite ulti­mate­ly work­ing for the Allied cause, he cre­at­ed an elab­o­rate fic­tion­al per­sona — com­plete with an invent­ed spy net­work oper­at­ing across Great Britain — who pro­fessed loy­al­ty to the Nazi cause. Not only did Pujol get this char­ac­ter plugged into the real Ger­man intel­li­gence sys­tem, he also got him on its pay­roll, receiv­ing what came to the equiv­a­lent of more than $6 mil­lion in today’s U.S. dol­lars for sup­ply­ing infor­ma­tion — infor­ma­tion that ulti­mate­ly con­tributed to the Axis’ loss of the war.

The sto­ry of how this chick­en farmer from Barcelona became the most impor­tant dou­ble agent of World War II is told in the ani­mat­ed Pri­mal Space video above. Unlike many of the spies his­to­ry has remem­bered more clear­ly, Pujol did­n’t begin his espi­onage career in […]

How Fritz Lang’s Metropolis Created the Blueprint for Modern Science Fiction (1927)

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A vast, mis­er­able pro­le­tari­at squan­ders its days in mean­ing­less toil. Soci­ety is under the con­trol of ultra-wealthy busi­ness mag­nates. In order to paci­fy the under­class, the rul­ing class pins its hopes on a tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion: arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Wel­come to the year 2026, as envi­sioned in Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis. When the film pre­miered, not long after…

What Did the Instruments in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights Sound Like? Oxford Scholars Recreate Them

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Wel­come to The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights.

You’ll find no angel­ic strings here.

Those are reserved for first-class cit­i­zens whose vir­tu­ous lives earned them pas­sage to the upper­most heights.

Down below, stringed instru­ments pro­duce the most hell­ish sort of cacoph­o­ny, a fit­ting accom­pa­ni­ment for the horn whose bell is…

How Medieval Cathedrals Were Built Without Science, or Even Mathematics

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Sci­ence and engi­neer­ing may be con­flat­ed to some degree in the pub­lic mind, but any­one who’s spent much time in an aca­d­e­m­ic depart­ment belong­ing to one or the oth­er of those branch­es of endeav­or knows how insis­tent­ly dis­tinc­tions can be drawn between them. Bill Ham­mack, a pro­fes­sor of engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois…