On Sep­tem­ber 26, 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon appeared in Amer­i­ca’s first nation­al­ly tele­vised pres­i­den­tial debate, an event wit­nessed by some 70 mil­lion Amer­i­cans. Although radio lis­ten­ers thought that Nixon hand­i­ly won the debate (48% v. 21%), tele­vi­sion view­ers gave the edge to Kennedy (30% v. 29%) – the even­tu­al win­ner of the elec­tion. On that Sep­tem­ber night, pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics entered the tele­vi­sion age and nev­er looked back.

Thanks to the YouTube Chan­nel spon­sored by the JFK Pres­i­den­tial Library, you can now revis­it this his­tor­i­cal moment, along with oth­er key footage from the Kennedy pres­i­den­cy. Tak­ing a tour of the chan­nel, you will find Kennedy giv­ing his inau­gur­al address, mak­ing the strong case for civ­il rights, con­fronting the real­i­ty of nuclear war, and urg­ing Amer­i­ca to win the race to the moon.  The JFK video col­lec­tion now appears on our grow­ing list of Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels.

Long ago, in the ancient civ­i­liza­tion of Mesopotamia, Akka­di­an was the dom­i­nant lan­guage. And, for cen­turies, it remained the lin­gua fran­ca in the Ancient Near East. But then it was grad­u­al­ly squeezed out by Ara­ma­ic, and it fad­ed into obliv­ion once Alexan­der the Great Hel­l­enized (Greek­i­fied) the region.

Now, 2,000+ years lat­er, Akka­di­an is mak­ing a small come­back. At Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, Dr. Mar­tin Wor­thing­ton, an expert in Baby­lon­ian and Assyr­i­an gram­mar, has start­ed record­ing read­ings of poems, myths and oth­er texts in Akka­di­an, includ­ing The Epic of Gil­gamesh. This clip gives you a taste of what Gil­gamesh, one of the ear­li­est known works of lit­er­a­ture, sounds like in its moth­er tongue. Or, you can jump into the full col­lec­tion of read­ings right here.

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via Her­itage Key

Relat­ed Con­tent:

World Lit­er­a­ture in 13 Parts: From Gil­gamesh to Gar­cía Márquez

The Ancient His­to­ry Learn­ing Guide

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’