Harvard’s 1869 Entrance Exam: Could You Answer Tough Questions About Latin, Greek, Ancient History, Plane Geometry & More

in Education, Harvard, History | June 10th, 2026

In 2025, Har­vard once again began ask­ing appli­cants to sub­mit an SAT or ACT score. This was a rever­sal of the no-test-nec­es­sary pol­i­cy that it and quite a few oth­er Amer­i­can col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties adopt­ed dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. To some observers of high­er edu­ca­tion, the dis­ap­pear­ance of the stan­dard­ized-test require­ment came as a shock, though in a sense, it was­n’t with­out prece­dent. Until the mid-nine­teen-tens, Har­vard had appli­cants take its own entrance exam, since no stan­dard­ized test exist­ed. One exam­ple from 1869, which you can see here, eval­u­at­ed stu­dents on their pro­fi­cien­cy in Latin, Greek, his­to­ry and geog­ra­phy, arith­metic, alge­bra, and plane geom­e­try.

The idea was­n’t so much to eval­u­ate the test-tak­er’s rea­son­ing abil­i­ties as to make sure he’d already under­gone the expect­ed edu­ca­tion for his class. Even so, as the New York Times’ Ali­son Leigh Cow­an notes, “col­leges occa­sion­al­ly allowed prospects to cor­rect defi­cien­cies as a con­di­tion of admis­sion.”

This reflects the very dif­fer­ent role high­er edu­ca­tion played in Amer­i­can life a cen­tu­ry and a half ago than it does today: back then, Har­vard admit­ted 185 out of 210 appli­cants; last year, it admit­ted 1,968 out of 57,435. As the coun­try indus­tri­al­ized, col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties changed accord­ing­ly: exist­ing ones grew, many new ones appeared, and a greater and greater per­cent­age of stu­dents sub­mit­ted to a process sur­round­ing ter­tiary edu­ca­tion that even­tu­al­ly came to seem machine-like itself.

To col­lege-apply­ing stu­dents today, the 1869 entrance exam may not look entire­ly unfa­mil­iar, at least to the extent that it asks ques­tions about math­e­mat­ics. Chances are, how­ev­er, that no cur­rent Har­vard hope­ful, no mat­ter how intel­li­gent, could actu­al­ly pass the test, giv­en the weight it places on clas­si­cal lan­guages. Through­out the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry and up until World War I, all young gen­tle­men got an edu­ca­tion in Latin and ancient Greek. But when both start­ed to van­ish from col­lege-admis­sions exams, espe­cial­ly after the SAT grew dom­i­nant in the nine­teen-for­ties, so did the imme­di­ate incen­tive to learn them. Reflect though that does the exi­gen­cies of a rapid­ly chang­ing tech­no­log­i­cal soci­ety, it also makes one won­der how much some­one with no grasp of Latin or Greek real­ly under­stands Eng­lish: a ques­tion to which the col­lege stu­dents of recent decades pro­vide dispir­it­ing answers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Lets You Take 133 Free Online Cours­es: Explore Cours­es on Jus­tice, Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment, Lit­er­a­ture, Reli­gion, Comp­Sci & More

This Is What an 1869 MIT Entrance Exam Looks Like: Could You Have Passed the Test?

Can You Pass This Test Orig­i­nal­ly Giv­en to 8th Graders Liv­ing in Ken­tucky in 1912?

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Syl­labus Asked Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Lit­er­ary Works, Total­ing 6,000 Pages

Teacher Calls Jacques Derrida’s Col­lege Admis­sion Essay on Shake­speare “Quite Incom­pre­hen­si­ble” (1951)

Carl Sagan’s Syl­labus & Final Exam for His Course on Crit­i­cal Think­ing (Cor­nell, 1986)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Largest Bookshelf Tour Ever Filmed: Inside a Classicist’s 20,000-Volume Library

in Books, Education | June 1st, 2026

If you grew up in the last few gen­er­a­tions, chances are you did­n’t get much of an edu­ca­tion, if any, in Latin or ancient Greek. One long-made argu­ment for phas­ing them out of cur­ric­u­la in Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries holds that room must be made for Span­ish, Man­darin, and oth­er lan­guages actu­al­ly used at scale in the mod­ern world. Nowa­days, when even those class­es face the pres­sure of extinc­tion, advo­ca­cy for clas­si­cal lan­guages exudes an ever stronger con­trar­i­an appeal. “Dead” though they may be, they also live on through not just the Romance lan­guages, but also the mighty hege­mon known as Eng­lish. Indeed, it makes sense to ask whether an Anglo­phone with­out knowl­edge of Latin or Greek tru­ly under­stands his own native tongue.

Nor, accord­ing to clas­si­cist David But­ter­field, can one learn Latin with­out hav­ing any Greek. Get­ting a han­dle on both of those lan­guages and their sur­viv­ing body of texts isn’t just the work of a life­time; it also fills a house, as evi­denced by the two-and-a-half-hour video tour of But­ter­field­’s per­son­al library above. (The sub­se­quent two hours con­tain But­ter­field­’s intro­duc­tions to a selec­tion of par­tic­u­lar vol­umes from his many shelves.) Youtu­ber Tim­o­thy Ken­ny has pre­vi­ous­ly uploaded quite a few such videos on the col­lec­tions of seri­ous bib­lio­philes, but this one he describes as the largest ever attempt­ed, includ­ing the com­plete Loeb Clas­si­cal Library, I Tat­ti Renais­sance Library, and Pauly-Wis­sowa ency­clo­pe­dias.

Yet accord­ing to But­ter­field him­self, a young man by the stan­dards of his pro­fes­sion and spe­cial­ty, he’s still got a lot of col­lect­ing to do. He’s only about 80 per­cent of the way to a full set of Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press’ Very Short Intro­duc­tions, a series through which I’ve been grad­u­al­ly mak­ing my own way in recent years. Hav­ing found that its books offer “a real­ly good view of what­ev­er the top­ic or per­son is,” he decid­ed to “col­lect all the vol­umes that inter­est­ed me. And that emerged to be more than I thought, because I am inter­est­ed in almost every­thing.” But with all of us, no mat­ter how broad­ly curi­ous, some of his inter­ests are stronger than oth­ers, as one might expect from a man with the patience to amass a great amount of man­u­als for writ­ing Greek and Latin prose and verse made for school­boys (and, often, con­tain­ing their doo­dles).

After spend­ing a cou­ple of decades at Cam­bridge, But­ter­field crossed the Atlantic to go from one of the old­est insti­tu­tions of high­er edu­ca­tion to one of the very newest. He’s now Provost of and Pro­fes­sor of Latin at Ral­ston Col­lege in Savan­nah, Geor­gia, which received its first cohort of stu­dents in 2022. With its mas­ter’s degree pro­gram close­ly focused on ancient, medieval and mod­ern lit­er­a­ture and art con­sid­ered foun­da­tion­al to West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, it seems like the kind of insti­tu­tion designed to attract some­one like But­ter­field, who was already win­ning prizes for his library in or short­ly after his col­lege days. “I can’t see myself relax­ing until I have accu­mu­lat­ed around 10,000 books,” he said in a 2008 inter­view. His home, as cap­tured in Ken­ny’s video, now con­tains dou­ble that amount, but the thu­mos clear­ly has­n’t desert­ed him just yet.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Umber­to Eco Walk Through His Immense Pri­vate Library: It Goes On, and On, and On!

Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Per­son­al Library

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Jane Austen’s Library

Dis­cov­er the 1126 Books in John Cage’s Per­son­al Library: Fou­cault, Joyce, Wittgen­stein, Vir­ginia Woolf, Buck­min­ster Fuller & More

The 321 Books in David Fos­ter Wallace’s Per­son­al Library: From Blood Merid­i­an to Con­fes­sions of an Unlike­ly Body­builder

Why Learn Latin?: 5 Videos Make a Com­pelling Case That the “Dead Lan­guage” Is an “Eter­nal Lan­guage”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Hip 1960s Latin Teacher Translated Beatles Songs into Latin for His Students: Read Lyrics for “O Teneum Manum,” “Diei Duri Nox” & More

in Language, Music | June 1st, 2026

I’ve inter­act­ed with many enter­tain­ing lan­guage-learn­ing resources in var­i­ous classes—from minis­eries in Span­ish to com­ic books in French—all geared toward mak­ing the unfa­mil­iar lan­guage rel­e­vant to dai­ly life. Learn­ing coun­ter­in­tu­itive pro­nun­ci­a­tions, pars­ing a new sys­tem of gram­mar, or mem­o­riz­ing the gen­ders of word after word can be labo­ri­ous and intim­i­dat­ing in the class­room. Doing so in every­day pop cul­tur­al set­tings, not as much.

When it comes to the teach­ing of dead lan­guages, the resources can seem less approach­able. I cer­tain­ly appre­ci­ate the lit­er­ary and rhetor­i­cal genius of Vir­gil, Ovid, Horace, Cicero, and Julius Cae­sar. But dur­ing my high school years, I did not always find their work easy to read in Eng­lish, much less in for­mal clas­si­cal Latin. The ela­tion I felt after suc­cess­ful­ly trans­lat­ing a pas­sage was some­times damp­ened as I puz­zled over his­tor­i­cal notes and gloss­es that often left me with more ques­tions than answers.

That’s not at all to say that stu­dents of Latin shouldn’t be exposed to cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal con­text or read the finest exem­plars of the writ­ten lan­guage. Only that a break from the heavy stuff now and then goes a long way. Might I sub­mit to Latin instruc­tors one inge­nious tool from Eddie O’Hara, for­mer British Labour Par­ty MP and clas­sics teacher? O’Hara passed away in May 2016, and not long after his death, his son Ter­ry O’Hara tweet­ed these trans­la­tions of Bea­t­les songs (includ­ing two Christ­mas tunes) his father made in the 60s for his stu­dents. At the time, these were the height of pop cul­ture rel­e­vance, and, while a far cry from the com­plex­i­ties of the Aeneid, a fun way for Latin learn­ers to relate to a lan­guage that can seem cold and impos­ing.

I will admit, my Latin has fall­en into such a state that I can’t imme­di­ate­ly vouch for the accu­ra­cy or ele­gance of these trans­la­tions (“cue fierce argu­ments among Latin gram­mar­i­ans,” replies one Twit­ter user), but there’s no rea­son to doubt Mr. O’Hara knew his stuff. ““He was a born edu­ca­tor,” his son remem­bers, “He was a teacher and clas­si­cist by back­ground and he had a strong inter­est in edu­ca­tion­al mat­ters and Greek cul­tur­al her­itage.” Edu­cat­ed him­self at Mag­dalen Col­lege, Oxford, O’Hara taught at Perse School, Cam­bridge, Birken­head School, and in the ear­ly 70s, C.F. Mott Col­lege in the Bea­t­les’ own Liv­er­pool.

In addi­tion to his role as a states­man, the Liv­er­pool Echo remem­bers O’Hara’s many decades as “a pop­u­lar teacher who brought class­es to life trans­lat­ing Bea­t­les lyrics into Latin.” We do not have any indi­ca­tion of whether he actu­al­ly tried to sing the lyrics, though his stu­dents sure­ly must have attempt­ed it. What must the cho­rus of “All My Lov­ing” sound like as “Ita totum amorem dabo, Tibi totum, numquam cess­a­ba”? Or “She Loves You” as “Amat te, mehercle”? Singing them to myself, I can see that O’Hara was sen­si­tive to the meter of the orig­i­nal Eng­lish in his Latin ren­der­ings. But I’d real­ly love to see some­one set these to music and make a video. Any of our read­ers up to the chal­lenge?

Final­ly, since ear­ly six­ties Bea­t­les lyrics aren’t as like­ly to engage stu­dents in 2017, what pop cul­tur­al mate­r­i­al would you trans­late today—classics teach­ers out there—to reach the bemused, bewil­dered, and the bored? If you’re already hard at work using hip resources in the class­room, please do share them with us in the com­ments!

Note: To view the images in a larg­er for­mat, please click on the links to these indi­vid­ual images: Image 1 - Image 2 — Image 3. When the image opens, click on it again to zoom in.

Note 2: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Per­formed in Clas­si­cal Latin

Can Mod­ern-Day Ital­ians Under­stand Latin? A YouTu­ber Puts It to the Test on the Streets of Rome

They Might Be Giants’ John Lin­nell Releas­es an EP of Songs in Latin

The Sto­ry of Lorem Ipsum: How Scram­bled Text by Cicero Became Used by Type­set­ters Every­where

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

The Most Influential Philosophers Explained in 26 Minutes: From Socrates to Wittgenstein

in Philosophy | May 14th, 2026

The ques­tion of who are the fif­teen most influ­en­tial philoso­phers of all time may not arise at every con­ver­sa­tion down at the pub — not out­side the cir­cle of Open Cul­ture read­ers, in any case. But even among non-spe­cial­ists, it could spark a live­li­er debate than you might imag­ine. Names like Socrates, Aris­to­tle, Descartes, and Marx are known, after all, even among the gen­er­al pub­lic who’ve nev­er read a page of philo­soph­i­cal text. All of them appear in the mil­lion-viewed video from Jay­done His­to­ry above, which takes its own crack at nam­ing a top fif­teen. Its 26 min­utes also pro­vide a brief bio­graph­i­cal sketch of each one, infor­ma­tive if lit­tered with odd mis­pro­nun­ci­a­tions, plus a cap­sulized sense of these philoso­phers’ last­ing ideas.

In pur­suit of truth, Socrates cre­at­ed the ques­tion­ing method of dia­logue that bears his name. Pla­to, Socrates’ stu­dent, advo­cat­ed for rule by the enlight­ened and the pur­suit of knowl­edge through the con­tem­pla­tion of pure forms. Reject­ing Pla­to’s method, Aris­to­tle ded­i­cat­ed him­self to sys­tem­at­ic empir­i­cal obser­va­tion. On the oth­er side of the world, Con­fu­cius spread teach­ings about the cul­ti­va­tion of moral virtue to main­tain the social rela­tion­ships he saw as the basic build­ing blocks of civ­i­liza­tion­al order, which Chi­na even­tu­al­ly adopt­ed as its state phi­los­o­phy. Back in Europe, Augus­tine syn­the­sized Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and clas­si­cal phi­los­o­phy, lay­ing the ground­work for medieval thought. Thomas Aquinas, too, ded­i­cat­ed him­self to a com­bi­na­tion of faith and rea­son, mak­ing a suite of oft-cit­ed argu­ments for the exis­tence of God.

Seek­ing a foun­da­tion of absolute­ly cer­tain knowl­edge, René Descartes arrived at self-aware­ness, famous­ly declar­ing, “I think, there­fore I am” and artic­u­lat­ing his epony­mous dual­is­tic world­view. Even apart from his work on the nature of knowl­edge, John Locke’s thoughts on social orga­ni­za­tion and gov­ern­ment live on in Enlight­en­ment-influ­enced mod­ern democ­ra­cies even today. David Hume mount­ed fun­da­men­tal chal­lenges to estab­lished ideas of empiri­cism, ques­tion­ing our very notion that future events will mir­ror past expe­ri­ence. Jean-Jacques Rousseau intro­duced the con­cep­tion of legit­i­mate polit­i­cal author­i­ty as aris­ing from the “gen­er­al will,” a social agree­ment among free and equal indi­vid­u­als, which turned out to be cen­tral to the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of the French Rev­o­lu­tion. Immanuel Kant worked to bridge the gap between ratio­nal­ism and empiri­cism, rec­on­cil­ing the role of both expe­ri­ence and the mind’s phys­i­cal struc­ture to the for­ma­tion of knowl­edge.

Among oth­er con­cepts, Georg Wil­helm Friedrich Hegel defined that of dasein, which encap­su­lates the human mode of being (and which requires a life­time spent with his writ­ings to grasp, if even then). A pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ist and his­to­ri­an, Karl Marx described human his­to­ry through eco­nom­ic struc­tures and class strug­gle, and his vision of a per­fect­ly equal soci­ety ahead still remains com­pelling to many. Friedrich Niet­zsche declared that “God is dead,” plac­ing the bur­den of defin­ing moral­i­ty on man, and specif­i­cal­ly a fig­ure he called the Über­men­sch. Lud­wig Wittgen­stein took it upon him­self to explain the rela­tion­ship between lan­guage and real­i­ty with the high­est rig­or. In the com­ments, the video’s cre­ator teas­es a part two, which makes one won­der which philoso­phers will be includ­ed: Spin­oza? Hei­deg­ger? Sartre? The year and a half it’s tak­en so far is sure­ly long enough for the nar­ra­tor to have learned to pro­nounce them.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Watch Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to 35 Philoso­phers by The School of Life: From Pla­to to Kant and Fou­cault

Bryan Magee’s In-Depth, Uncut TV Con­ver­sa­tions With Famous Philoso­phers (1978–87)

28 Impor­tant Philoso­phers List the Books That Influ­enced Them Most Dur­ing Their Col­lege Days

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

The 20 Most Influ­en­tial Aca­d­e­m­ic Books of All Time: No Spoil­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

9 Things a Woman Couldn’t Do in 1971

in Gender, History | April 9th, 2026

More than a cen­tu­ry after women’s suf­frage in the Unit­ed States, it’s not enough to bone up on the plat­forms of female pri­ma­ry can­di­dates (though that’s an excel­lent start).

A Twit­ter user and self-described Old Crone named Robyn urged her fel­low Amer­i­cans to take a good long gan­der at a list of nine free­doms that women in the Unit­ed States were not uni­ver­sal­ly grant­ed in 1971, the year Helen Red­dy released the soon-to-be anthem, “I Am Woman,” above.

Even those of us who remem­ber singing along as chil­dren may expe­ri­ence some shock that these facts check out on Snopes.

1. CREDIT CARDS: Pri­or to the Equal Cred­it Oppor­tu­ni­ty Act of 1974, mar­ried women couldn’t get cred­it cards with­out their hus­bands’ sig­na­tures. Sin­gle women, divorcees, and wid­ows were often required to have a man co-sign. The dou­ble stan­dard also meant female appli­cants were fre­quent­ly issued card lim­its up to 50% low­er than that of males who earned iden­ti­cal wages.
2. PREGNANT WORKERS: The Preg­nan­cy Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act of 1978 pro­tect­ed preg­nant women from being fired because of their impend­ing mater­ni­ty. But it came with a major loop­hole that’s still in need of clos­ing. The lan­guage of the law stip­u­lates that employ­ers must accom­mo­date preg­nant work­ers only if con­ces­sions are being made for oth­er employ­ees who are “sim­i­lar in their abil­i­ty or inabil­i­ty to work.”
3. JURY DUTY: In 1975, the Supreme Court declared it con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly unac­cept­able for states to deny women the oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve on juries. This is an are­na where we’ve all come a long way, baby. It’s now com­plete­ly nor­mal for men to be excused from jury duty as the pri­ma­ry care­givers of their young chil­dren.
4. MILITARY COMBAT: In 2013, for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Leon Panet­ta and for­mer Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen­er­al Mar­tin Dempsey announced that the Pen­ta­gon was rescind­ing the direct com­bat exclu­sion rule that barred women from serv­ing in artillery, armor, infantry and oth­er such bat­tle roles. At the time of the announce­ment, the mil­i­tary had already seen more than 130 female sol­diers killed, and 800 wound­ed on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan.
5. IVY LEAGUE ADMISSIONS: Those who con­ceive of elite col­leges as breed­ing grounds for sex­u­al assault protests and Title IX activism would do well to remem­ber that Colum­bia Col­lege didn’t admit women until 1983, fol­low­ing in the mar­gin­al­ly deep­er foot­steps of oth­ers in the Ivy League—Harvard (1977), Dart­mouth (1972), Brown (1971), Yale (1969), and Prince­ton (1969). These days, sin­gle-sex high­er edu­ca­tion options for women far out­num­ber those for men, but the net­work­ing pow­er and increased earn­ing poten­tial an Ivy League degree con­fers remain the same.
6. WORKPLACE HARASSMENT: In 1977, women who’d been sex­u­al­ly harassed in the work­place received con­fir­ma­tion in three sep­a­rate tri­als that they could sue their employ­ers under Title VII of the 1964 Civ­il Rights Act. In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex harass­ment was also unlaw­ful. In between was the tele­vi­sion event of 1991, Ani­ta Hill’s shock­ing tes­ti­mo­ny against her for­mer boss, U.S. Supreme Court jus­tice (then nom­i­nee) Clarence Thomas.
7. SPOUSAL CONSENT: In 1993, spousal rape was offi­cial­ly out­lawed in all 50 states. Not tonight hon­ey, or you’ll have a headache in the form of your wife’s legal back­up.
8. HEALTH INSURANCE: In 2010, the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act decreed that any health insur­ance plan estab­lished after March of that year could not charge women high­er pre­mi­ums than men for iden­ti­cal ben­e­fits. This was bad news for women who got their health insur­ance through their jobs, and whose employ­ers were grand­fa­thered into dis­crim­i­na­to­ry plans estab­lished pri­or to 2010. Of course, that’s all ancient his­to­ry now.
9. CONTRACEPTIVES: In 1972, the Supreme Court made it legal for all cit­i­zens to pos­sess birth con­trol, irre­spec­tive of mar­i­tal sta­tus, stat­ing “if the right of pri­va­cy means any­thing, it is the right of the indi­vid­ual, mar­ried or sin­gle, to be free from unwar­rant­ed gov­ern­men­tal intru­sion into mat­ters so fun­da­men­tal­ly affect­ing a per­son as the deci­sion whether to bear or beget a child.” (It’s worth not­ing, how­ev­er, that in 1972, states could still con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­hib­it and pun­ish sex out­side of mar­riage.)

Fem­i­nism is NOT just for oth­er women.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

How the Bicy­cle Accel­er­at­ed the Women’s Rights Move­ment (Cir­ca 1890)

Odd Vin­tage Post­cards Doc­u­ment the Pro­pa­gan­da Against Women’s Rights 100 Years Ago

The Library of Con­gress Dig­i­tizes Over 16,000 Pages of Let­ters & Speech­es from the Women’s Suf­frage Move­ment, and You Can Help Tran­scribe Them

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

Discover the Retirement Home for Elderly Musicians Created by Giuseppe Verdi: Created in 1899, It Still Lives On Today

in Life, Music | April 2nd, 2026

Among my works, the one I like best is the Home that I have had built in Milan for accom­mo­dat­ing old singers not favored by for­tune, or who, when they were young did not pos­sess the virtue of sav­ing. Poor and dear com­pan­ions of my life! 

—Giuseppe Ver­di

Is there a rem­e­dy for the iso­la­tion of old age?

What about the jol­ly fra­ter­ni­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness of an art col­lege dorm, as envi­sioned by opera com­pos­er Giuseppe Ver­di?

Short­ly before his death, the com­pos­er donat­ed all roy­al­ties from his operas to the con­struc­tion and admin­is­tra­tion of a lux­u­ri­ous retreat for retired musi­cians, designed by his librettist’s broth­er, archi­tect Camil­lo Boito.

Com­plet­ed in 1899, Casa Ver­di still serves elder­ly musi­cians today—up to 60 at a time. Res­i­dents of Casa Ver­di include alum­nae of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera and the Roy­al Opera House. Guests have worked along­side such nota­bles as Chet Bak­er and Maria Callas.

Com­pe­ti­tion for res­i­den­tial slots is stiff. To qual­i­fy, one must have been a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian or music teacher. Those select­ed enjoy room, board, and med­ical treat­ment in addi­tion to, writes The New York Times, “access to con­certs, music rooms, 15 pianos, a large organ, harps, drum sets and the com­pa­ny of their peers.” Musi­cal pro­gram­ming is as con­stant as the fine view of Verdi’s grave.

Din­ing tables are named in hon­or of Verdi’s works. Those inclined to wor­ship do so in a chapel named for San­ta Cecil­ia, the patron saint of musi­cians.

Prac­tice rooms are alive with the sound of music and crit­i­cism. As Casa Verdi’s music ther­a­pist told the Finan­cial Times, “They are very com­pet­i­tive: they are all pri­ma don­nas.”

When mem­o­ry fails, res­i­dents can tune in to such doc­u­men­taries as actor Dustin Hoffman’s Tosca’s Kiss, below

Get a peek inside Verdi’s retire­ment home for artists, com­pli­ments of Urban Sketch­ers here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Dutch “Demen­tia Vil­lage” Improves Qual­i­ty of Life with Inten­tion­al Design

Meet Nadia Boulanger, “The Most Influ­en­tial Teacher Since Socrates,” Who Men­tored Philip Glass, Leonard Bern­stein, Aaron Cop­land, Quin­cy Jones & Oth­er Leg­ends

How Music Can Awak­en Patients with Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

An Introduction to Brutalism: The Iconic Postwar Architectural Style That Combined Utopianism and Concrete

in Architecture, History | March 26th, 2026

The arti­fi­cial lan­guage of Esperan­to was con­ceived with high ideals in mind. In the eigh­teen-eight­ies, its cre­ator L. L. Zamen­hof envi­sioned it as the uni­ver­sal sec­ond lan­guage of human­i­ty, and if it has­n’t achieved that sta­tus by now, it at least remains the world’s most wide­ly spo­ken con­struct­ed aux­il­iary lan­guage. One fac­tor com­pli­cat­ing its spread is that no lan­guage, even one guid­ed by inter­na­tion­al­ism, can remain the same for long enough in two dif­fer­ent cul­tures. As in spo­ken and writ­ten lan­guages, so in the con­crete one of archi­tec­ture — and in the case of the style known as Bru­tal­ism, that would be lit­er­al con­crete. Meant to make human­i­ty whole again after the Sec­ond World War, its build­ings end­ed up being rather more par­tic­u­lar, and less utopi­an, than their archi­tects intend­ed.

Exam­ples aplen­ty appear in the new video above from Built Nar­ra­tive, which offers what amounts to a post­card tour of Bru­tal­ist (and Bru­tal­ism-adja­cent) build­ings from around the world. Named for its main mate­r­i­al béton brut, or raw con­crete, the style came into its own dur­ing the rebuild­ing of war-ruined sec­tions of British and con­ti­nen­tal Euro­pean cities — and, over in the U.S., the rapid pro­lif­er­a­tion and expan­sion of col­lege cam­pus­es — which had to be done quick­ly and under less-than-extrav­a­gant bud­gets.

Libraries, research facil­i­ties, city halls, admin­is­tra­tive build­ings, cour­t­hous­es, hous­ing projects: these are the sorts of struc­tures that most often took Bru­tal­ist form in the nine­teen-fifties, six­ties, and sev­en­ties, result­ing in the insti­tu­tion­al, bureau­crat­ic, and in some places total­i­tar­i­an asso­ci­a­tions it still has today.

Some pub­licly loathed Bru­tal­ist build­ings, like the Tri­corn Cen­tre in Portsmouth and the Third Church of Christ, Sci­en­tist in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. have been torn down, often after decades of neg­li­gent main­te­nance. Oth­ers, like the Bar­bi­can Estate in Lon­don or Habi­tat 67 in Mon­tre­al, are now beloved sites of pil­grim­age. Wide­ly acknowl­edged mas­ters of Bru­tal­ism include Le Cor­busier, who pio­neered it with build­ings like the Unité d’Habi­ta­tion in Mar­seille (not Berlin, con­tra the cap­tion in the video) and Ken­zo Tange (pro­nounced “tawn-gay,” not “tang” as the nar­ra­tor says it), whose work steered the Japan­ese ver­sion of the move­ment in its own sub­tle, some­times play­ful direc­tions. Now, thanks in part to the rapid dif­fu­sion of archi­tec­tur­al pho­tog­ra­phy made pos­si­ble by social media, a new enthu­si­ast of Bru­tal­ism seems to be born every minute. Even if they don’t believe that archi­tec­ture can bring a new world into being, they still feel the pull of a future that nev­er came — or, at any rate, has­n’t come yet.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Beau­ty of Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­ture: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

Why Peo­ple Hate Bru­tal­ist Build­ings on Amer­i­can Col­lege Cam­pus­es

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

Good­bye to the Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er, Tokyo’s Strangest and Most Utopi­an Apart­ment Build­ing

The World Accord­ing to Le Cor­busier: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Most Mod­ern of All Archi­tects

An Espres­so Mak­er Made in Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Style: Raw Con­crete on the Out­side, High-End Parts on the Inside

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

See the Climactic Ending of Steven Spielberg’s Breakout Duel Recreated Entirely with 3D-Printed Models

in Film | March 25th, 2026

With his last pic­ture The Fabel­mans, Steven Spiel­berg told a sto­ry of his own. Giv­en his long-held stature as more or less the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of big-screen Hol­ly­wood enter­tain­ment, there’s only one such sto­ry he could have told: that of how he became a film­mak­er. The most mem­o­rable of The Fabel­mans depicts the young direc­to­r­i­al sur­ro­gate alone in the base­ment of his fam­i­ly home, re-cre­at­ing the train crash scene from The Great­est Show on Earth with an eight-mil­lime­ter cam­era and a Lionel set. Today, on the brink of his ninth decade with his famous pro­duc­tiv­i­ty hard­ly slow­ing, Spiel­berg remains, on some lev­el, the wide-eyed boy smash­ing his toys togeth­er at just the right angle. What bet­ter way to pay him trib­ute than to repli­cate his cin­e­mat­ic achieve­ments in minia­ture?

The Fabel­mans ends with its pro­tag­o­nist a col­lege stu­dent, eager to drop out and go straight to Hol­ly­wood. At the same point in life, the real Spiel­berg was about to receive an offer from Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures to write and direct the short film that became Amblin’, which itself led to a con­tract to direct tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions.

He showed what he could do with episodes of Mar­cus Wel­by, M.D., The Name of the Game, and Colum­bo, among oth­er series. Then he stepped up to TV movies, a form regard­ed as infe­ri­or in all respects to the­atri­cal releas­es, but one he man­aged to tran­scend on the first try. When it first aired in 1971 as an ABC Movie of the Week, Duel pre­sent­ed its view­ers with a har­row­ing, near-mytho­log­i­cal con­fronta­tion between a mid­dle-aged trav­el­ing sales­man in a Ply­mouth Valiant and an unseen truck­er in a hulk­ing, smoke-belch­ing big rig who seems bent on destroy­ing him.

Giv­en that its direc­tor was just 24 years old at the time, Duel very much counts as ear­ly Spiel­berg. Yet it’s also dis­tilled Spiel­berg, a head-on treat­ment of mid­dle-class nor­mal­i­ty’s sud­den encounter with a force of incom­pre­hen­si­ble men­ace — a theme much revis­it­ed in his work since — with cin­e­mat­ic rhythms pre­cise­ly cal­cu­lat­ed for opti­mal ten­sion and release. An aspir­ing film­mak­er could learn much from re-cre­at­ing its sequences shot-for-shot. The YouTube chan­nel Movies Minia­tures Effects does just that in the video above, which doc­u­ments a remak­ing with 3D-print­ed maque­ttes of the final crash, after Den­nis Weaver’s des­per­ate every­man man­ages to out­wit his pur­suer. “Sheer skill need­ed more phi­los­o­phy for a fit­ting res­o­lu­tion,” wrote David Thom­son of this end­ing. Per­haps so, but the more than 18 mil­lion views so far racked up by its minia­ture ver­sion do sug­gest a film that more than retains its pow­er after 45 years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Steven Spielberg’s Rarely Seen 1968 Film Amblin’

Watch Steven Spielberg’s Debut: Two Films He Direct­ed as a Teenag­er

Shot-By-Shot Break­downs of Spielberg’s Film­mak­ing in Jaws, Scorsese’s in Cape Fear, and De Palma’s in The Untouch­ables

How Movies Cre­at­ed Their Spe­cial Effects Before CGI: Metrop­o­lis, 2001: A Space Odyssey & More

How Wes Ander­son Uses Minia­tures to Cre­ate His Aes­thet­ic: A Primer from His Mod­el Mak­er & Prop Painter

How Car Chase Scenes Have Evolved Over 100 Years

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Learn Ancient Greek in 118 Free Lessons: A Free Online Course from Brandeis & Harvard

in Language Lessons | March 18th, 2026

Leonard Muell­ner (Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Clas­si­cal Stud­ies at Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty) and Belisi Gille­spie (who now teach­es clas­sics at Agnes Scott Col­lege) have post­ed 118 videos on YouTube, which, when tak­en togeth­er, “present all the con­tent cov­ered in two semes­ters of a col­lege-lev­el Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek course.”

The text­book used is Greek: An Inten­sive Course. 2nd edi­tion. And if you read the blurb that accom­pa­nies each video on YouTube, you’ll find out 1) what mate­r­i­al each video cov­ers, and 2) what pages are being used in the text­book.

Made avail­able online by Har­vard’s Cen­ter for Hel­lenic Stud­ies, the playlist of Ancient Greek lessons will be added to our col­lec­tions, Learn 45+ Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More and 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Lis­ten to a Recon­struc­tion That’s “100% Accu­rate”

Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry: A Free Online Course by Yale His­to­ri­an Don­ald Kagan

The His­to­ry of Ancient Greece in 18 Min­utes: A Brisk Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

Howard Zinn’s “What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me About the American Empire”: An Illustrated Video Narrated by Viggo Mortensen

in History | February 18th, 2026

“Through­out U.S. his­to­ry, our mil­i­tary has been used not for moral pur­pos­es but to expand eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, and mil­i­tary pow­er,” says a car­toon Howard Zinn in Mike Konopacki’s 273-page com­ic book A People’s His­to­ry of Amer­i­can Empire. Writ­ten with Zinn and his­to­ri­an Paul Buh­le, the book adapts Zinn’s path­break­ing his­to­ry from below, A People’s His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States, and his auto­bi­og­ra­phy You Can’t Be Neu­tral on a Mov­ing Train in a direct exam­i­na­tion of the U.S. Imperi­um. Konopac­ki calls the book his “answer” to the text­books of “the pow­er struc­ture.”

Above, you can see a short video adap­ta­tion of some key text from A People’s His­to­ry of Amer­i­can Empire. Nar­rat­ed by Vig­go Mortensen, the video gives us a nut­shell ver­sion of Zinn’s cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal, and moral education—what the Ger­mans used to call bil­dung—as he grows from a some­what naive WWII bomber pilot, to a col­lege stu­dent on the G.I. Bill, to a grad­u­ate stu­dent, then pro­fes­sor, of his­to­ry.

Along the way he notices that the map in every text­book labeled “West­ern Expan­sion” shows “the march across the con­ti­nent as a nat­ur­al, almost bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non”:

That huge acqui­si­tion of land called the Louisiana Pur­chase gave no hint of any­thing but vacant land acquired, no sense that this ter­ri­to­ry was occu­pied by hun­dreds of Indi­an tribes that would have to be anni­hi­lat­ed or forced out of their homes in what we now call eth­nic cleans­ing.

Zinn goes on to chart the rise of U.S. Impe­ri­al­ism into the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry as the increas­ing­ly mil­i­ta­rized nation seizes Mex­i­can ter­ri­to­ry and invades Cuba and the Philip­pines. Then we come to the osten­si­bly anti-com­mu­nist “police actions” in Korea and Viet­nam, and Zinn’s high­ly influ­en­tial 1967 book Viet­nam: The Log­ic of With­draw­al. When entrust­ed by Daniel Ells­berg with hun­dreds of pages of the Pen­ta­gon Papers, Zinn learns that the war in Viet­nam is large­ly waged for the same rea­sons as our oth­er impe­ri­al­ist moves abroad: the papers “spoke blunt­ly of the U.S. motives as a quest for tin, rub­ber, oil.”

But what of the war Zinn begins with, the war in which he fought? Near the end of the short film, he returns to his days as a WWII bomber, when he heard a fel­low pilot argue that the U.S. was as “moti­vat­ed by ambi­tions of con­trol and con­quest” as its ene­mies. He dis­agreed at the time, but in the inter­ven­ing years came to see his fel­low airman’s point. What we get with our ide­al­ism about any war, Zinn says, is a seem­ing “Impe­ri­al­ism lite,” whose motives are benign. Soft pow­er, we’ve been told (until recent­ly), wins the day. But peel back the cur­tain on our actions in the world, and we will see the same atroc­i­ties, the same cru­el­ties, and the same basic moti­va­tions as every oth­er act of impe­ri­al­ist aggres­sion.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Howard Zinn’s Rec­om­mend­ed Read­ing List for Activists Who Want to Change the World

Matt Damon Reads Howard Zinn’s “The Prob­lem is Civ­il Obe­di­ence,” a Call for Amer­i­cans to Take Action

See Albert Camus’ His­toric Lec­ture, “The Human Cri­sis,” Per­formed by Actor Vig­go Mortensen

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.