View the Passport Photos of F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf & Other Cultural Icons

in Travel | January 16th, 2014

Click images to enlarge.

If you’ve had the for­tune of trav­el­ling for leisure, you know that there are three types of memen­toes that unfail­ing­ly elic­it pangs of nos­tal­gia. The first are pho­tographs. The sec­ond are the run­ning com­men­taries we write down in jour­nals and blogs, doc­u­ment­ing the var­i­ous impres­sions, thoughts, and minu­ti­ae we expe­ri­ence. The third are pass­ports. When brim­ming with exit stamps and tat­tered visas, pass­ports are the mark of a world­ly trav­eller: a grimy, well-worn sign to fel­low hos­tel guests that you’re want­ed com­pa­ny when the time comes to com­pare sto­ries.

Today, we bring you sev­er­al pass­port scans from a num­ber of the 20^th century’s best-known cul­tur­al fig­ures. Above, you can see a trav­el doc­u­ment belong­ing to Vir­ginia Woolf, who received a 1923 stamp from the For­eign Office. Below we have John Lennon’s entry card into the U.S., which the Bea­t­le received after a bat­tle for per­ma­nent res­i­den­cy that last­ed for sev­er­al years.

Then Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Depart­ment of Defense-issued ID card, under the name of Nor­ma Jean DiMag­gio. Fur­ther down are the pass­port pho­tos of writ­ers James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzger­ald, accom­pa­nied by their respec­tive fam­i­lies, who were trav­el­ling under the same doc­u­ments. Last­ly, we present to you the most impres­sive­ly dec­o­rat­ed pass­port pages of all, belong­ing to Ella Fitzger­ald:

John Lennon

Mar­i­lyn

James Joyce and Fam­i­ly

The Fitzger­alds

Ella Fitzger­ald

For more icon­ic pass­port pho­tos, head to Vintage.es or The Untrav­elled Paths blog.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Footage of Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald From the 1920s

Ella Fitzger­ald Sings ‘Sum­mer­time’ by George Gersh­win, Berlin 1968

James Joyce Plays the Gui­tar, 1915

Six Post­cards From Famous Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Kaf­ka, Ker­ouac & More

In 1968, Artist Imagines What John, Paul, George & Ringo Will Look Like When They’re 64

in Art, Music | January 15th, 2014

When I get old­er los­ing my hair,
Many years from now,
Will you still be send­ing me a valen­tine
Birth­day greet­ings bot­tle of wine?

Paul McCart­ney’s wist­ful song “When I’m Six­ty-Four” was released on the Bea­t­les’ 1967 album Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. The next year, an artist named Michael Leonard tried to imag­ine what the young musi­cians might look like four decades lat­er — on their 64th birth­days. We nev­er got a chance to fig­ure out whether he sized up Lennon and Har­ri­son cor­rect­ly. But we know that Paul, even at 71 today, nev­er got jow­ly. And Ringo nev­er went the suit route. You can see for your­self when the two per­form at the Gram­mys on Jan­u­ary 26.

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Relat­ed con­tent 

Flash­mob Per­forms The Bea­t­les’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ in Madrid Unem­ploy­ment Office

Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From the Clas­sic Bea­t­les Song, ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’ (1968)

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Jerry Seinfeld and Louis CK in Small Cars and Big Yachts, Getting Coffee

in Comedy | January 13th, 2014

Sea­son 3 of Come­di­ans in Cars Get­ting Cof­fee kicks off with Jer­ry Sein­feld and his pal Louis CK pil­ing into a very small 1959 Fiat Jol­ly and tak­ing a leisure­ly (death) ride through New York City. Even­tu­al­ly, they escape the city and wind up at an unex­pect­ed place — aboard CK’s yacht. There, they share a cap­puc­ci­no, nav­i­gate var­i­ous nau­ti­cal dan­gers, crack their sig­na­ture jokes, and kib­itz the day away. Not a bad way to pass some time. If you’d like to see Jer­ry and Louis togeth­er in anoth­er con­text, see our pre­vi­ous post: Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW).

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

Watch a Super Cut of Wes Anderson’s Signature Slo-Mo Shots

in Film | January 12th, 2014

When you watch a director’s work for a while, you get to know his/her sig­na­ture tricks — the themes and cam­era work that appear again and again. A cou­ple years ago, we fea­tured a video called Wes Ander­son // FROM ABOVE, a mon­tage cap­tur­ing Anderson’s pen­chant for the aer­i­al shot, a move that con­tributes to the light­ness, play­ful­ness and quirk­i­ness of his films. Now comes a super cut of Ander­son­’s slo-mo shots, com­piled by Ale­jan­dro Prul­lan­sky, set to The Shins’ song, “New Slang.” If you’re look­ing for a good overview of Wes Ander­son­’s fil­mog­ra­phy, we’d encour­age you to watch this series: 7 Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Has Wes Ander­son Sold Out? Can He Sell Out? Crit­ics Take Up the Debate

100 Years of Rock in Less Than a Minute: From Gospel to Grunge

in History, Music | January 8th, 2014

Click the image above and you’ll enter an interactive/moving graph­ic that gives you a fair­ly nice geneal­o­gy of rock n roll and the many forms of music it lat­er spawned. The graph­ic starts you with the blues, appalachi­an folk, and blue­grass. Even­tu­al­ly you hit the 1950s and the advent of rock. Then you keep trav­el­ing through time, reach­ing the hard rock, glam rock and punk of the 70s; the pow­er met­al and emerg­ing grunge of the 80s; the post met­al and neo folk of the 90s; and beyond. At any point, you can click the pause but­ton, click on the name of a par­tic­u­lar musi­cal genre (eg Gotha­bil­ly), and hear a sam­ple of the music. When you’re done, you might want to check out some of the relat­ed items below:

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

The Evo­lu­tion of the Rock Gui­tar Solo: 28 Solos, Span­ning 50 Years, Played in 6 Fun Min­utes

The His­to­ry of Music Told in Sev­en Rapid­ly Illus­trat­ed Min­utes

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

via Digg

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Barry White’s Philosophy of Music and Making Love, Animated

in Animation, Music | January 8th, 2014

Blank on Blank returns with an ani­mat­ed inter­view with Bar­ry White, the singer-song­writer who rose to promi­nence dur­ing the 1970s, record­ing songs that put us all in a lov­ing mood. With hits like “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love Baby,” “You’re the First, the Last, My Every­thing,” and “Love Theme” (record­ed by his 40-piece orches­tral group The Love Unlim­it­ed Orches­tra), White reached right into our bed­room and tried to nur­ture the best parts of human­i­ty and sub­due the worst. As he says in the ani­mat­ed inter­view above, “When a man is mak­ing love, the last thing he thinks about is war!” (Yes, it’s a gen­dered com­ment, but, let’s face it, it’s almost always men that screw up the world.) Oth­er artists and authors fea­tured in the Blank on Blank ani­mat­ed series include Kurt Cobain, Grace Kel­ley, Janis Joplin, Ray Charles, The Beast­ie Boys, David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck.

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Benjamin Bratton Explains “What’s Wrong with TED Talks?” and Why They’re a “Recipe for Civilizational Disaster”

in Science, TED Talks | January 7th, 2014

TED Talks — they give your “dis­cov­ery-seek­ing brain a lit­tle hit of dopamine;” make you “feel part of a curi­ous, engaged, enlight­ened, and tech-savvy tribe;” almost giv­ing you the sen­sa­tion that you’re attend­ing a “new Har­vard.” That was the hype around TED Talks a few years ago. Since then, the buzz around TED has mer­ci­ful­ly died down, and the orga­ni­za­tion has gone on, stag­ing its con­fer­ences around the globe. It’s been a while since we’ve fea­tured a TED Talk whose ideas seem worth spread­ing. But today we have one for you. Intrigu­ing­ly, it’s called “What’s Wrong with TED Talks?” It was pre­sent­ed by Ben­jamin Brat­ton, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Visu­al Arts at UCSD, at none oth­er than TEDxSanDiego 2013. Brat­ton makes his case (above) in 11 min­utes — well with­in the 18 allot­ted min­utes — by argu­ing that TED does­n’t just help pop­u­lar­ize ideas. Instead, it changes and cheap­ens the agen­da for sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy and tech­nol­o­gy in Amer­i­ca. He begins to frame the prob­lem by telling a sto­ry:

I was at a pre­sen­ta­tion that a friend, an astro­physi­cist, gave to a poten­tial donor. I thought the pre­sen­ta­tion was lucid and com­pelling.… After the talk the spon­sor said to him, “you know what, I’m gonna pass because I just don’t feel inspired …you should be more like Mal­colm Glad­well.”

Think about it: an actu­al sci­en­tist who pro­duces actu­al knowl­edge should be more like a jour­nal­ist who recy­cles fake insights! This is beyond pop­u­lar­iza­tion. This is tak­ing some­thing with val­ue and sub­stance and cor­ing it out so that it can be swal­lowed with­out chew­ing. This is not the solu­tion to our most fright­en­ing prob­lems – rather this is one of our most fright­en­ing prob­lems.

Brat­ton then con­cludes, “astro­physics run on the mod­el of Amer­i­can Idol is a recipe for civ­i­liza­tion­al dis­as­ter.” If “our best and bright­est waste their time – and the audi­ence’s time – danc­ing like infomer­cial hosts,” the cost will be too high, and our most dif­fi­cult prob­lems won’t get solved.

In watch­ing Brat­ton’s talk, I found myself agree­ing with many things. Sure, TED Talks are often “a com­bi­na­tion of epiphany and per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ny … through which the speak­er shares a per­son­al jour­ney of insight and real­iza­tion, its tri­umphs and tribu­la­tions.” Yes, the talks offer view­ers a pre­dictably “vic­ar­i­ous insight, a fleet­ing moment of won­der, an inkling that maybe it’s all going to work out after all.” Maybe TED Talks some­times pro­vide noth­ing more than “mid­dle­brow megachurch info­tain­ment.” But is TED real­ly chang­ing the agen­da for sci­en­tists, tech­nol­o­gists and philoso­phers? Are schol­ars actu­al­ly choos­ing their intel­lec­tu­al projects based on any­thing hav­ing to do with TED (or TED-inspired ways of think­ing)? Is some­one at the NIH dol­ing out mon­ey based on whether a project will even­tu­al­ly yield 15 good min­utes of diver­sion and enter­tain­ment? Short of empir­i­cal evi­dence that actu­al­ly applies to TED (the anec­dote above does­n’t), it feels like Brat­ton is giv­ing TED way too much cred­it. Maybe TED mat­ters on YouTube. But let’s get real, its pull large­ly starts and ends there. You can read a com­plete tran­script of Brat­ton’s talk here.

via The Guardian

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Two Peter Gabriel Albums ‘Scratch My Back … And I’ll Scratch Yours,’ Streaming Free for a Limited Time

in Music | January 2nd, 2014

Peter Gabriel’s cov­er album, Scratch My Back, came out in ear­ly 2010, and it fea­tured Gabriel’s quite orig­i­nal remakes of songs by David Bowie, Lou Reed, David Byrne, Regi­na Spek­tor and oth­er major artists. Now comes the fol­low-up: Set to be released on Jan­u­ary 6, the new album,  And I’ll Scratch Yours, flips the con­cept of the pre­vi­ous album. This time around, artists like Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, Lou Reed, Paul Simon and Feist record some of Peter Gabriel’s biggest hits — songs like “Games With­out Fron­tiers,” “Mer­cy Street” and “Biko.” The albums can be pur­chased togeth­er here, but, hap­pi­ly, you can stream them online for free — but only for a a lim­it­ed time — on NPR’s First Lis­ten site. Enjoy.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture in 2014. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

Peter Gabriel Plays Full Con­cert in Mod­e­na, Italy (1994)

Peter Gabriel and His Big Orches­tra Play Live at the Ed Sul­li­van The­ater

The 15 Most Popular Posts from Open Culture in 2013

in Most Popular | December 31st, 2013

In 2013, we pub­lished 1300+ posts on a wide range of cul­tur­al sub­jects. Look­ing back through our logs we were able to iden­ti­fy the 15 posts that res­onat­ed most wide­ly with our read­ers. We hope you enjoy this recap, and share some of the items with friends. And we look for­ward to see­ing you in 2014. Hap­py New Year to you all.

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’: A lit­tle spat broke out between Chom­sky and Žižek this sum­mer. Chom­sky got the debate going after he accused Jacques Lacan of being a “total char­la­tan” and Slavoj Žižek of pos­tur­ing rather than offer­ing real intel­lec­tu­al sub­stance. Žižek replied sharply. Chom­sky rebutted. Žižek coun­tered again. Some scored it a draw.

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics: Through­out the year, our res­i­dent film schol­ar Col­in Mar­shall revis­it­ed the favorite films of some of the great­est film­mak­ers — Stan­ley Kubrick, Mar­tin Scors­ese, Woody Allen, and Quentin Taran­ti­no, to name a few. But it also made sense to take a more glob­al view of things, to sur­vey the films loved by 800+ direc­tors and film crit­ics. That’s what you can find here.

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981: In 2013, we fea­tured a series of iso­lat­ed tracks that offer unique insights into clas­sic songs. You might recall Kurt Cobain’s Vocals From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’, and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals on the Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shel­ter’. But your favorite was Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie’s unfor­get­table per­for­mance on Queen’s Under Pres­sure. You have good taste. Bowie fans should also check his list of his Top 100 Books.

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online: When Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize on the strength of her many short sto­ries, Josh Jones gath­ered for you 18 free short sto­ries writ­ten by the now 82-year-old author. They’re all free to read online. Dur­ing the year, we also put togeth­er col­lec­tions of 10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son, Four Sto­ries by Jen­nifer Egan, and 30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace. Be sure to enjoy them as well.

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online: Art cat­a­logues from muse­ums can be down­right expen­sive. That’s why we were excit­ed when The Met and the Guggen­heim put an archive of art cat­a­logues online for free. For no cost, you can read high­ly visu­al intro­duc­tions to the work of Alexan­der Calder, Edvard Munch, Fran­cis Bacon, Gus­tav Klimt & Egon Schiele, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, Frank Lloyd Wright and many oth­er influ­en­tial artists.

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix: Some of the world’s great libraries are also open­ing access to our cul­tur­al her­itage. Take for exam­ple the British Library, which announced this month that it has released over a mil­lion images onto Flickr Com­mons for any­one to use, remix and repur­pose. Culled from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry books, the images include a dizzy­ing array of “maps, geo­log­i­cal dia­grams, beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions, com­i­cal satire, illu­mi­nat­ed and dec­o­ra­tive let­ters, col­or­ful illus­tra­tions, land­scapes, wall-paint­ings” and more.

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme: To cel­e­brate Trane’s birth­day, we fea­tured a rare doc­u­ment from the Smithsonian’s Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Coltrane’s hand­writ­ten out­line of his ground­break­ing jazz com­po­si­tion A Love Supreme. In terms of pop­u­lar­i­ty, this post was just about tied with anoth­er great (but very dif­fer­ent) jazz doc­u­ment: Thelo­nious Monk’s List of Tips for Play­ing a Gig.

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip: Bach wrote his “Crab Canon” in such a way that it could be played back­wards as well as for­wards. But pre­pare your­self for the mind-blow­ing coup de grâce when math­e­mat­i­cal image-mak­er Jos Ley lays the piece out on a Möbius strip.

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion: Hem­ing­way nev­er wrote a trea­tise on the art of writ­ing fic­tion. He did, how­ev­er, leave behind a great many pas­sages in let­ters, arti­cles and books with opin­ions and advice on writ­ing. Some of the best of those were assem­bled in 1984 by Lar­ry W. Phillips into a book, Ernest Hem­ing­way on Writ­ing. We’ve select­ed sev­en of our favorite quo­ta­tions from the book and placed them, along with our own com­men­tary, on this page. Read­ers will also want to peruse these relat­ed posts: 18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time and Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934, plus F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books, 1936.

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18: In the ear­ly 2000s, Pink Floyd gui­tarist and singer David Gilmour record­ed a musi­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of William Shakespeare’s “Son­net 18″ at his home stu­dio aboard the his­toric, 90-foot house­boat the Asto­ria. This video of Gilmour singing the son­net was released as an extra on the 2002 DVD David Gilmour in Con­cert, and it’s pret­ty sub­lime.

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course And Oth­er Free Tech Class­es: These days, it could nev­er hurt to make sure you have some good tech chops. Many of you under­stand that, and that’s why you jumped on Har­vard’s free, intro­duc­to­ry com­put­er sci­ence course. Taught by David Malan, the intro­duc­to­ry course cov­ers “abstrac­tion, algo­rithms, encap­su­la­tion, data struc­tures, data­bas­es, mem­o­ry man­age­ment, secu­ri­ty, soft­ware devel­op­ment, vir­tu­al­iza­tion, and web­sites. Lan­guages include C, PHP, and JavaScript plus SQL, CSS, and HTML.” You can always find the course list­ed in the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 800 Free Cours­es Online.

Michelangelo’s Illus­trat­ed 16th-Cen­tu­ry Gro­cery List: Very few of Michelan­gelo’s papers sur­vive today, but we do odd­ly have the gro­cery lists that he had his ser­vant bring to the food mar­ket. “Because the ser­vant he was send­ing to mar­ket was illit­er­ate,” writes the Oregonian‘s Steve Duin, “Michelan­ge­lo illus­trat­ed the shop­ping lists — a her­ring, tortel­li, two fen­nel soups, four anchovies and ‘a small quar­ter of a rough wine’ — with rushed … car­i­ca­tures in pen and ink.” It’s a unique his­tor­i­cal item, cer­tain­ly worth check­ing out.

Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Lets You Fly Through 17th Cen­tu­ry Lon­don: Six stu­dents from De Mont­fort Uni­ver­si­ty cre­at­ed a stel­lar 3D rep­re­sen­ta­tion of 17th cen­tu­ry Lon­don, as it exist­ed before The Great Fire of 1666. The three-minute video pro­vides a real­is­tic ani­ma­tion of Tudor Lon­don, and par­tic­u­lar­ly a sec­tion called Pud­ding Lane where the fire start­ed. Grab a small hand­ful of pop­corn, and sit back and enjoy.

Her­mann Rorschach’s Orig­i­nal Rorschach Test: What Do You See?: In hon­or of Her­mann Rorschach’s birth­day in Novem­ber, we high­light­ed the orig­i­nal images used in his famous psy­chol­o­gy test back in 1921. And we invit­ed you to say what you saw in these images. The answers were often amus­ing, some­times per­plex­ing.

Simone de Beau­voir Explains “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in a Rare TV Inter­view (1975): In a 1975 inter­view, Simone de Beau­voir picked up on ideas she explored in The Sec­ond Sex. This reveal­ing clip can be watched along­side oth­er 2013 posts fea­tur­ing de Beau­voir and her part­ner Jean-Paul Sartre. See Lovers and Philoso­phers — Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beau­voir Togeth­er in 1967 and Philosophy’s Pow­er Cou­ple, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beau­voir, Fea­tured in 1967 TV Inter­view.

Bonus: Fill Your New Kin­dle, iPad, iPhone, eRead­er with Free eBooks, Movies, Audio Books, Online Cours­es & More: Just last week, we told you where to load up your new iPads, Kin­dles, and oth­er devices with free intel­li­gent media. If you missed it the first time around, it’s not too late to cir­cle back.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture in 2014. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Sherlock Holmes Is Now in the Public Domain, Declares US Judge

in Books, Law, Literature | December 27th, 2013

Chief Judge Rubén Castil­lo of the Unit­ed States Dis­trict Court of the North­ern Dis­trict of Illi­nois has ruled that the char­ac­ters and sto­ry lines used in 50 Sher­lock Holmes texts pub­lished by Arthur Conan Doyle before Jan. 1, 1923 “are no longer cov­ered by Unit­ed States copy­right law and can be freely used by cre­ators with­out pay­ing any licens­ing fee to the Conan Doyle estate,” reports The New York Times. This gives con­tem­po­rary authors the abil­i­ty to write their own Sher­lock Holmes mys­tery sto­ries and keep con­tribut­ing to a rich tra­di­tion of detec­tive fic­tion. It would also seem­ing­ly put pre-1923 texts firm­ly in the pub­lic domain. (You can find The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes and oth­er relat­ed sto­ries in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions. ) Leslie S. Klinger, the edi­tor of The Com­plete Anno­tat­ed Sher­lock Holmes, who filed the civ­il suit, praised the judge’s deci­sion, say­ing “Peo­ple want to cel­e­brate Holmes and Wat­son, and now they can do that with­out fear.” Now it’s time for them to write some­thing that can hold a can­dle to what Conan Doyle cre­at­ed those many years ago.

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via Arts Beat

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Arthur Conan Doyle & The Cot­tin­g­ley Fairies: How Two Young Girls Fooled Sher­lock Holmes’ Cre­ator

Arthur Conan Doyle Fills Out the Ques­tion­naire Made Famous By Mar­cel Proust (1899)

Watch John Cleese as Sher­lock Holmes in The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It