Transit of Venus: A Quick Guide to a Last-of-a-Lifetime Event

in Astronomy | June 4th, 2012

Some­thing extra­or­di­nary hap­pens this week. The plan­et Venus will move across the face of the Sun for the last time in our lives.

Tran­sits of Venus occur on a 243-year cycle, with pairs of tran­sits eight years apart sep­a­rat­ed by gaps of 121.5 and 105.5 years. The last Venus tran­sit hap­pened in 2004. The next won’t occur until Decem­ber of 2117. So if you want to see one, don’t put it off! “This is it, folks,” said Robert Naeye, Edi­tor in Chief of Sky & Tele­scope mag­a­zine. “Unless mod­ern med­i­cine comes up with a mir­a­cle to extend human lifes­pans, this tran­sit of Venus will be your final oppor­tu­ni­ty to watch our sis­ter plan­et cross the Sun’s fiery disk as seen from Earth.”

The event will take place tomor­row, June 5, or the next day, June 6, depend­ing on your loca­tion. In North Amer­i­ca the tran­sit will begin tomor­row, just after 6 p.m. East­ern Day­light Time. Because of the great dis­tance between the Earth and Venus, the dura­tion will be far longer than for a Solar eclipse: over six hours.

Here are six tips for mak­ing the most of this last-of-a-life­time event:

1: Read up about it. For a quick and neat­ly orga­nized overview your best bet is astronomer Chuck Bueter’s Tran­sit Of Venus.org. The site includes all kinds of use­ful and inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion, includ­ing the video above.

2: Find out when you can see it from your loca­tion. The inter­na­tion­al non-prof­it group Astronomers With­out Bor­ders has cre­at­ed an extreme­ly handy Web page that will auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­ate a sched­ule of the tran­sit for your loca­tion, based on your com­put­er’s IP address. The site allows you to choose between a sim­ple graph­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion (the default set­ting) or a more detailed data sheet. It even pre­dicts the like­li­hood of cloud cov­er where you are.

3: Pre­pare for safe view­ing. Look­ing direct­ly into the sun can cause severe and per­ma­nent eye dam­age. There are a num­ber of safe ways to view the tran­sit of Venus, but it’s essen­tial that you fol­low the advice of experts. Bueter has pub­lished an overview, “Six Ways to See the Tran­sit.” Rick Fien­berg of the Amer­i­can Astro­nom­i­cal Soci­ety has pub­lished a detailed arti­cle on how to build a “sun fun­nel.” And Doug Dun­can, direc­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado’s Fiske Plan­e­tar­i­um, has cre­at­ed a video explain­ing a very sim­ple way to safe­ly project an image of a solar event onto a two-dimen­sion­al sur­face using a pair of binoc­u­lars.

4: Check for events in your area. If you fol­low the links in step three you should be able to watch the tran­sit on your own, but you might have more fun–and learn more–if you join a group. Astron­o­my clubs, plan­e­tar­i­ums and oth­er sci­ence groups will be host­ing tran­sit-view­ing events around the world. Check your local list­ings or go to the NASA Sun-Earth Day Web site for a com­pre­hen­sive round-up of events across the globe. Just scroll the map on the NASA site over to your own geo­graph­ic region and zoom in.

5: Down­load the app. If you have an Apple or Android device you can down­load a free Tran­sit of Venus phone app that will allow you to send your own obser­va­tions of the tran­sit to a glob­al exper­i­ment to mea­sure the size of the Solar Sys­tem. “In cen­turies past,” writes Steven van Roode of Astronomers With­out Bor­ders, which is orga­niz­ing the project, “explor­ers trav­eled around the globe to time the tran­sit of Venus to deter­mine the size of the solar sys­tem. We invite you to inspire inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion dur­ing the 2012 tran­sit of Venus by enabling a dig­i­tal re-cre­ation of those glob­al expe­di­tions. The phone app will allow cit­i­zens around the world to wit­ness this rare phe­nom­e­non and to con­tribute their obser­va­tion to a col­lec­tive exper­i­ment to mea­sure the sun’s dis­tance.” Also, Sky & Tele­scope is help­ing peo­ple make the most of the tran­sit by offer­ing free use of its Sky­Week astron­o­my app through June 7. You can down­load it for iPhone or Android.

6: Watch the web­cast. If you are unable to get a clear view of the tran­sit from your location–or even if you are–you should check out either of a pair of live web­casts which will be held dur­ing the event. Astronomers With­out Bor­ders will trans­mit its web­cast live from the Mount Wil­son Obser­va­to­ry in Cal­i­for­nia. The pro­gram will include inter­views with experts and con­tri­bu­tions from ama­teur astronomers, along with video tours of the his­toric obser­va­to­ry and its equip­ment, both antique and state-of-the-art. You can access the Astronomers With­out Bor­ders web­cast here. Anoth­er major web­cast will be broad­cast by NASA from Mau­na Kea, Hawaii begin­ning tomor­row at 9:45 p.m. UTC (Coor­di­nat­ed Uni­ver­sal Time) or 5:45 p.m. East­ern Time. You can access the NASA web­cast here. For a sched­ule of the pro­gram, which will include many videos and inter­views through­out the event, you can down­load a PDF.

British astronomer William Crab­tree, depict­ed observ­ing the 1639 tran­sit of Venus in a mur­al at Man­ches­ter Town Hall, paint­ed in 1903 by Ford Madox Brown.

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mockumentary on Stanley Kubrick and the Moon Landing Hoax

in Film, History | June 4th, 2012

Poor moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. Lack­ing the his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al grav­i­tas of JFK assas­si­na­tion con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists or the brazen pseu­do-rel­e­vance of 9/11 con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, those who believe the Apol­lo 11 mis­sion came out of a Hol­ly­wood back­lot must toil in deep­est obscu­ri­ty. Imag­ine suf­fer­ing from the aching con­vic­tion that the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment, in league with a respect­ed auteur or two, hood­winked the entire world with a few min­utes of blur­ry, ama­teur­ish video and gar­bled walkie-talkie speech — hood­winked the entire world except you, that is. Now imag­ine a Truther and a sec­ond-gun­man obses­sive shar­ing a laugh about all your impor­tant rev­e­la­tions. If indeed you do hold that mankind has nev­er vis­it­ed the moon, make sure you don’t watch usu­al­ly seri­ous doc­u­men­tar­i­an William Karel’s Dark Side of the Moon. In it, you’ll see your ideas fur­ther ridiculed, which would be unpleas­ant — or, even worse, you’ll see them vin­di­cat­ed.

These moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists offer many alter­na­tive his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tives, and Karel picks a rich one. He pro­ceeds from the ques­tion of how, exact­ly, film­mak­er Stan­ley Kubrick came into pos­ses­sion of the advanced cam­era lens­es he used to shoot 1975’s can­dle-lit Bar­ry Lyn­don. Per­haps NASA, who had the lens­es in the first place, owed Kubrick for cer­tain ser­vices ren­dered six years ear­li­er? Cut­ting decon­tex­tu­al­ized file footage togeth­er with script­ed lines deliv­ered by actors, NASA staffers, and Kubrick­’s actu­al wid­ow, Karel tells an omi­nous­ly earnest sto­ry of how the CIA recruit­ed Kubrick and his 2001-test­ed cin­e­mat­ic crafts­man­ship to “win” the space race, at least on tele­vi­sion. Though lib­er­al­ly pep­pered with small false­hoods and inside jokes for film buffs, Dark Side of the Moon has nonethe­less inad­ver­tent­ly won its share of sin­cere adher­ents, includ­ing self-styled “Speak­er of Truth” Wayne Green. It’s been said many times, many ways: human­i­ty isn’t quite smart enough to effec­tive­ly con­spire, but we’re just smart enough to invent an infini­tude of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The “Collapse” of the Sydney Opera House Sails

in Art, Media | June 4th, 2012

Mul­ti-award win­ning Ger­man design col­lec­tive URBANSCREEN spe­cial­izes in large-scale pro­jec­tion on urban sur­faces. Their first great inter­na­tion­al suc­cess was “555 KUBIK — How it would be if a house was dream­ing,” a bril­liant media instal­la­tion using the façade of the Kun­sthalle Ham­burg. This project quick­ly found its way to all major blogs and sites on the Inter­net and gained so much fame that it sur­passed the pop­u­lar­i­ty of lol­cat videos for almost an hour.

This year, URBANSCREEN was com­mis­sioned to trans­form the sails of the icon­ic Syd­ney Opera House as part of Vivid Syd­ney, a fes­ti­val of light, music and ideas. The tru­ly amaz­ing pro­jec­tions explore the sculp­tur­al form of the Opera House and its place as a home for music, dance and dra­ma. The con­clu­sion is not to be missed.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

Allen Ginsberg Reads His Famously Censored Beat Poem, Howl (1959)

in Audio Books, Literature, Poetry | June 3rd, 2012

Before Banned Books Week comes to a close, we bring you Allen Gins­berg’s 1955 poem, Howl. The con­tro­ver­sial poem became his best known work, and it now occu­pies a cen­tral place in the Beat lit­er­ary canon, stand­ing right along­side Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. Gins­berg first read the poem aloud on Octo­ber 7, 1955, to a crowd of about 150 at San Francisco’s Six Gallery. (James Fran­co reen­act­ed that moment in the 2010 film sim­ply called Howl.)

Things got dicey when City Lights pub­lished the poem in 1956, and espe­cial­ly when they tried to import 520 print­ed copies from Lon­don in ’57. US cus­toms offi­cials seized the copies, and Cal­i­for­nia pros­e­cu­tors tried City Lights founder Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti and his part­ner, Shigeyosi Murao, on obscen­i­ty charges that same year. Nine lit­er­ary experts tes­ti­fied to the redeem­ing social val­ue of Howl, and, after a lengthy tri­al, the judge ruled that the poem was of “redeem­ing social impor­tance.”

Above, we give you Gins­berg read­ing Howl in 1959. It’s also list­ed in the Poet­ry sec­tion of our Free Audio Books col­lec­tion. An online ver­sion of the text appears here.

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:

John Waters Reads Steamy Scene from Lady Chatterley’s Lover for Banned Books Week (NSFW)

See Pat­ti Smith Give Two Dra­mat­ic Read­ings of Allen Ginsberg’s “Foot­note to Howl”

2,000+ Cas­settes from the Allen Gins­berg Audio Col­lec­tion Now Stream­ing Online

Dimensions of Dialogue by Jan Svankmajer (1982)

in | June 1st, 2012

Jan Svankma­jer is a sur­re­al­ist Czech ani­ma­tor whose work has influ­enced Tim Bur­ton, The Broth­ers Quay, and Ter­ry Gilliam him­self. With his list of The Ten Best Ani­mat­ed Films, Gilliam points us to one film, Svankmajer’s stun­ning 1982 clay­ma­tion short, Dimen­sions of Dia­logue, writ­ing:

Jan Svankma­jer’s stop-motion work uses famil­iar, unre­mark­able objects in a way which is deeply dis­turb­ing. The first film of his that I saw was Alice, and I was extreme­ly unset­tled by the image of an ani­mat­ed rab­bit which had real fur and real eyes. His films always leave me with mixed feel­ings, but they all have moments that real­ly get to me; moments that evoke the night­mar­ish spec­tre of see­ing com­mon­place things com­ing unex­pect­ed­ly to life.

All Eyes on Ai Weiwei: Life Under Surveillance … and on Twitter … After His Arrest

in Art, Current Affairs | June 1st, 2012

As the one-year anniver­sary of Chi­nese artist and dis­si­dent Ai Wei­wei’s release from jail draws near, the whole world seems to be watch­ing his every move. The whole world, that is, except for the Chi­nese peo­ple.

Ai is cut off from most of the pop­u­la­tion of his own coun­try after the gov­ern­ment shut down his blog and stopped him from using Chi­nese social media. When he was released from jail on June 22 of last year, after 81 days of deten­tion, Ai found that the gov­ern­ment had installed sur­veil­lance cam­eras all around his Bei­jing home and stu­dio. He count­ed 15 with­in a 100-meter area. In response, he set up four of of his own cam­eras inside his home ear­li­er this spring and began stream­ing a 24-hour live webfeed, called “Wei­wei Cam.” The regime quick­ly shut that site down, too.

But the Chi­nese author­i­ties have not com­plete­ly cut off Ai’s access to the world out­side of Chi­na. More than 147,000 peo­ple fol­low him on Twit­ter, one of the many West­ern sites blocked in Chi­na, and a steady stream of for­eign jour­nal­ists have been mak­ing their way to his Bei­jing com­pound for inter­views. Last week The New York Times pub­lished a har­row­ing account of the day in April, 2011, when police pulled a hood over Ai’s head and drove him to an undis­closed deten­tion cen­ter. And this week Slate pub­lished an arti­cle, “Some­one’s Always Watch­ing Me,” along with videos (above and below) of an inter­view with Ai con­duct­ed by Slate Group Edi­tor-in-Chief Jacob Weis­berg on May 14. “I feel that what makes them most fright­ened,” Ai told Weis­berg, refer­ring to the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, “is my inter­na­tion­al pro­file, my inter­views with West­ern media.”

Ai is restrict­ed to Bei­jing until June 22. When­ev­er he leaves his house he must tell the police where he is going and who he will meet. “I basi­cal­ly obey their orders,” he told Evan Osnos of The New York­er in Jan­u­ary, “because it does­n’t mean any­thing. I also want to tell them I’m not afraid. I’m not secre­tive.” Every week he has to meet with the Pub­lic Secu­ri­ty Bureau for a chat. Like the for­eign jour­nal­ists, the Chi­nese police are eager to learn what Ai plans to do when restric­tions on his move­ment are lift­ed lat­er this month. “They asked me what I would do next when I met them last week­end,” Ai told a reporter for The Tele­graph this week. “They tried to make it very casu­al. After a chat, they said, ‘What comes next?’ I said: ‘It is an inter­est­ing ques­tion. What does this nation do next?’ ”

The 15 Worst Covers of Beatles Songs: William Shatner, Bill Cosby, Tiny Tim, Sean Connery & Your Excellent Picks

in Music | June 1st, 2012

Thanks to The Wall Street Jour­nal, you can endure box­er Man­ny Pac­quiao singing a ver­sion of John Lennon’s 1971 peace anthem, Imag­ine. It’s pret­ty painful, not quite as painful as tak­ing a Pac­quiao punch, but painful nonethe­less. We float­ed it on Twit­ter (fol­low us here) and we were quick­ly remind­ed that Pac­quiao is hard­ly the first per­son to butch­er The Bea­t­les. (No real knock on him, we’re just hav­ing some fun here.) So we start­ed pulling togeth­er your favorites. What are the worst Bea­t­les’ cov­ers you’ve ever heard — ones so bad, they’re good? Let us know in the com­ments or on Twit­ter, and we’ll start adding them to the post.

In 1968, William Shat­ner, rid­ing high on his Star Trek fame, released his first music album, The Trans­formed Man. It fea­tured poet­ry mixed with pop lyrics and a near­ly blas­phe­mous ver­sion of Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds. It’s here that the cheese began.

Also in 1968, the young come­di­an Bill Cos­by released Bill Cos­by Sings Hooray For The Sal­va­tion Army Band!. The par­o­dy album starts with Cos­by singing a semi-seri­ous ver­sion of Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. It was a high point for nei­ther the come­di­an nor the band.

Tel­ly Savalas — you know him from Kojak — sings George Har­rison’s Some­thing in a very lounge lizard kind of way. So awful it’s awe­some.

Michael McK­ean (This is Spinal Tap!) offers up this: Mil­ton Berle singing The Yel­low Sub­ma­rine. It was­n’t one of The Bea­t­les’ best songs, let’s admit it. But Berle did­n’t exact­ly ele­vate it. Uncle Miltie’s record­ing was made in 1968 (do you see a trend here?), not long after the ani­mat­ed Yel­low Sub­ma­rine hit the­aters.

From her 1966 album Way Out West, old time movie star Mae West sings Day Trip­per. Rec­om­mend­ed by @tonymolloy.

Sean Con­nery talk­ing his way through In My Life. And amaz­ing­ly George Mar­tin is respon­si­ble for this.

You can’t talk about so-bad-they’re-good Bea­t­les cov­ers with­out giv­ing a nod to Wing. The Hong Kong-born singer, now based in New Zealand, has record­ed a full album in her out-of-tune singing style. Is it par­o­dy? Is it seri­ous? Who knows. Her album can be had here: Wing Sings the Bea­t­les

Elva Ruby Connes Miller, oth­er­wise known as Mrs. Miller, cov­ered numer­ous songs dur­ing the 1960s, includ­ing A Hard Day’s Night. Her voice was com­pared to the sound of “roach­es scur­ry­ing across a trash can lid.” More recent­ly, this clip was fea­tured on EarBleed.com … for pret­ty good rea­son. Good find Daniel.

And now the male answer to Mrs. Miller, the immor­tal Tiny Tim and his ver­sion of Nowhere Man.

Here is Ger­many’s answer to Wing.  It is Klaus Bey­er’s remake of Back in the U.S.S.R.

This is from “Ban­da Plás­ti­ca de Tepetlix­pa.” Accord­ing to leg­end, John and Paul went to Mex­i­co, to a town called Tepetlix­pa, where peo­ple received them as dis­tin­guished guests. Local brass bands start­ed play­ing the Bea­t­les’ music and moved the singer-song­writer duo to tears. Some time lat­er, the Tepetlix­pa band record­ed Adios a Los Bea­t­les (Good­bye to the Bea­t­les), a 10-song trib­ute to the genius­es from Liv­er­pool. Jaime Orte­ga has more back­sto­ry in the com­ments sec­tion below.

@Brian_M_Cassidy asks: Is this what you’re look­ing for? Indeed it is. The Red Navy Singers, Dancers & Musi­cians sings Let It Be, dur­ing the final days of the Sovi­et Union.

We would­n’t want to leave France out. Here, Les com­pagnons de la chan­son sing Le Sous-Marin Vert. Thanks Pierre.

And final­ly pulling up the rear, The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Male Voice Choir sing When I’m Six­ty Four. H/T Olidez

“Good Chemistry” Explains Chemical Bonds with Cutout Animation and Teenage Romance

in Chemistry, K-12, Video - Science | May 31st, 2012

Love, or the promise of it, sells clothes, cologne and many a com­pact disc—but who’d think love could sell chem­istry? Six­teen-year-old Eli Ciri­no did, and was he ever right. The tenth grad­er sub­mit­ted an extra cred­it video for his chem­istry class and what he got was prob­a­bly way more than he bar­gained for. Good Chem­istry explains chem­i­cal bonds using con­struc­tion paper ani­ma­tion of pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive ions and cova­lent bonds set against an orig­i­nal song sung by Ciri­no. It’s all edit­ed togeth­er with images of a cute cou­ple reach­ing out and clasp­ing hands. A sam­ple of Cirino’s lyrics: “We always on the look­out for a part­ner­ship, pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive you get the drift.” It’s catchy and sweet, to the tune of more than 290,000 views on YouTube by the end of the day Wednes­day. Extra cred­it for Ciri­no for bring­ing the video in at pi-time: three min­utes, four­teen sec­onds.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lancer. Find more of her work at .

Get more intel­li­gent media by fol­low­ing us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Entitled Opinions, the “Life and Literature” Podcast That Refuses to Dumb Things Down

in Life, Literature, Podcasts | May 31st, 2012

Proust. Mimet­ic desire. The infla­tion­ary uni­verse. 1910, Amer­i­can writ­ers in Paris. The his­to­ry of the book. These top­ics may sound unusu­al enough to pique your inter­est. They may float through your mind once in a while, cap­tur­ing an hour or two of your curios­i­ty. They may peri­od­i­cal­ly send you to the library on read­ing binges. But for KZSU-FM’s Enti­tled Opin­ions, they are meat and drink. Since 2005, pro­fes­sor-broad­cast­er Robert Har­ri­son has explored these top­ics and many more besides in the intel­lec­tu­al­ly expan­sive long-form con­ver­sa­tions he con­ducts on Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s radio sta­tion. Always begin­ning with a mono­logue, Har­ri­son spends the bulk of his broad­casts think­ing aloud about these rich top­ics with philoso­phers like Richard Rorty, nov­el­ists like Orhan Pamuk, many a fel­low aca­d­e­m­ic, lis­ten­ers, and his own broth­er. (Some­times he up and con­ducts the entire show in French.) Each and every one of these he makes avail­able as a pod­cast, on the show’s site and on iTunes.

“These are not like Stan­ford cours­es online,” said Har­ri­son in a Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty News pro­file. “These are pro­grams where intel­lec­tu­als speak to each oth­er at a high lev­el of intel­lec­tu­al exchange—no one is exclud­ed per se, but you do have to have intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty. We refuse to dumb it down.” Hav­ing recent­ly returned from a pro­longed hia­tus, Enti­tled Opin­ions has kept not dumb­ing it down with con­ver­sa­tions on geog­ra­phy, her­maph­ro­ditism, polit­i­cal philoso­pher John Rawls, and Petrar­ch and Petrar­chism. I myself engaged Har­ri­son in a long-form inter­view on my pre­vi­ous pod­cast, The Mar­ket­place of Ideas, in which we dis­cussed the evo­lu­tion of his show; his books on forests, gar­dens, and the dead;  his life as a rock musi­cian (so that explains those episodes on Pink Floyd, The Doors, and Jimi Hen­drix); and get­ting called “the most pre­ten­tious man in the world” over e‑mail. We die-hard Enti­tled Opin­ions fans demand to know these things.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Art of Making a Flamenco Guitar: 299 Hours of Blood, Sweat & Tears Experienced in 3 Minutes

in Music | May 31st, 2012

The Fla­men­co gui­tar grew up in Andalu­sia, the major province in south­ern Spain, where it became inte­gral to the cul­ture dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry. The mod­ern fla­men­co gui­tar (a first cousin of the mod­ern clas­si­cal gui­tar) is typ­i­cal­ly made with two of three woods — spruce on the top, and cypress or sycamore on the back and sides. When put in the hands of the right luthi­er, the gui­tar can become a thing of beau­ty. Case in point: This art­ful video by Greek film­mak­er Dim­itris Ladopou­los brings you inside the work­shop of Vasilis Lazarides, who spe­cial­izes in mak­ing high qual­i­ty fla­men­co gui­tars by hand. (Vis­it his gui­tars online here.) 299 hours of blood, sweat, tears and love go into mak­ing each fine gui­tar. But you can watch it all hap­pen in a mat­ter of three min­utes, with the music of Edsart Udo de Haes pro­vid­ing the sound­track.

If elec­tric gui­tars hap­pen to be your thing, you can also watch Fend­ers being made in 1959 and 2012.

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:

Watch FLAMENCO AT 5:15, a Life-Affirm­ing, Oscar-Win­ning Doc­u­men­tary About a Fla­men­co Dance Class

Hear Metallica’s “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters” Cov­ered in Unex­pect­ed Styles: Gre­go­ri­an Choir, Cel­lo Ensem­ble, Finnish Blue­grass, Jazz Vocal & More