Take a Random Walk Around the Berlin Wall Just Months Before Its Sudden Fall (Summer 1989)

in History, Travel | May 27th, 2026

Offi­cial­ly, the Berlin Wall fell on Novem­ber 9, 1989. Demo­li­tion would take more than four years, and a few sec­tions remain for memo­r­i­al pur­pos­es, but it was on that date that pas­sage between East and West Berlin — and thus East and West Ger­many — opened to all cit­i­zens of both coun­tries. To say that it came as a sur­prise would be a seri­ous under­state­ment. Ear­li­er that year, even the best informed observers were pre­dict­ing that the wall would stand for at least a few more decades. Ear­li­er that day, for that mat­ter, the offi­cials involved in the open­ing did­n’t fore­see that Social­ist Uni­ty Par­ty of Ger­many Sec­re­tary of Infor­ma­tion Gün­ter Sch­abows­ki would, that evening, mis­tak­en­ly declare on nation­al tele­vi­sion that the lib­er­al­iza­tion of bor­der trav­el was effec­tive “imme­di­ate­ly, with­out delay.”

When the bor­der guards final­ly gave up their attempts to hold the line around 11:00 that night, the sur­round­ing scene in both Berlins had turned into what atten­dees now remem­ber, 36 years lat­er, as the biggest street fes­ti­val of their lives. To those of us unable to join in the cel­e­bra­tion at the time, it may seem unlike­ly that such an event could real­ly have occurred with no inti­ma­tions what­so­ev­er.

Yet the footage shot by a trav­el­er in Berlin dur­ing the sum­mer of 1989, right there in the vicin­i­ty of the wall, depicts a city where events seem to be frozen. Though the built envi­ron­ment isn’t with­out touch­es of fad­ed grandeur here and there (and as many West Berlin­ers were soon to dis­cov­er, the real urban state­li­ness was over East), the over­all impres­sion giv­en by what was then the red hot cen­ter of Cold War geopol­i­tics is that of a dullsville.

The most out­ward­ly inter­est­ing fea­ture in these parts of Berlin at the very end of the nine­teen-eight­ies is, of course, the wall itself: the brutish­ness of its form, the hum­drum men­ace of its guards, the accu­mu­la­tion of graf­fi­ti both polit­i­cal and apo­lit­i­cal. At one point, the tourist’s cam­corder cap­tures the memo­ri­als for fall­en wall jumpers, the most recent of which, a cer­tain Chris Guef­froy, had made his fate­ful escape attempt from the East that past Feb­ru­ary. His­to­ry would soon immor­tal­ize him as the last per­son to be shot try­ing to get over the wall, though not the last to die doing so. That title belongs to Win­fried Freuden­berg, who in March of 1989 fell from a bal­loon he’d rigged up to fly across the bor­der. At this point, when the rapid urban evo­lu­tion of the reuni­fied Ger­man cap­i­tal has long since made it one of the most pop­u­lar cities in Europe, nei­ther she nor Guef­froy would rec­og­nize the for­mer East Berlin they were des­per­ate to escape — nor, for that mat­ter, the West Berlin of which they dreamed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Berlin Wall Worked: The Engi­neer­ing & Struc­tur­al Design of the Wall That For­mi­da­bly Divid­ed East & West

See Berlin Before and After World War II in Star­tling Col­or Video

The Gold­en Age of Berlin Comes to Life in the Clas­sic, Avant-Garde Film, Berlin: Sym­pho­ny of a Metrop­o­lis (1927)

The Dos & Don’ts of Dri­ving to West Berlin Dur­ing the Cold War: A Weird Piece of Ephemera from the 1980s

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

Watch Samuel Beck­ett Walk the Streets of Berlin Like a Boss, 1969

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.

M.I.T. Computer Program Predicts in 1973 That Civilization Will End by 2040

in Computer Science, Data, Life | May 27th, 2026

In 1704, Isaac New­ton pre­dict­ed the end of the world some­time around (or after, “but not before”) the year 2060, using a strange series of math­e­mat­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions. Rather than study what he called the “book of nature,” he took as his source the sup­posed prophe­cies of the Book of Rev­e­la­tion. While such pre­dic­tions have always been cen­tral to Chris­tian­i­ty, it is star­tling for mod­ern peo­ple to look back and see the famed astronomer and physi­cist indulging them. For New­ton, how­ev­er, as Matthew Stan­ley writes at Sci­ence, “lay­ing the foun­da­tion of mod­ern physics and astron­o­my was a bit of a sideshow. He believed that his tru­ly impor­tant work was deci­pher­ing ancient scrip­tures and uncov­er­ing the nature of the Chris­t­ian reli­gion.”

Over three hun­dred years lat­er, we still have plen­ty of reli­gious doom­say­ers pre­dict­ing the end of the world with Bible codes. But in recent times, their ranks have seem­ing­ly been joined by sci­en­tists whose only pro­fessed aim is inter­pret­ing data from cli­mate research and sus­tain­abil­i­ty esti­mates giv­en pop­u­la­tion growth and dwin­dling resources. The sci­en­tif­ic pre­dic­tions do not draw on ancient texts or the­ol­o­gy, nor involve final bat­tles between good and evil. Though there may be plagues and oth­er hor­ri­ble reck­on­ings, these are pre­dictably causal out­comes of over-pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion rather than divine wrath. Yet by some strange fluke, the sci­ence has arrived at the same apoc­a­lyp­tic date as New­ton, plus or minus a decade or two.

The “end of the world” in these sce­nar­ios means the end of mod­ern life as we know it: the col­lapse of indus­tri­al­ized soci­eties, large-scale agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, sup­ply chains, sta­ble cli­mates, nation states…. Since the late six­ties, an elite soci­ety of wealthy indus­tri­al­ists and sci­en­tists known as the Club of Rome (a fre­quent play­er in many con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries) has fore­seen these dis­as­ters in the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry. One of the sources of their vision is a com­put­er pro­gram devel­oped at MIT by com­put­ing pio­neer and sys­tems the­o­rist Jay For­rester, whose mod­el of glob­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty, one of the first of its kind, pre­dict­ed civ­i­liza­tion­al col­lapse in 2040. “What the com­put­er envi­sioned in the 1970s has by and large been com­ing true,” claims Paul Rat­ner at Big Think.

Those pre­dic­tions include pop­u­la­tion growth and pol­lu­tion lev­els, “wors­en­ing qual­i­ty of life,” and “dwin­dling nat­ur­al resources.” In the video at the top, see Aus­trali­a’s ABC explain the computer’s cal­cu­la­tions, “an elec­tron­ic guid­ed tour of our glob­al behav­ior since 1900, and where that behav­ior will lead us,” says the pre­sen­ter. The graph spans the years 1900 to 2060. “Qual­i­ty of life” begins to sharply decline after 1940, and by 2020, the mod­el pre­dicts, the met­ric con­tracts to turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry lev­els, meet­ing the sharp increase of the “Zed Curve” that charts pol­lu­tion lev­els. (ABC revis­it­ed this report­ing in 1999 with Club of Rome mem­ber Kei­th Suter.)

You can prob­a­bly guess the rest—or you can read all about it in the 1972 Club of Rome-pub­lished report Lim­its to Growth, which drew wide pop­u­lar atten­tion to Jay Forrester’s books Urban Dynam­ics (1969) and World Dynam­ics (1971). For­rester, a fig­ure of New­ton­ian stature in the worlds of com­put­er sci­ence and man­age­ment and sys­tems theory—though not, like New­ton, a Bib­li­cal prophe­cy enthusiast—more or less endorsed his con­clu­sions to the end of his life in 2016. In one of his last inter­views, at the age of 98, he told the MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review, “I think the books stand all right.” But he also cau­tioned against act­ing with­out sys­tem­at­ic think­ing in the face of the glob­al­ly inter­re­lat­ed issues the Club of Rome omi­nous­ly calls “the prob­lem­at­ic”:

Time after time … you’ll find peo­ple are react­ing to a prob­lem, they think they know what to do, and they don’t real­ize that what they’re doing is mak­ing a prob­lem. This is a vicious [cycle], because as things get worse, there is more incen­tive to do things, and it gets worse and worse.

Where this vague warn­ing is sup­posed to leave us is uncer­tain. If the cur­rent course is dire, “unsys­tem­at­ic” solu­tions may be worse? This the­o­ry also seems to leave pow­er­ful­ly vest­ed human agents (like Exxon’s exec­u­tives) whol­ly unac­count­able for the com­ing col­lapse. Lim­its to Growth—scoffed at and dis­parag­ing­ly called “neo-Malthu­sian” by a host of lib­er­tar­i­an crit­ics—stands on far sur­er evi­den­tiary foot­ing than Newton’s weird pre­dic­tions, and its cli­mate fore­casts, notes Chris­t­ian Par­en­ti, “were alarm­ing­ly pre­scient.” But for all this doom and gloom it’s worth bear­ing in mind that mod­els of the future are not, in fact, the future. There are hard times ahead, but no the­o­ry, no mat­ter how sophis­ti­cat­ed, can account for every vari­able.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1953, a Tele­phone-Com­pa­ny Exec­u­tive Pre­dicts the Rise of Mod­ern Smart­phones and Video Calls

In 1922, a Nov­el­ist Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like in 2022: Wire­less Tele­phones, 8‑Hour Flights to Europe & More

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dicts the World Will End in 2060

It’s the End of the World as We Know It: The Apoc­a­lypse Gets Visu­al­ized in an Inven­tive Map from 1486

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

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

Hear Robert Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen” in Remarkably Restored Audio, Taken from a Rare Test Pressing

in Music | May 26th, 2026

Robert John­son died at just 27 years old, some say as a con­se­quence of sell­ing his soul to the dev­il at a cross­roads. But before his time came, he man­aged to record 29 songs, a scant body of work that nev­er­the­less secured his artis­tic immor­tal­i­ty as one of the most influ­en­tial blues musi­cians of all time. It’s unfor­tu­nate that his record­ings, all of them made between 1936 and 1937 in less-than-ide­al stu­dio con­di­tions even for the time, leave some­thing to be desired in the audio qual­i­ty depart­ment. But now, some 90 years lat­er, sound restor­er Nick Del­low has been upload­ing rel­a­tive­ly crisp dig­i­tized “test press­ings” of John­son’s songs to YouTube: last month, for exam­ple, we fea­tured one of “Cross Road Blues” here on Open Cul­ture.

In the video above, you’ll find a sim­i­lar­ly high­er-qual­i­ty ver­sion of “Come On in My Kitchen,” a song acknowl­edged as an ear­ly demon­stra­tion of the young John­son’s oth­er­world­ly musi­cal pow­er. You may notice that the title labels this par­tic­u­lar record­ing as “take one.” John­son also record­ed a much dif­fer­ent sec­ond take, which his label Vocalion Records released in 1937, pos­si­bly because it sound­ed less mourn­ful and thus — accord­ing to record-indus­try log­ic — more viable as a hit.

Though take one now seems to be regard­ed as the “true” ren­di­tion of the song by his seri­ous enthu­si­asts, the pub­lic did­n’t get to hear it until 1961, when it was includ­ed on the com­pi­la­tion King of the Delta Blues Singers that did more than any oth­er release to win John­son his posthu­mous fan base.

It is, admit­ted­ly, not easy to imag­ine the first take of “Come On in My Kitchen” sweep­ing the dance halls, even with this sound qual­i­ty much improved from the ver­sion on King of the Delta Blues Singers. But the rea­sons John­son’s music has endured so long have less to do with his abil­i­ty to get a crowd mov­ing than with his com­bi­na­tion of under­stat­ed vir­tu­os­i­ty and preter­nat­ur­al-sound­ing abil­i­ty to reach into gen­uine­ly haunt­ing emo­tion­al realms. Like many canon­i­cal singer-song­writ­ers who died young, he seems always to be and remain some­how old­er than us, his lis­ten­ers, even as we reach (and indeed pass) mid­dle age. Occa­sion­al­ly, the release of nev­er-before-heard record­ings or press­ings reveals the true edge of imma­tu­ri­ty in such fig­ures; with John­son, it only deep­ens his leg­end.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A New­ly Dis­cov­ered Record­ing Lets You Hear Delta Blues Leg­end Robert John­son in Stun­ning Clar­i­ty

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 Myth of Sisyphus Wonderfully Animated in an Oscar-Nominated Short Film (1974)

in Film | May 26th, 2026

Even if you don’t know the myth by name, you know the sto­ry. In Greek mythol­o­gy, Sisy­phus, King of Corinth, was pun­ished “for his self-aggran­diz­ing crafti­ness and deceit­ful­ness by being forced to roll an immense boul­der up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, repeat­ing this action for eter­ni­ty.” In mod­ern times, this sto­ry inspired Albert Camus to write “The Myth of Sisy­phus,” an essay where he famous­ly intro­duced his con­cept of the “absurd” and iden­ti­fied Sisy­phus as the absurd hero. And it pro­vid­ed the cre­ative mate­r­i­al for a breath­tak­ing­ly good ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by Mar­cell Jankovics in 1974. The film, notes the anno­ta­tion that accom­pa­nies the ani­ma­tion on YouTube, is “pre­sent­ed in a sin­gle, unbro­ken shot, con­sist­ing of a dynam­ic line draw­ing of Sisy­phus, the stone, and the moun­tain­side.” Fit­ting­ly, Jankovics’ lit­tle mas­ter­piece was nom­i­nat­ed for the Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film at the 48th Acad­e­my Awards.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

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 

Mythos: An Ani­ma­tion Retells Time­less Greek Myths with Abstract Mod­ern Designs

The Greek Mythol­o­gy Fam­i­ly Tree: A Visu­al Guide Shows How Zeus, Athena, and the Ancient Gods Are Relat­ed

Mythol­o­gy Expert Reviews Depic­tions of Greek & Roman Myths in Pop­u­lar Movies and TV Shows

Revisit Daily Life in China in 1917 Through Footage Enhanced and Colorized by AI

in Film, Travel | May 25th, 2026

Even for Amer­i­cans, keep­ing up with the geopo­lit­i­cal entan­gle­ments of the Unit­ed States has nev­er been an easy task. More than a cen­tu­ry ago, just a few months after their coun­try got involved in what’s now known as World War I, they got word that the mil­i­tary of a dis­tant nation had joined their side: Chi­na, whose image would have been both opaque and for­bid­ding­ly vast. A dozen years before they’d even heard the name Pearl S. Buck, what impres­sions of that coun­try they had would have come from scat­tered sources like post-Opi­um Wars mis­sion­ary pub­li­ca­tions, news­pa­per cov­er­age of com­pli­cat­ed events like the Box­er Rebel­lion and the fall of the Qing dynasty, and silent-film genre stereo­types. (Per­haps the rare read­er got ahold of John Thom­son’s Through Chi­na with a Cam­era.) Most could live a life­time with­out a glimpse of “the real Chi­na.”

By the end of 1917, how­ev­er, “there were at least 10 doc­u­men­taries avail­able to sat­is­fy curios­i­ty about America’s new ally in the Far East,” accord­ing to the Nation­al Film Preser­va­tion Foun­da­tion. Most were shorts that played along­side fea­tures, but A Trip Through Chi­na was dif­fer­ent. At least five years in the mak­ing, “the doc­u­men­tary was the brain­child of Ben­jamin Brod­sky, a wide­ly trav­eled Russ­ian-born busi­ness­man who claimed to speak 11 lan­guages. Accord­ing to a 1912 Mov­ing Pic­ture World pro­file, the young entre­pre­neur had moved to Chi­na from San Fran­cis­co after the 1906 Earth­quake and set up shop as a film exhibitor. Soon, as the Amer­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Vari­ety Film Exchange, he had a hand in dis­tri­b­u­tion and by 1909 branched into film pro­duc­tion in Shang­hai and Hong Kong. While jug­gling busi­ness inter­ests, he filmed his trav­els,” all of which took place not just before Chi­na’s eco­nom­ic rise, but before even the Com­mu­nist Rev­o­lu­tion.

Brod­sky brought 20,000 feet of neg­a­tives with him back to San Fran­cis­co, even­tu­al­ly cut­ting it down to ten reels, which would have run around one hour and 50 min­utes. Of this fea­ture-length trav­el­ogue film only cer­tain sec­tions sur­vive, but you can see them enhanced and col­orized with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in the video at the top of the post. (Some of an un-enhanced black-and-white print appears just above.) Bear in mind that col­ors you see are not, of course, the col­ors Brod­sky would have seen; there’s also some dis­cus­sion about whether the AI ren­dered cer­tain com­plex­ions unre­al­is­ti­cal­ly dark for the regions in which he shot these scenes. For Chi­na is quite a diverse place, not just in region­al land­scapes, cli­mates, and cul­tures, but also in the faces of its peo­ple: some­thing many West­ern­ers would­n’t have guessed in the nine­teen-tens — and for that mat­ter, some­thing a fair few of them don’t real­ize even today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold the Pho­tographs of John Thom­son, the First West­ern Pho­tog­ra­ph­er to Trav­el Wide­ly Through Chi­na (1870s)

A Trip Around the World in 1900: See Restored Footage Show­ing Life in New York, Lon­don, India, Japan, Chi­na & Beyond

Footage of Cities Around the World in the 1890s: Lon­don, Tokyo, New York, Venice, Moscow & More

Watch Life on the Streets of Tokyo in Footage Record­ed in 1913: Caught Between the Tra­di­tion­al and the Mod­ern

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

The Pho­to That Trig­gered China’s Dis­as­trous Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion (1966)

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.

Who Would Be King of the United States If George Washington Had Become a Monarch?

in History | May 25th, 2026

The young George Wash­ing­ton may nev­er have hacked up his father’s cher­ry tree and refused to lie about it, but his life nev­er­the­less offers plen­ty of deeds both vir­tu­ous and ade­quate­ly doc­u­ment­ed. It was no small thing, for instance, to refuse to seek a third term as the first Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca — much less to exchange that title for “King of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.” As every enthu­si­ast of Amer­i­can his­to­ry knows, this set the prece­dent, only once vio­lat­ed and there­after writ­ten into law, of a two-term lim­it. But as every enthu­si­ast of alter­nate Amer­i­can his­to­ry has won­dered, what would have hap­pened had Wash­ing­ton become king? And if the U.S. monar­chy had remained intact for the past 227 years, who would rule it today?

In the Use­fulCharts video above, Matt Bak­er explains a series of dif­fer­ent suc­ces­sion sce­nar­ios. While none is high­ly plau­si­ble in itself, they togeth­er give an idea of the lines along which Amer­i­can monar­chi­cal his­to­ry could have played out, at least assum­ing that every oth­er event played out exact­ly the same way as it has in our real­i­ty.

One of the first com­pli­cat­ing fac­tors is that Wash­ing­ton him­self had no bio­log­i­cal descen­dants. Giv­en that, we can trace down a the­o­ret­i­cal roy­al lin­eage start­ing with his adopt­ed son, born from his wife Martha’s first mar­riage; with the nephew he select­ed as the pri­ma­ry heir of his estate; or with the senior-most heir of his father (own­er of the notion­al cher­ry tree). Not that any of those major paths through the chart of Wash­ing­ton’s indi­rect descen­dants is nec­es­sar­i­ly straight­for­ward either.

The whole mat­ter seems at least as com­pli­cat­ed as fig­ur­ing out who would be the Roman emper­or if Rome had nev­er fall­en, an exer­cise Bak­er works through in anoth­er Use­fulCharts video pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. The pos­si­bil­i­ties for the Amer­i­can monarch in 2026 come down to King Robert III, or Robert E. Lee V (and great-great grand­son of Robert E. Lee); Queen Bryn­da, or Bryn­da Hansen; King Richard, or Richard Wash­ing­ton; and King Lar­ry II, or Lawrence Shaffn­er, the descen­dant of George Wash­ing­ton’s nephew Bushrod. Bak­er finds that Shaffn­er is the most con­vinc­ing can­di­date for the job, which is hard to deny. Even apart from the rel­e­vant famil­ial, polit­i­cal, and legal fac­tors, con­sid­er that name again. King Lar­ry: apart from the title, how much more Amer­i­can could it pos­si­bly sound?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Who Would Be Emper­or If the Roman Empire Still Exist­ed Today?

How George Wash­ing­ton Became Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States: It Was Weird­er Than You Think

George Washington’s 110 Rules for Civil­i­ty and Decent Behav­ior

What We Can Learn from Past Pres­i­dents

A Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca (1861): Fea­tures George Wash­ing­ton Punch­ing Tigers, John Adams Slay­ing Snakes & Oth­er Fan­tas­tic Scenes

A Visu­al Time­line of World His­to­ry: Watch the Rise & Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions Over 5,000 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.

Enjoy Three Hours of Free Nature Videos Narrated by David Attenborough

in Nature | May 22nd, 2026

For your week­end view­ing plea­sure, enjoy three hours of David Atten­bor­ough nar­rat­ing free nature videos from the BBC. Atten­bor­ough just turned 100 this month, and he’s still going strong!

via Kot­tke

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!

The Spread of Christianity Animated, from Antiquity Until Today, on an Animated Map

in History, Religion | May 21st, 2026

Chris­tian­i­ty has long been close­ly iden­ti­fied with West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. The asso­ci­a­tion is espe­cial­ly strong, in mod­ern times, with the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, that source of deri­sive­ly quot­ed, quite pos­si­bly apoc­ryphal argu­ments that “if Eng­lish was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for our chil­dren.” But of course, Jesus nev­er heard a word of Eng­lish, and though the spread of the reli­gion named after him did shift into high gear not long after his death — to say noth­ing of after Con­stan­ti­ne’s — it took its sweet time get­ting to the Amer­i­can con­ti­nent. In fact, it does­n’t show up there until more than five and a half min­utes into the new eight-minute video from Ollie Bye above, which ani­mates Chris­tian­i­ty’s his­tor­i­cal prop­a­ga­tion on a world map.

It’s a world map by the end, in any case: the view zooms out as the reach of Chris­tian­i­ty increas­es, start­ing with the region we now call the Mid­dle East and end­ing up with every con­ti­nent on dis­play, none of them untouched save Antarc­ti­ca (which actu­al­ly does have eight church­es of its own). Remark­able though it is that this first-cen­tu­ry “desert reli­gion” has tak­en root in such a vari­ety of envi­ron­ments, cul­tures, and soci­eties, it has­n’t come through that process com­plete­ly unchanged.

Indeed, Bye’s map includes a run­ning leg­end of its major vari­ants, from Nicene, Celtic, and Chal­cedon­ian Chris­tian­i­ty ear­ly on to Angli­can, Luther­an, Bap­tist, and many more in our time. It makes less sense to speak of the spread of Chris­tian­i­ty, per­haps, than the spread of Chris­tian­i­ties.

In the sin­gu­lar or the plur­al, what has made all this so adapt­able to such a wide vari­ety of human set­tings? Chris­tian­i­ty’s non-eth­nic uni­ver­sal­ism sure­ly has some­thing to do with it, as does the broad emo­tion­al res­o­nance of its core nar­ra­tives of sin, sal­va­tion, and rebirth. The assid­u­ous trans­la­tion of its texts and out­ward march of mis­sion­ar­ies and oth­er car­ri­ers of the gospel has been going on almost since the very begin­ning. Through­out its his­to­ry, Chris­tian­i­ty has also shown the ver­sa­til­i­ty to thrive as a clan­des­tine under­ground move­ment, a state reli­gion, and every­thing in between. All the while, it has assim­i­lat­ed qual­i­ties of the civ­i­liza­tions it enters, from Gre­co-Roman phi­los­o­phy to Celtic fes­ti­vals to Kore­an shaman­is­tic tra­di­tions. In fact, I’m writ­ing this very post from one of the many church cafés in Seoul, as con­vinc­ing an expe­ri­ence as to under­score Chris­tian­i­ty’s improb­a­ble — and con­tin­u­ing — endurance.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed Map Shows How the Five Major Reli­gions Spread Across the World (3000 BC — 2000 AD)

180,000 Years of Reli­gion Chart­ed on a “His­tom­ap” in 1943

The Birth and Rapid Rise of Islam, Ani­mat­ed (622‑1453)

A Visu­al Map of the World’s Major Reli­gions (and Non-Reli­gions)

World Reli­gions Explained with Use­ful Charts: Hin­duism, Bud­dhism, Judaism, Islam, Chris­tian­i­ty & More

The His­to­ry of the World in One Video: Every Year from 200,000 BCE to Today

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.

Watch Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page Rock the Theremin, the Early Soviet Electronic Instrument

in Music | May 21st, 2026

It can be frus­trat­ing for Led Zep­pelin fans to hear the band reduced to pla­gia­rism law­suits or the quin­tes­sence of sex­u­al­ly-aggres­sive rock-star enti­tle­ment (though much of that is deserved). For one thing, Zeppelin’s occult song­writ­ing ten­den­cies, cour­tesy of both Page and Plant, play just as promi­nent a role as their blues-rock come-ons (as sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of fan­ta­sy met­al bands can attest). For anoth­er, their stu­dio pro­duc­tions and live shows are renowned for pio­neer­ing mash-ups of mod­ern rock, folk, and clas­si­cal instru­men­ta­tion, cour­tesy of both Page and Jones. And final­ly, the band’s record­ing tech­niques were—for the time—demonstrations of tech­ni­cal wiz­ardry.

Thus it should come as no sur­prise that tech­ni­cal wiz­ard Jim­my Page would play the Theremin, though he does play on it the kind of scream­ing, feed­back-laden bends he unleashed from his Les Paul. Intro­duced to the world by Sovi­et inven­tor Leon Theremin in 1919, the ear­ly elec­tron­ic instru­ment emits high-pitched singing when a play­er’s hands come with­in range of its invis­i­ble elec­tri­cal fields. “It hasn’t got six strings,” Page says in his demon­stra­tion at the top of the post, from the 2009 film It Might Get Loud, “but it’s a lot of fun.”

Page used a Son­ic Wave Theremin in his Zep­pelin days in a very gui­tar-like way—running it through a Mae­stro Echoplex and Orange amps and cab­i­nets. (Watch him revive the tech­nique in a 1995 French TV broad­cast above.) For sev­er­al months in 1971, writes fan­site Achilles Last Stand, Page “used a dou­ble-stacked Theremin” for twice the son­ic assault.

Though he seems to have gone back to just the one Theremin in the solo above, the effect is no less elec­tri­fy­ing, if you’ll excuse the pun, as he sends echoes of ray-gun noise cas­cad­ing around the the­ater. Well over five min­utes into the hyp­not­ic affair, Page takes to his Les Paul, cre­at­ing more ragged pat­terns with vio­lin bow and Echoplex. Even if you aren’t in a dazed and con­fused state, you’ll feel like you are if you give your­self over to this piece of per­for­mance art. Hero­ics? Yes, and indeed the bowed gui­tar act has its phal­lic over­tones. But it begins and ends with long stretch­es of the kind of dron­ing exper­i­men­tal noise one would expect to find onstage at an ear­ly Kraftwerk show.

Those in the know will know that Page put the theremin to use on one of the band’s most tech­ni­cal­ly exper­i­men­tal record­ings (though it also hap­pens to be an appro­pri­at­ed blues stom­per), “Whole Lot­ta Love” from 1969’s Led Zep­pelin II. “I always envi­sioned the mid­dle to be quite avant-garde,” Page told Gui­tar World, “The Theremin gen­er­ates most of the high­er pitch­es and my Les Paul makes the low­er sounds.” Watch him rip out a theremin-and-gui­tar solo above in the live per­for­mance from 1973. Tak­en with the psy­che­del­ic video effects, the per­for­mance reach­es mys­ti­cal planes of rhyth­mic abstrac­tion.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

Learn How to Play the Theremin: A Free Short Video Course

Meet Clara Rock­more, the Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Who First Rocked the Theremin in the Ear­ly 1920s

Leon Theremin Adver­tis­es the First Com­mer­cial Pro­duc­tion Run of His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment (1930)

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

Hand-Colored Photographs from 19th Century Japan: 110 Images Capture the Waning Days of Traditional Japanese Society

in History, Photography | May 20th, 2026

What we euphemisti­cal­ly refer to as the “Open­ing of Japan” cat­alyzed a peri­od of seis­mic upheaval for the proud for­mer­ly closed coun­try. Between the fall of the Toku­gawa shogu­nate in 1853 and the Mei­ji restora­tion in 1868, Japan­ese soci­ety changed rapid­ly due to the sud­den forced influx of for­eign cap­i­tal and influ­ence, much of it destruc­tive. “Unem­ploy­ment rose,” writes his­to­ri­an John W. Dow­er, “Domes­tic prices soared sky high…. Much of Japan was wracked by famine in the mid 1860s…. As if all this were not curse enough, the for­eign­ers also brought cholera with them.” They also brought pho­tog­ra­phy, and both West­ern and Japan­ese pho­tog­ra­phers doc­u­ment­ed not only the country’s pro­found trans­for­ma­tion, but also its tra­di­tion­al dress and cul­ture.

Closed for 200 years, Japan became a source of end­less fas­ci­na­tion for West­ern­ers as arti­facts made their way across the sea. Among them was “an exten­sive pho­to­graph­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion of Japan,” notes the New York Pub­lic Library, and “of inter­ac­tion between the Japan­ese and for­eign­ers” (Com­modore Perry’s expe­di­tion to Tokyo Bay includ­ed a daguerreo­type pho­tog­ra­ph­er.)

“In the broad­est sense, pho­tog­ra­phy entered Asia from Europe and Amer­i­ca as part of the process of colo­nial­ism, but soon took root in those regions with local pho­tog­ra­phers.”

The col­orized images you see here come from the NYPL’s large col­lec­tion of late 19th cen­tu­ry Japan­ese pho­tog­ra­phy, tak­en by pho­tog­ra­phers like the Ital­ian-British Felice Beato and his Japan­ese stu­dent Kim­bei, who “assist­ed Beato in the hand-col­or­ing of pho­tographs until 1863,” then “set up his own large and flour­ish­ing stu­dio in Yoko­hama in 1881.” The archive pro­vides “a rich resource for the under­stand­ing of the polit­i­cal, social, eco­nom­ic, and artis­tic his­to­ry of Asia from the 1870s to the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.” These images date from between 1890 and 1909, by which time much of Japan had already been exten­sive­ly west­ern­ized in dress, archi­tec­ture, and style of gov­ern­ment.

To many Japan­ese, the old ways, sus­tained through a cou­ple hun­dred years of iso­la­tion, must have seemed in dan­ger of slip­ping away. To many West­ern­ers, how­ev­er, the encounter with Japan offered a kind of cul­tur­al renew­al. As the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art points out, “a tidal wave of for­eign imports” from Asia, includ­ing “wood­cut prints by mas­ters of the ukiyo‑e school… trans­formed Impres­sion­ist and Post-Impres­sion­ist art.” Euro­pean col­lec­tors, traders, and artists dis­cov­ered a mania for all things Japan­ese, even as some of its cul­tur­al forms threat­ened to dis­ap­pear. Enter the NYPL’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion, Pho­tographs of Japan, here.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold the Mas­ter­piece by Japan’s Last Great Wood­block Artist: View Online Tsukio­ka Yoshitoshi’s One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon (1885)

What Hap­pens When a Japan­ese Wood­block Artist Depicts Life in Lon­don in 1866, Despite Nev­er Hav­ing Set Foot There

Japan­ese Kabu­ki Actors Cap­tured in 18th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints by the Mys­te­ri­ous & Mas­ter­ful Artist Sharaku

The Evo­lu­tion of The Great Wave off Kana­gawa: See Four Ver­sions That Hoku­sai Paint­ed Over Near­ly 40 Years

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