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Category: Arts & recreation

By The Generalist Posted on August 2, 2022August 13, 2022

The book arcade

Around the end of the 19th century, Melbourne, Australia, hosted one of the biggest – and certainly the most carnivalesque – bookstores in the world: Cole’s Book Arcade.

Categories: 19th century history, 20th century history, Economics & business, Literature, Oceania
By The Generalist Posted on July 30, 2022January 25, 2023

Wordless novels and motionless movies

Novels have words and films move. But some creators have resisted even these conventions, creating novels without writing and films without motion.

Categories: 20th century history, Art, Europe, Film & television, Literature, North & Central America
By The Generalist Posted on June 30, 2022January 25, 2023

Art before art

Humans have been making figurative art for at least forty thousand years – but we may have been carrying “found” art around for much longer.

Categories: Africa, Art, Prehistory
By The Generalist Posted on June 22, 2022June 21, 2022

Star Wars disco

At the 1978 Grammy Awards, in the category Best Pop Instrumental Performance, John Williams’ famous Star Wars soundtrack faced off against… a disco funk cover of the Star Wars soundtrack that had outsold and out-charted the original.

Categories: 20th century history, Film & television, Music, North & Central America
By The Generalist Posted on June 13, 2022June 13, 2022

Fantasy revised

In the original edition of The Hobbit, Gollum was willing to give up the ring; before 1994 the American and British editions of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader were different; Madame Mim was removed from The Sword and the Stone for its 1958 reissue.

Categories: 20th century history, Europe, Literature
By The Generalist Posted on June 2, 2022January 25, 2023

Happiest meal

McDonald’s iconic Happy Meal came to us via a Chilean-Guatemalan restauranteur, a Missouri advertising agent, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Categories: 20th century history, Economics & business, Film & television, Food & agriculture, North & Central America
By The Generalist Posted on May 26, 2022May 25, 2022

Breeches of The Last Judgment

After Michelangelo’s death, his friend Daniele da Volterra was employed by the Vatican to paint over the genitalia of the Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgment.

Categories: Art, Early modern history, Europe, Religion & belief
By The Generalist Posted on May 19, 2022May 18, 2022

The band prophecy

In the mid-20th century, Austin Wiggin’s mother predicted that her son would have daughters, and those daughters would form a famous band. He did, and they did, in the most surprising way possible.

Categories: 20th century history, Music, North & Central America
By The Generalist Posted on May 1, 2022April 30, 2022

Indian flag monopoly

Every Indian flag in India is made in one small south Indian village.

Categories: 20th century history, Fashion & design, Politics & law, South Asia
By The Generalist Posted on April 17, 2022April 17, 2022

Blanket heater table

The Japanese kotatsu combines a table, a heater, and a layer of comfortable blankets.

Categories: East Asia, Fashion & design, Technology
By The Generalist Posted on March 29, 2022March 28, 2022

Horned Moses

Michelangelo’s statue of Moses has horns, thanks to a mistranslation in the Latin Vulgate Bible.

Categories: Art, Early modern history, Europe, Medieval history, Religion & belief
By The Generalist Posted on March 25, 2022March 25, 2022

Scavenger cistern

The Basilica Cistern in Istanbul is an underground underwater forest of 336 huge marble columns. It was built in the 6th century CE, but parts are much older – because they were scavenged from other buildings, sometimes with original sculptures intact.

Categories: Architecture, Art, Europe, Medieval history
By The Generalist Posted on March 20, 2022January 25, 2023

German troublemakers

In the 1865 German children’s book Max and Moritz, the titular troublemakers blow up a teacher, are baked in an oven, and finally get ground up in a flour mill and eaten by ducks.

Categories: 19th century history, Europe, Literature
By The Generalist Posted on February 23, 2022February 22, 2022

First piano

The arpicembalo (harp-harpsichord) of Bartolomeo Cristofori could play notes both loud and quiet, which the harpsichord could not. It was the first piano.

Categories: Early modern history, Europe, Music, Technology
By The Generalist Posted on February 22, 2022February 22, 2022

The Phony King of England

Disney’s Robin Hood features a song about the “Phony King of England.” That song is based on an old (and very bawdy) English folk ballad about “The Bastard King of England.”

Categories: 20th century history, Europe, Film & television, Music, North & Central America, Politics & law
By The Generalist Posted on February 21, 2022February 20, 2022

Buried film history

In 1978 a cache of five hundred film reels was discovered under an ice rink in Dawson City, Yukon. These buried reels included the only copy of films that had been lost for decades.

Categories: 20th century history, Film & television, North & Central America

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