Nose tomb
The Mimizuka monument in Kyoto, Japan, is full of Korean noses. It is a hanazuka, a nose tomb.
Category: Early modern history
1500 CE until 1800 CE
Dance notes
Music notation gives you a record of exactly how to play a piece of music. But how do you write a record of a dance?
Let the buyer beware of magic stones
The famous legal phrase caveat emptor (“let the buyer beware”) entered common law because of a 17th century dispute over a magic bezoar stone.
Sheep fruit
Behold the fabulous creatures of myth and legend! The dragon, the phoenix, the basilisk, the roc, the unicorn… and the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary?
Largest bell
The Tsar Bell in Moscow is the largest extant bell in the world – but it has never been rung.
Schools vs. Satan
Some of the first public schools in North America were founded explicitly to counteract “that old deluder, Satan.”
The do in do-re-mi
The solfège system teaches Western music scales: do re mi fa sol la ti do. But who is “do”?
Cat poetry (Part 2)
The famed Romantic poet Thomas Gray wrote a verse about his friend’s cat drowning in a goldfish bowl. [2 of 2]
Cat poetry (Part 1)
Cat poetry has a long history: Christopher Smart wrote a Romantic religious poem featuring his cat Jeoffry while confined in a mental asylum in the 1760s. [1 of 2]
Drunken graduation
“Gaudeamus igitur” is a solemn Latin song commonly sung at Western graduation ceremonies. Two hundred and fifty years ago, it was a bawdy student drinking song.
Death by immortality potion
Poisoned potions of immortality caused the death of up to seven Chinese emperors – the last less than three centuries ago.
The lost bell of Shwedagon Pagoda
A Portuguese mercenary stole the largest working bell in history from Shwedagon Pagoda, and then lost it in the waters of the Yangon River.
Grace from slavery
John Newton was a press-ganged sailor, a slave, a slave-ship captain, an Anglican priest, an abolitionist, and the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace.”
Portugal vs. Egypt in India
How about that time that the Egyptian Mamluks, with secret support from Venice, battled the Portuguese in the sea off the coast of India?
Log guns
Take a log, paint it black, and make sure your enemy can see it. The “quaker guns” were a key piece of strategic deception in the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars.
The Tamil bell
In 1836 a missionary in New Zealand learned of a strange artefact that had been in Māori possession for several generations: a bronze bell with an unfamiliar script. The script was Tamil, the bell came from Sri Lanka, and it was hundreds of years old.
The Generalist Academy 