I love learning about history I haven’t been exposed to before. These short videos fill in blank spots in my knowledge and help knit together the story of the past. — Douglas
In 1989, a wave of revolution swept across Eastern Europe, disrupting the Communist governments of Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary and of course, Romania. But how did the Romanian Revolution play out and why couldn’t Nicolae Ceaușescu or the authorities stop it like they had done previously? And why did it end the way it did? With the same people still in power and the Ceaușescu’s subject to a mock trial.
Cities grow, adapt and change, like all living things. The Library’s map collections show this in all sorts of unexpected ways, offering a vision of days gone by, of what “normal” once looked like. We present you with some fascinating glimpses of the cities of yesteryear in this edition of the Library’s Free to Use and Reuse sets of copyright-free images.
The good news about these, if you haven’t seen them before, is that they are yours for the taking — print them out, blow them up into huge posters, use them for laptop screensavers. It’s your choice. In the past few months, we’ve highlighted classic movie theaters, genealogy, maps of discovery and exploration and so on, but there are lots more.
If you’re running low on free educational content and you’re eager to use this time to improve your craft, we have some good news. The website Photography Life hast just released all of their premium photography courses, usually $150 apiece, for free on YouTube.
The announcement was made earlier today by Photography Life founder Nasim Mansurov, who explained that he and his staff felt compelled to help out the community during these difficult times.
Archaeologists found the bones of three young African men in a 500-year-old mass grave in what is now Mexico City. The chemical makeup of their bones sheds light on their earlier lives in Africa, and forensic analysis reveals hard, painful lives and young deaths.
How the dead speak
Archaeologists unearthed the mass grave in 1992 while digging a new subway line in Mexico City. Five hundred years earlier, the site had been the grounds of the Hospital Real de San José de los Naturales. The Spanish colonizers had built the hospital to treat indigenous people—that’s what “los Naturales” means in Spanish—but these three men were African, not North or Central American. Their bones radiocarbon-dated to the 1500s CE, which makes them part of an important but often anonymous group of people: the first African people abducted in their homelands and brought across the Atlantic Ocean to European colonies in the Americas.
Already bored at home? Well, don’t you worry because the COOPH photographers do their best even during this extraordinary time to provide you with fresh ideas and inspiration. They put together a list of creative things you can shoot during your time at home. Equipment or props? They only used things that you should already have in your home, so you can start shooting right away!
While we won’t call entertaining and educating kids stuck at home an easy task, we can at least say there are plenty of places stepping up to fill the virtual void. That includes museums offering virtual tours, destinations providing virtual views, and even national parks hosting virtual hikes, all of which make for excellent virtual field trips. But, if your kid is more into math and science now’s their time to shine thanks to The Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Classroom.
These days students, teachers, professors, and parents are figuring out an awful lot about how distance learning works. But teaching and learning remotely is not a brand-new thing. As microbiologist Roy D. Sleator writes, it’s actually much older than Zoom, Google Classroom, or even the internet itself.
Sleator begins the history of distance learning in 1728. That’s when shorthand teacher Caleb Phillips bought an ad in the Boston Gazette promising that students “may by having the several lessons sent weekly to them, be as perfectly instructed as those that live in Boston.”
You’ll notice that many ex-British Colonies, like Australia, Canada and New Zealand don’t use pounds like their former British overlords but instead use dollars. Why? What caused these nations to switch currencies and why did they prefer America’s style of currency of the Britain’s? Find out in this video, the latest in my very short, animated historical documentaries (about history).
In 1949 Mao won the Chinese Civil War and pushed the Koumintang government into exile in Taiwan. But why didn’t he finish the job and Conquer the island, reunifying China in the process?
Currently the British Library is busy digitizing its collection of around 150 globes and making them available as 3D interactive visualizations. Not wanting to be outdone the National Maritime Museum has also released a virtual 3D visualization of one of its historical globes.
The Mercator Terrestrial Globe was made by Gerard Mercator in 1541. Ten years later, in 1551, he made a companion celestial globe. You can also view 3d versions of Mercator’s Earth Globe and Mercator’s Celestial Globe on the University of Lausanne’s website.
