A list of reasons why people write and explore history with examples of each.
14. The past is heritage: we study it to form or enforce national, ethnic, religious or personal identity, or to combat attempts to destroy heritage. Gertrude Himmelfarb, The De-Moralization of Society.
(via short shrift)
Everything I Know About Hyman Victor is one man's remembrance of his great grandfather through old photographs and documents.
A hundred and twenty year old photo of a young Helen Keller has been found.
The photograph, shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8-year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan's hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.
An (animated (and condensed (and brief (and truncated)))) history of evil. Almost as interesting for the comments as for the video itself.
Bookmarked for some weekend reading: The History of Visual Communication...from rocks and caves to the avant-garde to the computer. (via girlhacker)
Letter to the editor, New York Times, August 25, 1993:
(Yes; today you are all being the victims of a project for which I'm urgently neck-deep in research.)The East Village is awash in criminal activity and antisocial behavior, which blatantly occurs all through the day and escalates as the sun goes down. At 7 A.M., when I walk my dog, the area looks like a war zone. Crack vials, human feces, used condoms and hypodermic needles litter the sidewalks, building entryways, halls and stoops. Junkies are roaming the streets uprooting flower beds to look for the drugs they hurriedly stashed the night before.
This summer will be the 20th anniversary of the Tompkins Square Park riot. From the New York Times, August 6, 1993:
In a playground off Avenue A, Gerry Griffin watched Emily, her 18-month-old towheaded daughter, run after flying bubbles. Ms. Griffin said she enjoys the renovated Tompkins Square Park.
"For people with kids, it's a dream come true," she said. "I was against what they were doing, but I am really enjoying the effects of it." [...]
"They said they tore down the bandshell because people slept in it," said Ruth Silber, who has lived near the park for 26 years. "Pretty soon they're going to destroy all the subways because homeless people sleep in the subways." [...]
Farther up Avenue A, two officers on mopeds sat inside the locked gate, talking about Saturday, the fifth anniversary of the 1988 battle. They told visitors to come back then if they wanted to see some action.
Do they expect trouble? "I hope so," one officer said as he rode off.
Letter to the editor, New York Times, June 23, 1993:
If landlords could double or triple the rent on vacant apartments, it would be a compelling incentive for them to try to drive current tenants out by any means necessary. (During the East Village's gentrification in the 1980's, my landlords neglected or cut off heat and hot water, called us late at night to tell us to leave, let crack addicts stay in warehoused apartments and rented storefronts to drug dealers.)
Under luxury decontrol, what would stop them from renting only to tenants who make more than $100,000 a year to get apartments permanently deregulated? Warehousing would burgeon as landlords kept apartments vacant for months waiting for a sucker to pay top market rent.
New York Times, September 29, 1991:
She began asking $132,000 for her studio in 1988 and has since lowered the asking price to $115,00, but has not had a bid.
Another owner in the Christadora House bought her 1,100-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment for $270,000 in 1986 has been trying to sell it for 14 months. She first asked $305,000 and has lowered her price to $260,000. Her only offer so far, which she rejected six months ago, was for $220,000.
Two blocks away, on 11th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B, the owner of a two-bedroom co-op on the top floor of a renovated five-story tenement has received a bigger blow. He paid $186,000 for it a year ago and has been trying to sell it for four months at $89,000. So far, no takers.
New York Times, October 23, 1994:
These days you can walk into the St. Marks Bookshop and find his second novel, "The Ice Storm," on the same shelf as James Michener and Cormac McCarthy, thanks to alphabetical order.... [H]e makes nearly all of his income from writing. And lives in a state of at least intermittent dread. "This minute I'm sitting here being interviewed," he mused, "and in five years I won't be able to get published."
In 1984, Maureen Dowd, now an op-ed columnist, was a reporter on the "Metropolitan staff" of the New York Times. This excerpt (from a 5112-word piece) ran in the Times magazine on November 4, 1984, with the headline "9PM TO 5AM." (It's behind the paywall here.)
On Monday nights, Area offers ''obsession'' nights—with fixations such as sex, pets and body oddities. At a recent ''sex evening,'' nude jugglers and whip dancers moved in and out of the crowd while an ex-nun heard sexual confessions in the ladies' room and an old man played with inflatable dolls in a pool.
This evening, the theme is ''confinement,'' and the club is decorated with dolls in pajamas chained under water, a caged rabbit and go-go dancers armed with guns and dressed in Army fatigues.
''Where's Andy Warhol?'' asks a young punk, dragging on a joint and scanning the crowd. ''I want to get a good look at him.''
''I think he went to Limelight,'' says his friend. At Limelight, a church- turned-club on the Avenue of the Americas at 20th Street, halolike arcs of light stream from stained-glass windows.
''We should go there,'' says someone else.
''We should go there immediately,'' says another.
They scurry off to Limelight, unaware that their quarry, wearing corduroys and a backpack, is standing unobtrusively at the bar.
''This is the best bar in town,'' Andy Warhol says. ''You could take everything out and put it in a gallery.''
Matt Dillon, Vincent Spano and Mickey Rourke, each confident in his role as a teen idol, make their separate ways through the crowd, as young girls reach out to touch their arms, backs, anything. Director Francis Ford Coppola is talking to the actress Diane Lane.
Nearby, Don Marino, an up-and-coming actor, is talking to Brian Jones, an up-and-coming director. ''L.A. is a whole different world,'' the actor says. ''You go to the A party, the B party and you are home in bed by 11 for your 5 o' clock call the next morning. In New York, you've got to be seen at night, you've got to get around.''
The young director scans the room. ''I know people Coppola knows,'' he says. ''I wonder if I could go say hi.''
The opening title sequence of The Kingdom is a nice 3.5 minute overview of the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia.
A timeline of human history (mostly sex and violence) by Milo Manara. NSFW.
Now that the NY Times has discontinued their Times Select subscription program and made much more of their 150+ years of content available for anyone to read and link to, let's take a look at some of the more notable items that the non-subscriber has been missing.
- Access to the last two years-worth of columns from the NY Times' noted Op-Ed columnists, including Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, and Paul Krugman.
- The first mention of the World Wide Web in the Times in February 1993. According to the article, the purpose of the web is "[to make] available physicists' research from many locations". Also notable are this John Markoff article on the internet being overwhelmed by heavy traffic and growth...in 1993, and a piece, also by Markoff, on the Mosaic web browser.
- Early report of Lincoln's assassination..."The President Still Alive at Last Accounts".
- A report on Custer's Last Stand a couple of weeks after the occurance (I couldn't find anything sooner). The coverage of Native Americans is notable for the racism, both thinly veiled and overt, displayed in the writing, e.g. a story from September 1872 titled The Hostile Savages.
- From the first year of publication, a listing of the principle events of 1851.
- An article about the confirmation of Einstein's theory of gravity by a 1919 expedition led by Arthur Eddington to measure the bending of starlight by the sun during an eclipse.
- A front page report on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, including a seismograph of the quake which the Times labeled "EARTHQUAKE'S AUTOGRAPH AS IT WROTE IT 3,000 MILES AWAY".
- The first mention of television (as a concept) in the Times, from February 1907. "The new 'telephotograph' invention of Dr. Arthur Korn, Professor of Physics in Munich University, is a distinct step nearer the realization of all this, and he assures us that 'television,' or seeing by telegraph, is merely a question of a year or two with certain improvements in apparatus."
- First mention of Harry Potter. Before it became a phenomenon, it was just another children's book on the fiction best-seller list.
- Some of the output by prolific Times reporter R.W. Apple is available (after 1981, pre-1981).
- A report during the First World War of the Germans using mustard gas. Lots more reporting about WWI is available in the Times archive.
- Not a lot is available from the WWII era, which is a shame. For instance, I wish this article about the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima was available in the Times archive. Nothing about the moon landing, Kennedy's assassination, Watergate, etc. etc. either. :(
- On The Table, Michael Pollan's blog from last summer about food soon after the publication of The Omnivore's Dilemma.
- Urban Planet, a blog about cities from Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map.
- Oddly, The Principles of Uncertainty, an illustrated blog by Maira Kalman isn't available anymore. Update: Kalman's blog is probably unavailable because it's due to be published in book form in October. (thx, rafia) Further update: Kalman's blog is back online and wonderful. The culprit was a misconfiguration at the Times' end. (thx, rich)
- Several other previously unavailable blogs are listed here and here.
- It looks like most of the links to old NY Times articles I (and countless other early bloggers) posted in the late 90s and early 00s now work. Tens of thousands of broken links fixed in one pass. Huzzah!
I'll also note that this move by the Times puts them in a much better position to win the Long Bet between Dave Winer and the Times' Martin Nisenholtz at the end of this year.
In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site.
As of the end of 2005, the Times was not faring very well against blogs.
Update: One more: a report on the sinking of the Titanic. A small mention of the sinking was published in the paper the previous day.
A Brief History of Economic Time. "No 18th-century politician would have asked 'Are you better off than you were four years ago?' because it never would have occurred to anyone that they ought to be better off than they were four years ago." (via migurski)
Blog to watch: Madame Royale, a blog about notable women from the past. (via cyn-c)
An animated version of the Bayeux Tapestry, which tells the story of the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Wikipedia has more info on the tapestry and VSL has more on the video.
Short interview by James Surowiecki of Nassim Taleb about his new book, The Black Swan. "History is dominated not by the predictable but by the highly improbable -- disruptive, unforeseeable events that Taleb calls Black Swans. The effects of wars, market crashes, and radical technological innovations are magnified precisely because they confound our expectations of the universe as an orderly place." Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article on Taleb for the New Yorker in 2002, which Taleb said "put too much emphasis on the far less interesting, more limited -- and rather boring -- applications of my ideas to finance/economic, & less on the dynamics of historical events/philosophy of history, artistic success, and general uncertainty in society". See also an interview in New Scientist, a NY Times op-ed, and a long piece on the Edge site about the black swan idea.
A list of the earliest printed books in select languages. Movable metal type printing in Korea predates that of Gutenberg by a couple hundred years. See also the Wikipedia entry for movable type.
Thoughtful post on the extreme recency of recorded human history. We know very little about the people who lived before the invention of writing and collections of stories like the Bible, save for what we can glean from speechless skeletons, footprints, and other remains. "And look at how much is lost. Between the time of the couple fleeing across a field of volcanic ash and poor dead Lucy lies 400,000 years. If a Bible is a record of the struggle of a people for 2,000 years, we'd need 200 Bibles to tell us the tale of just this one obscure, remote branch of our lineage." (thx, alexander)
How to think about the scale of human history: "Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., one the United States' great historians, is less than two lifetimes removed from a world where the United States did not exist. Through Mr. Schlesinger, you're no more than three away yourself. That's how short the history of our nation really is. Not impressed? It's only two more life spans to William Shakespeare. Two more beyond that, and the only Europeans to see America are those who sailed from Greenland. You're ten lifetimes from the occupation of Damietta during the fifth crusade. Twenty from the founding of Great Zimbabwe and the Visigoth sack of Rome. Make it forty, and Theseus, king of Athens, is held captive on Crete by King Minos, the Olmecs are building the first cities in Mexico, and the New Kingdom collapses in Egypt."
Wikipedia has a series of maps showing the political and social boundries of the world in 2000 BC, 1000 BC, 500 BC, 323 BC and so on.
Some recent rigorous radiocarbon dating has thrown into doubt the theory that the Americas were first settled 11,000 years ago by the so-called Clovis peoples.
Writer's Dreamtools has a timeline of events, people, entertainment, fashion, money, etc. for every decade since 1650. This allows the writer to put herself in that time period and as a jumping off point for further historical research. Favorite categories: "who's in" and "what's in". What a great resource for writers. (via youngna)
Historiography is the study of the practice of history. "When you study 'historiography' you do not study the events of the past directly, but the changing interpretations of those events in the works of individual historians."
The Library of Congress has an online photography exhibit called Bound for Glory: America in Color, 1939-1943 (thx, shay). The photos were a little low contrast, so I color corrected a few of them in Photoshop:
My goal was not to blow out the contrast or unnecessarily accentuate colors, but attempt to duplicate what these photos would look like had they been taken with a contemporary camera and processed using contemporary techniques and materials.
Since he was 12, Gilles Trehin has been drawing and writing about the imaginary city of Urville, which is situated on the Mediterranean coast of France, was founded by the Phoenicians in the 12th century BC, and currently houses over 17 million inhabitants. Don't miss the drawings. (via godammit)
Social, political, economic, cultural, historical, and technological timelines of the world from 1750 to 2100. Having all the timelines in one view is nice, but the zoomable interface is clunky.
The CIA World Factbook maintains a page about the entire world, which seems like it was meant to be read by aliens about to visit Earth for the first time. (thx jake)
This Onion story is right on the edge between humor and tasteless: Kent State Basketball Team Massacred By Ohio National Guard In Repeat Of Classic 1970 Matchup. I laughed, but I felt bad about it.
The story of the Hindenburg disaster. Amazingly, 2/3 of the zeppelin's passengers survived the crash. Here's an audio recording of the famous Herbert Morrison radio broadcast ("oh, the humanity") of the disaster.
This Day in Apple History offers a daily story about what happened on a given day in Apple's history.
A Brief Economic History of the World, 10,000 BC-2000 AD, consisting of several PDFs. I only read the intro, but it seems pretty interesting if you're interested in such things.
Right around 1985 is when American cuisine took hold in NYC...and with it came other changes. "It can be argued that fine dining finally lost its haughty attitude then, that cloches became less important than customer comment cards. A fascination with classic French cooking was forevermore trumped by an insistence on something lighter, more flexible and less hidebound. The trickle of a simpler sensibility from California became a tide. The glories of the Greenmarket took ineradicable root."
Timeline of video games, mostly business-related. But holy crap, Hunt the Wumpus (a game I had for the TI-99) was invented in 1973? Cool.
Who knew the history of the hambuger was so convoluted? Here's what we know: somewhere between Kublai Khan and the Big Mac, someone somewhere invented it.
Steven Shapin reviews Tom Standage's A History of the World in 6 Glasses, a "social life of beverages". Standage is one of my favorite technology/culture writers; he wrote about the telegraph in The Victorian Internet.
Slideshow of historic photography from the archives of ICP and the George Eastman Collection. Lots of photos from both collections are set to be available online in 2006 at photomuse.org.
The Harry Potter book series as allegory for 1930s Europe. Voldemort as Hitler, Dumbledore as Churchill, and Potter as FDR's America?
Animated geographic history of the United States. This is pretty cool.
Jared Diamond calls agriculture "the worst mistake in the history of the human race". "With the advent of agriculture [the] elite became better off, but most people became worse off".
David McCullough's 1776 and the tension between academic historians and popularizers. Also apropos to the scientists vs. pop science writers argument I've been hearing lately re: Blink and Everything Bad is Good for You.
Jared Diamond has written a fantastic book that lays out in simple terms how Europeans came to dominate the rest of the world without resorting to racist notions of Europeans being intrinsically smarter or more gifted than the inhabitants of the rest of the world. Diamond's thesis is so simple and powerful, it seems, as Erdos would say, to come from "God's book of proofs". An illustration of this powerful simplicity is how the orientation of the continents affected the spread of domestication of crops, animals, germs, and ideas (which in turn influenced how fast difference cultures matured):
Why was the spread of crops from the Fertile Crescent so rapid? The answer partly depends on that east-west axis of Eurasia with which I opened this chapter. Localities distributed east and west of each other at the same latitude share exactly the same day length and its seasonal variations. To a lesser degree, they also tend to share similar diseases, regimes of temperature and rainfall, and habitats or biomes (types of vegetation). That's part of the reason why Fertile Crescent [crops and animals] spread west and east so rapidly: they were already well adapted to the climates of the regions to which they were spreading.
I've read so much about science that I was reluctant to pick up Bryson's book, but I'm a sucker for good but accessible science writing, so I forged ahead anyway. The beginning of the book was interesting but nothing I hadn't heard before, but once Bryson got to the more recent developments in everything from physics to evolutionary biology, I was hooked. I try to keep up with where science stands today by reading magazine and newspaper articles, but the big picture is hard to visualize that way. Bryson painted that big picture...the last few chapters of the book should be required reading for high school science students who may have learned that protons, neutrons, and electrons are indivisible or that Darwin had the first and final say on how evolution works.
Zinn's a Marxist freak (well, according to some), but this book is still worth reading as an antidote to what most American kids learn about in school.
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