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“4. I realized that the feeling a man preserves longest is anger. There is only enough flesh on a hungry man for anger: everything else leaves him indifferent.” → from Forty-Five Things I Learned in the Gulag [Thanks, Reader B.]
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Below the Surface is an amazing project documenting tens of thousands (of more than 700,000) artifacts uncovered during a systematic excavation of Amsterdam’s central River Amstel, a central artery in the city for millennia.
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RFID Machines in British Libraries Are Producing Charming Found Poetry [Thanks, Reader S.]
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“Swearing was a litmus test […] Swearing could unite people.” → “Damn your blood”: Swearing in early modern English
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“The arts of memory are among the arts of thinking, especially involved with fostering the qualities we now revere as ‘imagination’ and ‘creativity.'” → Mary Carruthers (and Alan Jacobs) on memorization
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Isochrone maps depict time on maps, such as this fascinating map by Francis Galton showing just how large the world was in 1881 (with the center being London, naturally).
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“How a meteorite hunter’s obsession took him from the mountains of Colorado, to the Bundy Ranch, and eventually landed him in jail” → How one man went from hunting meteorites to being hunted by the law
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Beautiful. → Daniel Mercadante’s long exposure light paintings
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Some happy news: After searching for years, Wisconsin woman learns her sister lives next door || Harrogate bookshop tweets about dismal sales and sets a sales record || Teenage Girl Helps a Blind and Deaf Passenger
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Today in 1916 is the first—and deadliest—day in the four-and-a-half-month long World War 1 Battle of the Somme. Ultimately the largest battle on the Western Front, with more than 70,000 casualties on this day alone—the Battle of the Somme would end only after more than one million wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles of all time. While undeniably the beginning of modern warfare, and the introduction of the British forces to this kind of combat, the strategic value of this most-costly battle remains in dispute to this day.
