The Strange and Brilliant Inventions of Nikola Tesla
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall9h ago
Even before the success of the electric car company that now bears his name, Nikola Tesla was a widely respected historical figure.
Open Culture
openculture.comadded August 2026
top 68%7 Tips from Edgar Allan Poe on How to Write Vivid Stories & Poems
Open Cultureby OC10h ago
There may be no more a macabrely misogynistic sentence in English literature than Edgar Allan Poe’s contention that “the death… of a beautiful woman” is “unquestionably the most poetical topic in...
Why the Maps of London, Tokyo, New York, and Other Major Cities Look the Way They Do
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall1d ago
If you’re trying to understand a city, its map isn’t a bad place to start. Today, of course, we can call up an accurate map of practically any part of any city at any time we like, with detailed...
It’s the End of the World as We Know It: The Apocalypse Gets Visualized in an Inventive Map from 1486
Open Cultureby OC1d ago
When will the world end? We can find serious scientific answers to this question, depending on what we mean by “world” and “end.” If we mean the end of civilization as we currently know it, climate...
Discover the Lost Horror Series Deemed Too Shocking for BBC Television (1967)
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall2d ago
High culture and new technology have never been a natural pairing. As our digital era has often underscored, media innovations tend to be adopted earliest to deliver the most puerile...
In 1704, Isaac Newton Predicted That the World Will End in 2060
Open Cultureby OC2d ago
We have become quite used to pronouncements of doom, from scientists predicting the sixth mass extinction due to the measurable effects of climate change, and from religionists declaring the...
300 Years Before ChatGPT, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels Imagined Machines Writing Books and Producing Knowledge (1726)
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall3d ago
The printing press was invented in the middle of the fifteenth century, and it’s been downhill for the written word ever since.
When Buckminster Fuller Proposed Putting a Dome Over Manhattan (1960)
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall7d ago
Image via Buckminster Fuller Estate The novels of John Brunner have become a niche taste, even within his genre of science fiction. A more sociologically minded version of Philip K.
The Cable that Changed the World: How Instant Global Communication Began in 1858
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall8d ago
The word wireless is going the way of computerized and portable, and for much the same reasons. We no longer regard wireless devices that require no physical connections to anything else as...
The Oldest Book Printed with Movable Type is Not The Gutenberg Bible: Jikji, a Collection of Korean Buddhist Teachings, Predated It By 78 Years and It’s Now Digitized Online
Open Cultureby OC8d ago
The history of the printed word is full of bibliographic twists and turns, major historical moments, and the significant printing of books now so obscure no one has read them since their...
How to Explain Complicated Things
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall9d ago
You may remember a time when it was difficult to make it through the day without hearing someone cite a TED Talk.
Mick Jagger Tells the Story Behind ‘Gimme Shelter’ and Merry Clayton’s Haunting Background Vocals
Open Cultureby OC9d ago
In the fall of 1969 the Rolling Stones were in a Los Angeles recording studio, putting the final touches on their album Let It Bleed. It was a tumultuous time for the Stones.
Read the CIA’s Manual of Trickery and Deception, Written by a Professional Stage Magician
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall10d ago
The idea of a youngster vacillating between whether to become a magician or join the Central Intelligence Agency may sound implausible, but those two working environments have deeper commonalities...
The Little Albert Experiment: The Perverse 1920 Study That Made a Baby Afraid of Santa Claus & Bunnies
Open Cultureby OC10d ago
The field of psychology is very different than it used to be. Nowadays, the American Psychological Association has a code of conduct for experiments that ensures a subject’s confidentiality...
How Else Marie Pade, a Prisoner in World War II, Became Denmark’s First Female Electronic Composer
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall13d ago
Before she became a composer of electronic music, Else Marie Pade was a sick child listening to the radio.
The Long, Strange History of Tarot Cards: From the 14th Century to Modern Times
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall14d ago
We have any number of reasons for difficulty getting to sleep, not least worries about the future.
How to Memorize an Entire Chapter from “Moby Dick”: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
Open Cultureby OC14d ago
Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I mentally revisit the various homes of my childhood, wandering from room to room, turning on lights and peering in closets until I conk out.
When Salvador Dalí Gave a Surrealist Lecture in a Diving Suit … and Almost Suffocated (1936)
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall15d ago
Many a foreigner has visited England and found it an unexpectedly surreal place. Some of that effect has to do with encountering familiar icons — Big Ben, double-decker Routemaster buses, Marmite —...
How Alan Turing and His Fellow Codebreakers Broke the Nazis’ “Unbreakable” Enigma Code
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall16d ago
There was a time when you could just go out and buy an Enigma machine. In the early nineteen-twenties, any organization with a need to keep its communications secret could order a few of those...
The Digital Dada Library: Discover the Archive That Preserves the Original Publications of the Experimental Anti-Art Movement Online
Open Cultureby OC16d ago
Critical theorists like Theodor Adorno may have overreached in claiming that all mass culture is mediocre, mechanized propaganda made to justify the status quo.