When Michelangelo Created Artistic Designs for Military Fortifications to Protect Florence (1529–1530)

in Art, History | September 16th, 2025

Michelan­ge­lo was born in the Repub­lic of Flo­rence, with the tal­ent of… well, Michelan­ge­lo. Giv­en those begin­nings, it would have been prac­ti­cal­ly impos­si­ble for him to avoid entan­gle­ment with the House of Medici, the bank­ing fam­i­ly and polit­i­cal dynasty that ruled over Flo­rence for the bet­ter part of three cen­turies. By the time of Michelan­gelo’s birth, in 1475, the Medici had been in pow­er for four decades. At the age of four­teen, he was tak­en in by Loren­zo de’ Medici, known as “il Mag­nifi­co,” in whose house­hold he received artis­tic train­ing as well as philo­soph­i­cal knowl­edge and polit­i­cal con­nec­tions.

It was with Loren­zo’s death in 1492 that this first streak of Medici dom­i­nance ran into chop­py waters. When the fam­i­ly was expelled from Flo­rence two years lat­er, Michelan­ge­lo took his leave as well, begin­ning the peri­od of his career in which he would sculpt both the Pietà and the David.

Only in 1512 (after var­i­ous trou­bles in Flo­rence that includ­ed the four-year theoc­ra­cy of Savonaro­la) were the Medici restored to pow­er, but they also had the papa­cy: the Medici popes Leo X and Clement VII com­mis­sioned a great deal of work from Michelan­ge­lo, though he sel­dom saw eye-to-eye with those par­tic­u­lar patrons.

When Flo­rence rebelled against the Medici in the late fif­teen-twen­ties, Michelan­ge­lo took the side of the repub­li­cans. Their gov­ern­ment select­ed him as one of the “Nine of the Mili­tias” meant to design for­ti­fi­ca­tions for the threat­ened city (a resump­tion of ear­li­er, aban­doned Medici plans) in 1526, and before long appoint­ed him gov­er­na­tore gen­erale. It was in that capac­i­ty that he drew the sketch­es seen here, which con­sti­tute his plans for a set of for­ti­fi­ca­tions against the Medici-backed siege that spanned 1529 and 1530. How­ev­er artis­ti­cal­ly strik­ing, their designs were nev­er actu­al­ly built, at least not in any­thing like their entire­ty.

As it hap­pened, Michelan­ge­lo had backed the wrong horse: the siege was ulti­mate­ly suc­cess­ful, and the Medici retook pow­er under the aegis of Holy Roman emper­or Charles V. This put the artist in a dif­fi­cult posi­tion, and for a peri­od of months he was forced to go into hid­ing. With his death sen­tence in effect, he lay low in a small cham­ber beneath the Basil­i­ca of San Loren­zo, now part of the Medici Chapels Muse­um, whose walls are cov­ered in draw­ings, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, in his unmis­tak­able hand. The artis­tic skills he’d kept sharp dur­ing that peri­od of inter­nal exile would prob­a­bly have kept serv­ing him well enough in Flo­rence after Clement VII guar­an­teed his safe­ty there. But it seems he’d had enough Flo­ren­tine intrigue for one life­time, the rest of which he wise­ly opt­ed to spend in Rome.

via BLDGBLOG

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Secret Room with Draw­ings Attrib­uted to Michelan­ge­lo Opens to Vis­i­tors in Flo­rence

How Michelangelo’s David Still Draws Admi­ra­tion and Con­tro­ver­sy Today

New Video Shows What May Be Michelangelo’s Lost & Now Found Bronze Sculp­tures

Watch the Painstak­ing and Nerve-Rack­ing Process of Restor­ing a Draw­ing by Michelan­ge­lo

The Sis­tine Chapel: A $22,000 Art-Book Col­lec­tion Fea­tures Remark­able High-Res­o­lu­tion Views of the Murals of Michelan­ge­lo, Bot­ti­cel­li & Oth­er Renais­sance Mas­ters

Michelangelo’s Illus­trat­ed Gro­cery List

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Albert Einstein Gives a Speech Praising Immigrants’ Contributions to America (1939)

in Uncategorized | September 16th, 2025

There have been many times in Amer­i­can his­to­ry when cel­e­bra­tions of the country’s mul­ti-eth­nic, ever-chang­ing demog­ra­phy served as pow­er­ful coun­ter­weights to nar­row, exclu­sion­ary, nation­alisms. In 1855, for exam­ple, the pub­li­ca­tion of Brook­lyn native Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself offered a “pas­sion­ate embrace of equal­i­ty,” writes Kath­leen Kennedy Townsend, “the soul of democ­ra­cy.” We can con­trast the vibran­cy and dynamism of Whitman’s vision with the vio­lent nativism of the anti-immi­grant Know-Noth­ings, who reached their peak in the 1850s. The move­ment was found­ed by two oth­er New York­ers, gang leader William “Bill the Butch­er” Poole and writer Thomas R. Whit­ney, who asked in one of his polit­i­cal tracts, “What is equal­i­ty but stag­na­tion?”

Almost 100 years lat­er, we see anoth­er nation­al­ist move­ment tak­ing hold, not only in Europe, but in the States. Before the U.S. entered World War II, its views on Nation­al Social­ist Ger­many were decid­ed­ly ambiva­lent, with glow­ing por­traits of its leader pub­lished through­out the 30s, and a siz­able Nazi pres­ence in the U.S. From 1934 to 1939, for exam­ple, Ger­man groups in the U.S. orga­nized mas­sive ral­lies in Madi­son Square Gar­den. Addi­tion­al­ly, the Ger­man-Amer­i­can Bund pro­mot­ed the Nazi Par­ty through­out the U.S. with 70 dif­fer­ent local chap­ters. These orga­ni­za­tions held Nazi fam­i­ly and sum­mer camps in New Jer­sey, Wis­con­sin, Penn­syl­va­nia…. “There were forced march­es in the mid­dle of the night to bon­fires,” says his­to­ri­an Arnie Bern­stein, “where the kids would sing the Nazi nation­al anthem and shout ‘Sieg Heil.’”

Need­less to say, these scenes made a num­ber of minor­i­ty groups and immi­grants par­tic­u­lar­ly ner­vous, espe­cial­ly Jews who had just escaped from Europe. One such immi­grant, physi­cist Albert Ein­stein, had made the U.S. his per­ma­nent home in 1933 when he accept­ed a posi­tion at Prince­ton after liv­ing as a refugee in Eng­land. He would go on to become a force­ful advo­cate for equal­i­ty in the U.S., speak­ing out against the racial caste sys­tem of seg­re­ga­tion. In 1940, Ein­stein gave a lit­tle-known speech at the New York World’s Fair to inau­gu­rate an exhib­it that paid “homage to the diver­si­ty of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion.” On the dis­play, called the “Wall of Fame,” were inscribed “the names and pro­fes­sions of hun­dreds of the nation’s most notable ‘immi­grants, Negroes and Amer­i­can Indi­ans.’” (See the first page of the typed list above, and the full list here.)

Ein­stein’s speech comes to us via Speech­es of Note, a sib­ling of two favorite sites of ours, Let­ters of Note and Lists of Note. Below, you can read the full tran­script of the speech, in which Einstein—having adopt­ed the coun­try as it had adopt­ed him—-declaims, “these, too, belong to us, and we are glad and grate­ful to acknowl­edge the debt that the com­mu­ni­ty owes them.”

It is a fine and high-mind­ed idea, also in the best sense a proud one, to erect at the World’s Fair a wall of fame to immi­grants and Negroes of dis­tinc­tion.

The sig­nif­i­cance of the ges­ture is this: it says: These, too, belong to us, and we are glad and grate­ful to acknowl­edge the debt that the com­mu­ni­ty owes them. And focus­ing on these par­tic­u­lar con­trib­u­tors, Negroes and immi­grants, shows that the com­mu­ni­ty feels a spe­cial need to show regard and affec­tion for those who are often regard­ed as step-chil­dren of the nation—for why else this com­bi­na­tion?

If, then, I am to speak on the occa­sion, it can only be to say some­thing on behalf of these step-chil­dren. As for the immi­grants, they are the only ones to whom it can be account­ed a mer­it to be Amer­i­cans. For they have had to take trou­ble for their cit­i­zen­ship, where­as it has cost the major­i­ty noth­ing at all to be born in the land of civic free­dom.

As for the Negroes, the coun­try has still a heavy debt to dis­charge for all the trou­bles and dis­abil­i­ties it has laid on the Negro’s shoul­ders, for all that his fel­low-cit­i­zens have done and to some extent still are doing to him. To the Negro and his won­der­ful songs and choirs, we are indebt­ed for the finest con­tri­bu­tion in the realm of art which Amer­i­ca has so far giv­en to the world. And this great gift we owe, not to those whose names are engraved on this “Wall of Fame,” but to the chil­dren of the peo­ple, blos­som­ing name­less­ly as the lilies of the field.

In a way, the same is true of the immi­grants. They have con­tributed in their way to the flow­er­ing of the com­mu­ni­ty, and their indi­vid­ual striv­ing and suf­fer­ing have remained unknown.

One more thing I would say with regard to immi­gra­tion gen­er­al­ly: There exists on the sub­ject a fatal mis­com­pre­hen­sion. Unem­ploy­ment is not decreased by restrict­ing immi­gra­tion. For unem­ploy­ment depends on faulty dis­tri­b­u­tion of work among those capa­ble of work. Immi­gra­tion increas­es con­sump­tion as much as it does demand on labor. Immi­gra­tion strength­ens not only the inter­nal econ­o­my of a sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed coun­try, but also its defen­sive pow­er.

The Wall of Fame arose out of a high-mind­ed ide­al; it is cal­cu­lat­ed to stim­u­late just and mag­nan­i­mous thoughts and feel­ings. May it work to that effect.

The speech is remark­able for its egal­i­tar­i­an­ism. The exhib­it works more or less as a “who’s who” of notable personalities—all of them men. Of course, Ein­stein him­self was one of the most notable immi­grants of the age. And yet, his ethos is Whit­man­ian, cel­e­brat­ing the mul­ti­tudes of labor­ers and artists “blos­som­ing name­less­ly” and those who have “remained unknown.” The coun­try, Ein­stein sug­gests, could not pos­si­bly be itself with­out its diver­si­ty of peo­ple and cul­tures. That same year, Ein­stein would pass his cit­i­zen­ship test, and explain in a radio broad­cast, “Why I am an Amer­i­can.” 

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Explains How Slav­ery Has Crip­pled Everyone’s Abil­i­ty (Even Aristotle’s) to Think Clear­ly About Racism

20,000 Amer­i­cans Hold a Pro-Nazi Ral­ly in Madi­son Square Gar­den in 1939: Chill­ing Video Re-Cap­tures a Lost Chap­ter in US His­to­ry

Albert Ein­stein Express­es His Admi­ra­tion for Mahat­ma Gand­hi, in Let­ter and Audio

Rare Audio: Albert Ein­stein Explains “Why I Am an Amer­i­can” on Day He Pass­es Cit­i­zen­ship Test (1940)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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Everything That Went Wrong During The Wizard of Oz’s Seriously Troubled Production

in Film, History | September 15th, 2025

The Wiz­ard of Oz is now show­ing at Las Vegas’ Sphere. Or a ver­sion of it is, at any rate, and not one that meets with the approval of all the pic­ture’s count­less fans. “The beloved 1939 film star­ring Judy Gar­land, wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the great­est Hol­ly­wood clas­sics, has been stretched and mor­phed and adapt­ed to fit the enor­mous dome-shaped venue,” writes the New York Times’ Alis­sa Wilkin­son. This entailed an exten­sion “upward and out­ward with the help of A.I. as well as visu­al effects artists. The cool tor­na­do cre­at­ed by Arnold Gille­spie for the orig­i­nal has been trad­ed for some­thing dig­i­tal, and even­tu­al­ly you can’t see it at all, because you’re inside the fun­nel. New per­for­mances and vis­tas have also been gen­er­at­ed,” which is “at best ques­tion­able” eth­i­cal­ly, to say noth­ing of the aes­thet­ics.

Yet even giv­en the con­sid­er­able mod­i­fi­ca­tions to — and exci­sions from — the orig­i­nal film, “most audi­ences will glad­ly over­look all of this, wowed by the sheer scale of the spec­ta­cle.” The Wiz­ard of Oz has, as has often been said, the kind of “mag­ic” that endures through even great defi­cien­cies in pre­sen­ta­tion.

That qual­i­ty first became appar­ent in 1956, sev­en­teen years after the movie’s release in cin­e­mas, when it first aired on tele­vi­sion. Though the dra­mat­ic tran­si­tion from black-and-white to col­or would have been lost on most home view­ers at the time, “45 mil­lion peo­ple tuned in, far more than those who had seen it in the­aters,” says the nar­ra­tor of the It Was A Sh*t Show video above. Anoth­er broad­cast, in 1959, did even bet­ter, and there­after The Wiz­ard of Oz became an “annu­al must-see event” on TV, which even­tu­al­ly made it “the most-watched film in his­to­ry.”

That sta­tus jus­ti­fies the movie’s infa­mous­ly trou­bled pro­duc­tion, which is the video’s cen­tral sub­ject. From its numer­ous rewrites all the way through to its fee­ble box office per­for­mance, The Wiz­ard of Oz encoun­tered severe dif­fi­cul­ties every step of the way, which gave rise to rumors that con­tin­ue to haunt it: that an actor died from poi­son make­up, for exam­ple, or that one of the munchkins com­mit­ted sui­cide in view of the cam­era. While the pro­duc­tion caused no fatal­i­ties — at least not direct­ly — it did come close more than once, to say noth­ing of the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll the com­bi­na­tion of high ambi­tion and per­sis­tent dys­func­tion must have tak­en on many, if not most, of its par­tic­i­pants. Even hear­ing enu­mer­at­ed only its clear­ly doc­u­ment­ed prob­lems is enough to make one won­der how the pic­ture was ever com­plet­ed in the first place. Yet now, 86 years lat­er, its Sphere rein­ter­pre­ta­tion is rak­ing in $2 mil­lion in tick­et sales per day: an act of wiz­ardry if ever there was one.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Ear­li­est Sur­viv­ing Filmed Ver­sion of The Wiz­ard of Oz (1910)

The Wiz­ard of Oz Bro­ken Apart and Put Back Togeth­er in Alpha­bet­i­cal Order

The Com­plete Wiz­ard of Oz Series, Avail­able as Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

Hear Wait­ing for Godot, the Acclaimed 1956 Pro­duc­tion Star­ring The Wiz­ard of Oz’s Bert Lahr

Watch the Sesame Street Episode Banned for Being Too Scary, Fea­tur­ing The Wiz­ard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West (1976)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Leonardo Da Vinci’s To-Do List from 1490: The Plan of a Renaissance Man

in Art, History | September 15th, 2025

Most people’s to-do lists are, almost by def­i­n­i­tion, pret­ty dull, filled with those quo­tid­i­an lit­tle tasks that tend to slip out of our minds. Pick up the laun­dry. Get that thing for the kid. Buy milk, canned yams and kumquats at the local mar­ket.

Leonar­do Da Vin­ci was, how­ev­er, no ordi­nary per­son. And his to-do lists were any­thing but dull.

Da Vin­ci would car­ry around a note­book, where he would write and draw any­thing that moved him. “It is use­ful,” Leonar­do once wrote, to “con­stant­ly observe, note, and con­sid­er.” Buried in one of these books, dat­ing back to around the 1490s, is a to-do list. And what a to-do list.

NPR’s Robert Krul­wich had it direct­ly trans­lat­ed. And while all of the list might not be imme­di­ate­ly clear, remem­ber that Da Vin­ci nev­er intend­ed for it to be read by web surfers 500  years in the future.

[Cal­cu­late] the mea­sure­ment of Milan and Sub­urbs

[Find] a book that treats of Milan and its church­es, which is to be had at the stationer’s on the way to Cor­du­sio

[Dis­cov­er] the mea­sure­ment of Corte Vec­chio (the court­yard in the duke’s palace).

[Dis­cov­er] the mea­sure­ment of the castel­lo (the duke’s palace itself)

Get the mas­ter of arith­metic to show you how to square a tri­an­gle.

Get Mess­er Fazio (a pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine and law in Pavia) to show you about pro­por­tion.

Get the Brera Fri­ar (at the Bene­dic­tine Monastery to Milan) to show you De Pon­deribus (a medieval text on mechan­ics)

[Talk to] Gian­ni­no, the Bom­bardier, re. the means by which the tow­er of Fer­rara is walled with­out loop­holes (no one real­ly knows what Da Vin­ci meant by this)

Ask Benedet­to Poti­nari (A Flo­ren­tine Mer­chant) by what means they go on ice in Flan­ders

Draw Milan

Ask Mae­stro Anto­nio how mor­tars are posi­tioned on bas­tions by day or night.

[Exam­ine] the Cross­bow of Mas­tro Gian­net­to

Find a mas­ter of hydraulics and get him to tell you how to repair a lock, canal and mill in the Lom­bard man­ner

[Ask about] the mea­sure­ment of the sun promised me by Mae­stro Gio­van­ni Francese

Try to get Vitolone (the medieval author of a text on optics), which is in the Library at Pavia, which deals with the math­e­mat­ic.

You can just feel Da Vinci’s vora­cious curios­i­ty and intel­lec­tu­al rest­less­ness. Note how many of the entries are about get­ting an expert to teach him some­thing, be it math­e­mat­ics, physics or astron­o­my. Also who casu­al­ly lists “draw Milan” as an ambi­tion?

Lat­er to-do lists, dat­ing around 1510, seemed to focus on Da Vinci’s grow­ing fas­ci­na­tion with anato­my. In a note­book filled with beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered draw­ings of bones and vis­cera, he rat­tles off more tasks that need to get done. Things like get a skull, describe the jaw of a croc­o­dile and tongue of a wood­peck­er, assess a corpse using his fin­ger as a unit of mea­sure­ment.

On that same page, he lists what he con­sid­ers to be impor­tant qual­i­ties of an anatom­i­cal draughts­man. A firm com­mand of per­spec­tive and a knowl­edge of the inner work­ings of the body are key. So is hav­ing a strong stom­ach.

You can see a page of Da Vinci’s note­book above but be warned. Even if you are con­ver­sant in 16th cen­tu­ry Ital­ian, Da Vin­ci wrote every­thing in mir­ror script.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Decem­ber, 2014.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Hand­writ­ten Resume (Cir­ca 1482)

Thomas Edison’s Huge­ly Ambi­tious “To-Do” List from 1888

Umber­to Eco Explains Why We Make Lists

John­ny Cash’s Short and Per­son­al To-Do List

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. 

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The Horrifying Paintings of Francis Bacon

in Art, History, Religion | September 12th, 2025

Men­tion Fran­cis Bacon, and you some­times have to clar­i­fy which one you mean: the twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry painter, or the sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry philoso­pher? Despite how much time sep­a­rat­ed their lives, the two men aren’t with­out their con­nec­tions. One may actu­al­ly have been a descen­dant of the oth­er, if you cred­it the artist’s father’s claim of rela­tion to the Eliz­a­bethan intel­lec­tu­al’s half-broth­er. Bet­ter doc­u­ment­ed is how the more recent Fran­cis Bacon made a con­nec­tion to the time of the more dis­tant one, by paint­ing his own ver­sions of Diego Velázquez’s Por­trait of Inno­cent X. We refer, of course, to his “scream­ing popes,” the sub­ject of the new Hochela­ga video above.

As Hochela­ga cre­ator Tom­mie Trelawny puts it, “no image cap­tured his imag­i­na­tion more” than Velázquez’s depic­tion of Pope Inno­cent X, which is “con­sid­ered to be one of the finest works in West­ern art.”

Bacon’s ver­sion from 1953, after he’d more than estab­lished him­self in the Eng­lish art scene, is “a ter­ri­ble and fright­en­ing inver­sion of the orig­i­nal. The Pope screams as if elec­tro­cut­ed in his gold­en throne. Vio­lent brush­strokes sweep across the can­vas like bars of a cage, strip­ping away all sense of grandeur and leav­ing only bru­tal­i­ty and pain.” In many ways, this har­row­ing image came as the nat­ur­al meet­ing of exist­ing cur­rents in Bacon’s work, which had already drawn from the his­to­ry of Chris­t­ian art and employed a vari­ety of anguished, iso­lat­ed fig­ures.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Bacon’s Study after Velázquez’s Por­trait of Pope Inno­cent X inspired all man­ner of con­tro­ver­sy. The artist him­self denied all inter­pre­ta­tions of its sup­posed impli­ca­tions, insist­ing that “recre­at­ing this papal por­trait was sim­ply an aes­thet­ic choice: art for the sake of art.” In any case, he fol­lowed it up with about 50 more scream­ing popes, each of which “embod­ies a dif­fer­ent facet of human dark­ness.” These and the many oth­er works of art Bacon cre­at­ed pro­lif­i­cal­ly until his death in 1992 reflect what seems to have been his own trou­bled soul and per­pet­u­al­ly dis­or­dered life. His style changed over the decades, becom­ing some­what soft­er and less aggres­sive­ly dis­turb­ing, sug­gest­ing that his demons may have gone into at least par­tial retreat. But could any­one capa­ble of paint­ing the scream­ing popes ever tru­ly have lost touch with the abyss?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Bril­liant­ly Night­mar­ish Art & Trou­bled Life of Painter Fran­cis Bacon

Fran­cis Bacon on The South Bank Show: A Sin­gu­lar Pro­file of the Sin­gu­lar Painter

William Bur­roughs Meets Fran­cis Bacon: See Nev­er-Broad­cast Footage (1982)

The “Dark Relics” of Chris­tian­i­ty: Pre­served Skulls, Blood & Oth­er Grim Arti­facts

The Scream Explained: What’s Real­ly Hap­pen­ing in Edvard Munch’s World-Famous Paint­ing

When There Were Three Popes at Once: An Ani­mat­ed Video Drawn in the Style of Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Earliest Known Appearance of the F‑Word (1310)

in English Language | September 11th, 2025

Pho­to by Paul Booth

You val­ue deco­rum, pro­pri­ety, elo­quence, you trea­sure le mot juste and ago­nize over dic­tion as you com­pose polite but strong­ly-word­ed let­ters to the edi­tor. But alas, my lit­er­ate friend, you have the mis­for­tune of liv­ing in the age of Twit­ter, Tum­blr, et al., where the favored means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­sists of ready­made mimet­ic words and phras­es, pho­tos, videos, and ani­mat­ed gifs. World lead­ers trade insults like 5th graders—some of them do not know how to spell. Respect­ed sci­en­tists and jour­nal­ists debate anony­mous strangers with car­toon avatars and work-unsafe pseu­do­nyms. Some of them are robots.

What to do?

Embrace it. Insert well-placed pro­fan­i­ties into your com­mu­niqués. Indulge in bawdi­ness and rib­aldry. You may notice that you are doing no more than writ­ers have done for cen­turies, from Rabelais to Shake­speare to Voltaire. Pro­fan­i­ty has evolved right along­side, not apart from, lit­er­ary his­to­ry. T.S. Eliot, for exam­ple, knew how to go low­brow with the best of them, and gets cred­it for the first record­ed use of the word “bull­shit.” As for anoth­er, even more fre­quent­ly used epi­thet in 24-hour online commentary?—well, the word “F*ck” has a far longer his­to­ry.

Not long ago we alert­ed you to the first known use of the ver­sa­tile obscen­i­ty in a 1528 mar­gin­al note scrib­bled in Cicero’s De Offici­is by a monk curs­ing his abbot. Not long after this dis­cov­ery, notes Medievalists.net, anoth­er schol­ar found the word in a 1475 poem called Flen fly­ys. This was thought to be the ear­li­est appear­ance of “f*ck” as a pure­ly sex­u­al ref­er­ence until medieval his­to­ri­an Paul Booth of Keele Uni­ver­si­ty dis­cov­ered an instance dat­ing over a hun­dred years ear­li­er. Rather than with­in, or next to, a work of lit­er­a­ture, how­ev­er, the word appears in a set of 1310 Eng­lish court records. And no, it is decid­ed­ly not a legal term.

The doc­u­ments con­cern the case of “a man named Roger Fucke­bythenavele.” Used three times in the record, the name, says Booth, is prob­a­bly not a joke made by the scribe but some kind of bizarre nick­name, though one hopes not a descrip­tion of the crime. “Either it refers to an inex­pe­ri­enced cop­u­la­tor, refer­ring to some­one try­ing to have sex with a navel,” says Booth, stat­ing the obvi­ous, “or it’s a rather extrav­a­gant expla­na­tion for a dimwit, some­one so stu­pid they think that this is the way to have sex.” Our medieval gent had oth­er prob­lems as well. He was called to court three times with­in a year before being pro­nounced “out­lawed,” which The Inde­pen­dent’s Loul­la-Mae Eleft­he­ri­ou-Smith sug­gests exe­cu­tion but prob­a­bly refers to ban­ish­ment.

For the word to have such casu­al­ly hilar­i­ous or insult­ing cur­ren­cy in the ear­ly 14th cen­tu­ry, it must have come from an even ear­li­er time. Indeed, “f*ck is a word of Ger­man ori­gin,” notes Jesse Shei­d­low­er, author of an ety­mo­log­i­cal his­to­ry called The F Word, “relat­ed to words in sev­er­al oth­er Ger­man­ic lan­guages, such as Dutch, Ger­man, and Swedish, that have sex­u­al mean­ings as well as mean­ing such as ‘to strike’ or ‘to move back and forth’” (nat­u­ral­ly). So, in oth­er words, it’s just a word. But in this case it might have also been a weapon, Booth spec­u­lates, wield­ed “by a revenge­ful for­mer girl­friend. Four­teenth-cen­tu­ry revenge porn per­haps…” If that’s not evi­dence for you that the present may not be unlike the past, then maybe take note of the appear­ance of the word “twerk” in 1820.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Young T.S. Eliot Writes “The Tri­umph of Bullsh*t” and Gives the Eng­lish Lan­guage a New Exple­tive (1910)

Peo­ple Who Swear Are More Hon­est Than Those Who Don’t, Finds a New Uni­ver­si­ty Study

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Stephen Fry, Lan­guage Enthu­si­ast, Defends The “Unnec­es­sary” Art Of Swear­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Technology That Brought Down Medieval Castles and Changed the Middle Ages

in Architecture, History | September 11th, 2025

Civ­i­liza­tion moved past the use of cas­tles long ago, but their imagery endures in pop­u­lar cul­ture. Even young chil­dren here in the twen­ty-twen­ties have an idea of what cas­tles look like. But why do they look like that? Admit­ted­ly, that’s a bit of a trick ques­tion: the pop­u­lar con­cept of cas­tles tends to be inspired by medieval exam­ples, but in his­tor­i­cal fact, the design of cas­tles changed sub­stan­tial­ly over time, albeit slow­ly at first. You can hear that process explained in the Get to the Point video above, which tells the sto­ry of “star forts,” the built response to the “tech­nol­o­gy that end­ed the Mid­dle Ages.”

You may be famil­iar with the con­cept of “motte and bai­ley,” now most wide­ly under­stood as a metaphor for a cer­tain debate tac­tic irri­tat­ing­ly preva­lent on the inter­net. But it actu­al­ly refers to a style of cas­tle con­struct­ed in Europe between the tenth and the thir­teenth cen­turies, con­sist­ing of a for­ti­fied hill­top keep, or “motte,” with a less defen­si­ble walled court­yard, or “bai­ley,” below. In case of an attack, the bat­tle could pri­mar­i­ly take place down in the bai­ley, with retreats to the motte occur­ring when strate­gi­cal­ly nec­es­sary. The motte-and-bai­ley cas­tle is a “great idea,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor, pro­vid­ed “you don’t have can­nons shoot­ing at you.”

Cas­tles, he explains, “were a reflec­tion of armies at the time: build a big wall, keep the bar­bar­ians out.” But once the can­non came on the scene, those once-prac­ti­cal­ly imper­vi­ous stone walls became a seri­ous lia­bil­i­ty. That was defin­i­tive­ly proven in 1453, when “the Ottomans famous­ly bat­tered down the great walls of Con­stan­tino­ple with their can­nons. That brought an end not only to the 1500-year-old Roman Empire, but also to the Mid­dle Ages as an era entire­ly.” In response, cas­tle archi­tects added dirt slopes, or glacis, at the edges, as well as cir­cu­lar bas­tions to deflect can­non fire at the cor­ners — which, incon­ve­nient­ly, cre­at­ed “dead zones” in which ene­my sol­diers could hide, pro­tect­ed from any defens­es launched from with­in the cas­tle.

The solu­tion was to make the bas­tions tri­an­gu­lar instead, and then to add fur­ther tri­an­gu­lar struc­tures between them. Seen from the side, cas­tles became much low­er and wider; from above, they grew ever pointier and more com­plex in shape. Sébastien Le Pre­stre, Mar­quis of Vauban, an army offi­cer under Louis XIV, became the acknowl­edged mas­ter of this form, the trace ital­i­enne. You may not know his name, but his designs made France “lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble to invade.” For sheer beau­ty, how­ev­er, it would be hard to top the plans for star forts to defend Flo­rence in the fif­teen-twen­ties by a mul­ti-tal­ent­ed artist named Michelan­ge­lo. Per­haps you’ve heard of him?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sim­ple, Inge­nious Design of the Ancient Roman Javelin: How the Romans Engi­neered a Remark­ably Effec­tive Weapon

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Draws Designs of Future War Machines: Tanks, Machine Guns & More

How to Build a 13th-Cen­tu­ry Cas­tle, Using Only Authen­tic Medieval Tools & Tech­niques

A For­got­ten 16th-Cen­tu­ry Man­u­script Reveals the First Designs for Mod­ern Rock­ets

Behold a 21st-Cen­tu­ry Medieval Cas­tle Being Built with Only Tools & Mate­ri­als from the Mid­dle Ages

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Erik Satie Invented Modern Music: A Visual Explanation

in History, Music | September 10th, 2025

Once you hear Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, you nev­er for­get it. Not that pop­u­lar cul­ture would let you for­get it: the piece has been, and con­tin­ues to be, rein­ter­pret­ed and sam­pled by musi­cians work­ing in a vari­ety of gen­res from pop to elec­tron­ic to met­al. In ver­sions that sound close to what Satie would have intend­ed when he com­posed it in 1888, it’s also been fea­tured in count­less films and tele­vi­sion shows. It’s even heard with some fre­quen­cy in YouTube videos, though in the case of the one from The Music Pro­fes­sor above, it’s not just the sound­track, but also the sub­ject. Using an anno­tat­ed score, it explains just what makes the piece so endur­ing and influ­en­tial.

Upon “a sim­ple iambic rhythm with two ambigu­ous major 7th chords,” Gymnopédie No. 1 intro­duces a melody that “floats above an aus­tere pro­ces­sion of notes,” then “moves down the octave from F# to F#.” With its lack of a clear key, as well as its lack of devel­op­ment and dra­ma that the orches­tral music of the day would have trained lis­ten­ers to expect, the piece was “as shock­ing as the dance of naked Spar­tans it was meant to evoke.”

The melody makes its turns, but nev­er quite arrives at its seem­ing des­ti­na­tions, going around in cir­cles instead — before, all of a sud­den, swerv­ing into the “minor and dis­so­nant” before end­ing in “pro­found melan­choly.”

Despite music in gen­er­al hav­ing long since assim­i­lat­ed the dar­ing qual­i­ties of Gymnopédie No. 1, the orig­i­nal piece still catch­es our ears — in its sub­tle way — when­ev­er it comes on. So, in anoth­er way, do the less rec­og­niz­able and more exper­i­men­tal Gnossi­ennes with which Satie fol­lowed them up. In the video above, the Music Pro­fes­sor pro­vides a visu­al expla­na­tion of Gnossi­enne No. 1, dur­ing whose per­for­mance “soft dis­so­nance hangs in the air” while “a curi­ous melody floats over gen­tle syn­co­pa­tions in the left hand” over just two chords. The score comes with “sur­re­al com­ments”: “Très luisant,” “Du bout de la pen­sée,” “Pos­tulez en vous-même,” “Ques­tionez.” Satie is often cred­it­ed with pio­neer­ing what would become ambi­ent music; could these be pro­to-Oblique Strate­gies?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ani­mat­ed Scores of Eric Satie’s Most Famous Pieces: “Gymno­pe­die No. 1” and “Gnossi­enne No. 1”

Lis­ten to Nev­er-Before-Heard Works by Erik Satie, Per­formed 100 Years After His Death

The Vel­vet Underground’s John Cale Plays Erik Satie’s Vex­a­tions on I’ve Got a Secret (1963)

Watch the 1917 Bal­let “Parade”: Cre­at­ed by Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so & Jean Cocteau, It Pro­voked a Riot and Inspired the Word “Sur­re­al­ism”

Japan­ese Art Instal­la­tion Lets Peo­ple Play Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” As They Walk on Social­ly-Dis­tanced Notes on the Floor

How Erik Satie’s “Fur­ni­ture Music” Was Designed to Be Ignored and Paved the Way for Ambi­ent Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Browse Thousands of Free Vintage Cocktail Recipes Online (1705–1951)

in Food & Drink | September 10th, 2025

Where do the hip­ster mixol­o­gists of Tokyo, Mex­i­co City and Brook­lyn take their inspi­ra­tion?

If not from the Expo­si­tion Uni­verselle des Vins et Spir­itueux’ free col­lec­tion of dig­i­tized vin­tage cock­tail recipe books, per­haps they should start.

An ini­tia­tive of the Muse­um of Wine and Spir­its on the Ile de Ben­dor in South­east­ern France, the col­lec­tion is a boon to any­one with an inter­est in cock­tail cul­ture …dit­to design, illus­tra­tion, evolv­ing social mores…

1928’s Chee­rio, a Book of Punch­es and Cock­tails was writ­ten by Charles, for­mer­ly of Delmonico’s, tout­ed in the intro­duc­to­ry note as “one who has served drinks to Princes, Mag­nates and Sen­a­tors of many nations”. No doubt dis­cre­tion pre­vent­ed him from pub­lish­ing his sur­name.

Charles appar­ent­ly abid­ed by the the­o­ry that it’s five o’clock some­where, with drinks geared to var­i­ous times of day, from the moment you “stag­ger out of bed, grog­gy, grouchy and cross-tem­pered” (try a Charleston Brac­er or a Brandy Port Nog) to the mid­night hour when “insom­nia, bad dreams, dis­il­lu­sion­ment and despair” call for such reme­dies as a Cholera Cock­tail or an Egg Whiskey Fizz.

As not­ed on the cov­er, there’s a sec­tion devot­ed to favorite recipes of celebri­ties. These big­wigs’ names will like­ly mean noth­ing to you near­ly one hun­dred years lat­er, but their first per­son rem­i­nis­cences bring them roar­ing back to the­atri­cal, boozy life.

Here’s cel­e­brat­ed vaude­vil­lian Trix­ie Frig­an­za:

In that nau­ti­cal city of Venice, I first made the acquain­tance of a remark­ably deli­cious drink known as ‘Port and Star­board’. Pour one half part Grena­dine or rasp­ber­ry syrup in a cor­dial glass. Then on top of this pour one half por­tion of Creme de Men­the slow­ly so that the ingre­di­ents will not mix. Dear old Venice.

Indeed.

Pre­sum­ably any cock­tail recipe in the EUVS’s vast col­lec­tion could be adapt­ed as a mock­tail, but Charles gives a delib­er­ate nod to Pro­hi­bi­tion with a sec­tion on alco­hol-free (and extreme­ly easy to pre­pare) Tem­per­ance Drinks.

Don’t expect a Shirley Tem­ple — the triple threat child star was but an infant when Chee­rio was pub­lished. Expand your options with a Sarato­ga Cool­er or an Oggle Nog­gle instead.

Before attempt­ing to recite the poem that opens 1949’s Bot­toms Up: A Guide to Pleas­ant Drink­ing, you may want to slam a cou­ple of Depth Bombs Cock­tails or a Mer­ry Wid­ow Cock­tail No. 1.

In an abstemious con­di­tion, there’s no way this dit­ty can be made to scan…or rhyme:

The Advent of the Cock­tail

A lone­ly, aban­doned jig­ger of gin
Sat on a table top. “Alas”, cried he,
“Who will join me?” And he tried a friend­ly grin.
Came a pret­ty youth, Mam’selle Ver­mouth,
Who was bored with just being winey.
Said she to Sir Gin: “You’d be ever so nice
With Olive and Ice. And so they were Mar­ti­ni.

The cock­tail recipes are sol­id, through­out, how­ev­er, as one might expect from a book that dou­bled as an ad for spon­sor First Avenue Wine and Liquor Cor­po­ra­tion — “for Liquor…Quicker.”

We’ve yet to try any­thing from the “wines in cook­ery” sec­tion — but sus­pect that stur­dy fare like Pota­to Soup and Baked Beans could help sop up some of the alco­hol, even if con­tains some hair of the dog…

Shak­ing in the 60’s author Eddie Clark’s pre­vi­ous titles include Shak­ing with Eddie, Shake Again with Eddie and 1954’s Prac­ti­cal Bar Man­age­ment. 

Clark, who served as head bar­tender at London’s Savoy Hotel, Berke­ley Hotel and Albany Club, gets in the swing­ing 60s spir­it, by ded­i­cat­ing this work to “all imbib­ing lovers.”

William S. McCall’s decid­ed­ly boozy illus­tra­tions of ele­phants, anthro­po­mor­phized cock­tail glass­es and scant­i­ly clad ladies con­tribute to the fes­tive atmos­phere, though you prob­a­bly won’t be sur­prised to learn that some of them have not aged well.

Shak­ing in the 60’s boasts dozens of straight­for­ward cock­tail recipes (the Beat­nik the Bun­ny Hug and the Mon­key Hugall fea­ture Pern­od), a sur­pris­ing­ly seri­ous-mind­ed sec­tion on wine, and a cou­ple of pages devot­ed to non-alco­holic drinks.

If your child turns up their nose at Clark’s Remain Sober, serve ‘em an Alber­mar­le Pussy­cat.

Clark also draws on his pro­fes­sion­al exper­tise to help home bar­tenders get a grip on mea­sure­ment con­ver­sions, sup­ply lists, and toasts.

So con­fi­dent is he in his abil­i­ty to help read­ers throw a tru­ly mem­o­rable par­ty, he includes a dishy par­ty log, that prob­a­bly should be kept under lock and key after it’s been filled out. We imag­ine it would pair well with the Morn­ing Mashie, anoth­er Pern­od-based con­coc­tion ded­i­cat­ed to “all those enter­ing the hang­over class.”

Delve into the Expo­si­tion Uni­verselle des Vins et Spir­itueux’ free col­lec­tion of dig­i­tized vin­tage cock­tail recipe books from the 1820s through the 1960s here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2021.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Dig­i­tal Library for Bar­tenders: Vin­tage Cock­tail Books with Recipes Dat­ing Back to 1753

A New Dig­i­tized Menu Col­lec­tion Lets You Revis­it the Cui­sine from the “Gold­en Age of Rail­road Din­ing”

Explore an Online Archive of 12,700 Vin­tage Cook­books

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er.

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The Advanced Technology of Ancient Rome: Automatic Doors, Water Clocks, Vending Machines & More

in History, Technology | September 9th, 2025

Ancient Rome nev­er had an indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion. Grant­ed, cer­tain his­to­ri­ans have object­ed now and again to that once-set­tled claim, ges­tur­ing toward large heaps of pot­tery dis­cov­ered in garbage dumps and oth­er such arti­facts clear­ly pro­duced in large num­bers. Still, the fact remains that Ancient Rome nev­er had an indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion of the kind that fired up toward the end of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, but not due to a com­plete absence of the rel­e­vant tech­nol­o­gy. As explained in the new Lost in Time video above, Romans had wit­nessed the pow­er of steam har­nessed back in the first cen­tu­ry — but they dis­missed it as a nov­el­ty, evi­dent­ly unable to see its pow­er to trans­form civ­i­liza­tion.

That’s just one of a vari­ety of exam­ples of gen­uine high Roman tech­nol­o­gy fea­tured in the video, many or all of which would seem implau­si­ble to the aver­age view­er if insert­ed into a sto­ry set in ancient Rome.

Take the set of auto­mat­ic doors installed in a tem­ple, trig­gered by a fire that heats an under­ground water tank, which in turn fills up a pot attached to a cable that — through a sys­tem of pul­leys — throws them open. (When the fire cools down, the doors then shut again.) This was the work of the Greek-born inven­tor Hero of Alexan­dria, who would bear com­par­i­son in one sense or anoth­er with every­one from Rube Gold­berg to Leonar­do da Vin­ci.

It was also Hero who came up with that ear­ly steam tur­bine, called the aeolip­ile. He came along too late, how­ev­er, to take cred­it for the “self-heal­ing” Roman con­crete pre­vi­ous­ly much-fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, the mate­r­i­al of build­ings like the Pan­theon, “still the largest unre­in­forced con­crete dome in the world.” Anoth­er inven­tion high­light­ed in the video comes from Alexan­dria, but well before Hero’s time, and even before that of the Roman Empire itself: the accu­rate water clock engi­neered by Cte­si­bius, whose under­ly­ing design remained influ­en­tial in the Roman era. Hydraulic pow­er was also used in Roman mills, which made pos­si­ble com­plex fac­to­ry sys­tems, even in a civ­i­liza­tion that nev­er reached an indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion prop­er. And if a Roman fac­to­ry work­er got thirsty at break time, maybe he could drop a coin into one of Hero’s wine vend­ing machines.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Ancient Romans Built Their Roads, the Life­lines of Their Vast Empire

The Amaz­ing Engi­neer­ing of Roman Baths

The Roman Colos­se­um Decon­struct­ed: 3D Ani­ma­tion Reveals the Hid­den Tech­nol­o­gy That Pow­ered Rome’s Great Are­na

How Did Roman Aque­ducts Work?: The Most Impres­sive Achieve­ment of Ancient Rome’s Infra­struc­ture, Explained

The Ancient Roman Dodec­a­he­dron: The Mys­te­ri­ous Object That Has Baf­fled Archae­ol­o­gists for Cen­turies

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman Snack Bar in the Ruins of Pom­peii

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Discover the 100-Year-Old Self-Playing Violin, One of the Most Complex Music Players Ever Made

in Music | September 9th, 2025

At the 1910 World’s Exhi­bi­tion in Brus­sels, Lud­wig Hupfeld unveiled the Phono­liszt-Vio­li­na, an instru­ment once dubbed “the eighth won­der of the world.” A lead­ing mak­er of auto­mat­ed instru­ments in Ger­many, Hupfeld built a com­pa­ny that pro­duced every­thing from phono­la push-up play­ers to play­er pianos. In 1907 he cre­at­ed his most famous inven­tion, the Phono­liszt-Vio­li­na. It fea­tured three ver­ti­cal­ly mount­ed vio­lins, each with a sin­gle active string, played by a rotat­ing bow of 1,300 horse­hairs. Mean­while, pneu­mat­ic bel­lows pressed the strings accord­ing to per­fo­rat­ed rolls. And a play­er piano could accom­pa­ny the vio­lins. Sold in upright home and com­mer­cial mod­els, the Phono­liszt-Vio­li­na enter­tained patrons of upscale hotels, restau­rants, and cafes, before grad­u­al­ly fad­ing into obso­les­cence. The Win­ter­gatan video above, along with the Wel­teMax video below, will give you a nice intro­duc­tion to one of the most com­plex music play­ers ever made.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

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