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Posts Tagged ‘history’

The ancient world’s greatest board games

Ludus Latrunculorum. Senet. Chaturanga. And don't forget Hnefatafl. These were just some of the board games that ancient people were into thousands of years ago. Over at Smithsonian, Meilan Solly explains "The Best Board Games of the Ancient World." From the magazine:

The rules of Mehen remain unclear, as the game faded from popularity following ...

A guide to Silicon Valley’s High-Tech Heritage Trail

Over at The Startup on Medium, David Laws, semiconductor curator at the wonderful Computer History Museum, has prepared a fascinating guide to Silicon Valley's "high-tech heritage trail exploring places that housed the early stirrings of the digital revolution." Covering the "30-mile corridor from Stanford University to the former IBM disk-drive campus," Laws visits ...

The silk shirt Charles I of England wore to have his head chopped off

The Museum of London will soon publicly display Charles I's execution vest for the first time. The doomed king wore the silk garment to the chopping block after his defeat in the English Civil War of the 17th century; 30 January is the 371st anniversary of his death at the Banqueting House on Whitehall.

The ...

********** was not socially acceptable in medieval Europe

Sweary historian Eleanor Janega writes on her Going Medieval blog (previously) that there was never a time in medieval Europe when ********** was socially acceptable, and brings the receipts in the form of eyewatering details on the punishments for having *** with animals.

Janega mentions that, of course, any non-procreative *** was doctrinally suspect in ...

Our olfactory heritage: researcher preserves scents before they’re lost forever

Smell is perhaps more closely intertwined with memory than sight, sound, or any other of our senses. Indeed, scents are an incredibly important part of history and culture. That's why Cecilia Bembibre and her colleagues at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage are working to preserve certain smells for the ages. After all, smells are ...

Secret history of the screwdriver

From old-school bOING bOING editor Gareth Branwyn's must-read e-newsletter "Gareth's Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales":

I love The History Guy on YouTube. In this episode, he examines the history of the screwdriver and how world events shaped the development of the Phillips head and Robertson head drivers and screws. Even if you know something ...

Santa Claus is a psychedelic mushroom

One fantastic and wonderful origin theory of Santa Claus involves psychedelic mushrooms and shamanic rituals of the indigenous Sámi people who live in northern Finland. Paul Devereux wrote about this incredible hidden history in his fascinating 2008 book The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia. Then, Brooklyn filmmaker Matthew Salton blew mainstream minds with ...

The weird history of magical ways to protect your home

Last month, I posted about "witch bottles" -- containers of curious items like human teeth, fish hooks, glass shards, and undetermined liquid -- sometimes found in chimneys or inside walls of old buildings where they were placed to ward off evil spells, spirits, and curses. Turns out that there's a new book -- "