Julian Chehirian goes looking for the history of telecommunication, and is left sitting in the slim shadow of a lightning rod, listening to a voice from beyond the grave.
This is just an automatic copy of Public Domain Review blog.
Julian Chehirian goes looking for the history of telecommunication, and is left sitting in the slim shadow of a lightning rod, listening to a voice from beyond the grave.
Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/last-pole
A surprising and vividly written late Victorian compendium of local British lore and traditions.
Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/old-english-customs
Weighing in at a colossal 18,000 lines, Herman Melville's Clarel (1876), which centres on the theological musings of a group of pilgrims touring the Holy Land, is not for the faint-hearted. Jeff Wheelwright explores the knot of spiritual dilemmas played out in the poem and its roots in Melville's trip to the Middle East two decades earlier.
Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-skeptical-pilgrim-melvilles-clarel
Our postcard sets sent to Friends of the PDR in summer will be themed on "touch"
Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/blog/2020/05/next-postcard-theme-touch
Stylised herbal including plants with faces and dragon-like roots, in addition to more naturalistic depictions.
Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/erbario-15th-century-herbal
Illustrations by a little-known Brazilian artist for the first French translation of H. G. Wells’ science-fiction classic.
Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/henrique-alvim-correa-war-of-the-worlds
Article about the emotional life of the passenger pigeon, including musical notation of its songs, kahs, and coos.
Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/emotion-in-the-pigeons
Living through the devastating Italian plague of 1656, the great polymath Athanasius Kircher turned his ever-enquiring mind to the then mysterious disease, becoming possibly the first to view infected blood through a microscope. While his subsequent theories of spontaneous generation and "universal sperm" were easily debunked, Kircher's investigation can be seen as an important early step to understanding contagion, and perhaps even the very first articulation of germ theory. John Glassie explores.
Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/athanasius-kircher-study-of-the-plague
A series of depictions of prostitutes, likely lesbian couples, drawn and painted in a Paris brothel during the Belle Époque.
Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/toulouse-lautrec-bed-series
A masterpiece of early Italian prose, in which 100 tales are told by a group of young people in self-quarantine during the plague of Florence in 1349.
Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-decameron