The Self-Balancing Monorail: A 1910 Train That Could Balance Without Falling

in History, Technology | April 8th, 2026

If mono­rails have a bad name, The Simp­sons may be to blame. In an episode acclaimed for its hilar­i­ous­ness since it first aired 33 years ago, a huck­ster shows up in Spring­field and con­vinces the town to build just such a tran­sit sys­tem, which turns out to be not just sus­pi­cious­ly unnec­es­sary (at least in young Lisa’s judg­ment) but also dan­ger­ous­ly shod­dy. I watched it while grow­ing up in the sub­urbs of Seat­tle, a city that endured bit­ter­ly pro­tract­ed con­tention over whether or not to build out its own rudi­men­ta­ry mono­rail sys­tem — a World’s Fair arti­fact, like the Space Nee­dle — but final­ly opt­ed not to. Con­cerns were per­pet­u­al­ly raised, right­ly or wrong­ly, about the noise and dark­ness that could result from extend­ing the wide ele­vat­ed track on which it ran.

But what if there were anoth­er way to build a mono­rail? Indeed, what if it could run on the ground, like a tra­di­tion­al two-railed train? Such was the idea in the head of the inde­fati­ga­ble Irish-Aus­tralian engi­neer Louis Bren­nan, who’s remem­bered today for invent­ing a wire-guid­ed tor­pe­do back in 1877.

If things had gone dif­fer­ent­ly, maybe he’d be bet­ter remem­bered for invent­ing the gyro mono­rail, the sub­ject of the Pri­mal Space video above. In Bren­nan’s design, which he actu­al­ly got built and work­ing, the car bal­ances on a sin­gle rail with the aid of a pair of spin­ning pow­ered gyro­scopes that pre­vent it from falling over (and, in the case of pow­er loss, could keep spin­ning for half an hour to allow a safe evac­u­a­tion), allow­ing it to run faster and cor­ner more tight­ly than the trains the world knew.

Bren­nan’s gyro mono­rail made its pub­lic debut at the Japan-British Exhi­bi­tion in Lon­don in 1910, giv­ing 50 pas­sen­gers at a time the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ride around in a cir­cle at 20 miles per hour. Though the inter­est it drew inspired a minor boom of gyro-sta­bi­lized chil­dren’s toys, it nev­er actu­al­ly trans­lat­ed into a real tran­sit sys­tem. Around the same time, a group in Ger­many also unveiled their own ver­sion, and in the decades there­after, addi­tion­al abortive efforts were made in Rus­sia. The engi­neer­ing involved was impres­sive, as the video explains, but also a bit too com­pli­cat­ed and expen­sive for its time. The devel­op­ment of a new Ger­man app-ordered autonomous gyro mono­rail sys­tem was announced just a few years ago. Giv­en the pos­si­bil­i­ty of its enter­ing pro­duc­tion as soon as 2032, we could soon be hear­ing cho­rus­es of “Mono­rail, mono­rail, mono­rail” — or rather, “Mono­cab, Mono­cab, Mono­cab” — once again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Trips on the World’s Old­est Elec­tric Sus­pen­sion Rail­way in 1902 & 2015 Show How a City Changes Over a Cen­tu­ry

Paris Had a Mov­ing Side­walk in 1900, and a Thomas Edi­son Film Cap­tured It in Action

A Sub­way Ride Through New York City: Watch Vin­tage Footage from 1905

Why Pub­lic Tran­sit Sucks in the Unit­ed States: Four Videos Tell the Sto­ry

A Har­row­ing Test Dri­ve of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s 1933 Dymax­ion Car: Art That Is Scary to Ride

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How the CIA Secretly Funded Abstract Expressionism During the Cold War

in Art, History | April 8th, 2026


Con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a tru­ly pro­le­tar­i­an art, the great Eng­lish lit­er­ary crit­ic William Emp­son once wrote, “the rea­son an Eng­lish audi­ence can enjoy Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dist films is that the pro­pa­gan­da is too remote to be annoy­ing.” Per­haps this is why Amer­i­can artists and bohemi­ans have so often tak­en to the polit­i­cal iconog­ra­phy of far-flung regimes, in ways both roman­tic and iron­ic. One nation’s tedious social­ist real­ism is another’s rad­i­cal exot­i­ca.

But do U.S. cul­tur­al exports have the same effect? One need only look at the suc­cess of our most banal brand­ing over­seas to answer in the affir­ma­tive. Yet no one would think to add Abstract Expres­sion­ist paint­ing to a list that includes fast food and Walt Dis­ney prod­ucts.

Nev­er­the­less, the work of such artists as Jack­son Pol­lock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Koon­ing wound up as part of a secret CIA pro­gram dur­ing the height of the Cold War, aimed at pro­mot­ing Amer­i­can ideals abroad.

The artists them­selves were com­plete­ly unaware that their work was being used as pro­pa­gan­da. On what agents called a “long leash,” they par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al exhi­bi­tions secret­ly orga­nized by the CIA, such as “The New Amer­i­can Paint­ing” (see cat­a­log cov­er at top), which vis­it­ed major Euro­pean cities in 1958–59 and includ­ed such mod­ern prim­i­tive works as sur­re­al­ist William Baziotes’ 1947 Dwarf (below) and 1951’s Tour­na­ment by Adolph Got­tlieb above.

Of course what seems most bizarre about this turn of events is that avant-garde art in Amer­i­ca has nev­er been much appre­ci­at­ed by the aver­age cit­i­zen, to put it mild­ly. Amer­i­can Main Streets har­bor under­cur­rents of dis­trust or out­right hatred for out-there, art-world exper­i­men­ta­tion, a trend that fil­ters upward and peri­od­i­cal­ly erupts in con­tro­ver­sies over Con­gres­sion­al fund­ing for the arts. A 1995 Inde­pen­dent arti­cle on the CIA’s role in pro­mot­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ism describes these atti­tudes dur­ing the Cold War peri­od:

In the 1950s and 1960s… the great major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans dis­liked or even despised mod­ern art—President Tru­man summed up the pop­u­lar view when he said: “If that’s art, then I’m a Hot­ten­tot.” As for the artists them­selves, many were ex- com­mu­nists bare­ly accept­able in the Amer­i­ca of the McCarthyite era, and cer­tain­ly not the sort of peo­ple nor­mal­ly like­ly to receive US gov­ern­ment back­ing.

Why, then, did they receive such back­ing? One short answer:

This philis­tin­ism, com­bined with Joseph McCarthy’s hys­ter­i­cal denun­ci­a­tions of all that was avant-garde or unortho­dox, was deeply embar­rass­ing. It dis­cred­it­ed the idea that Amer­i­ca was a sophis­ti­cat­ed, cul­tur­al­ly rich democ­ra­cy.

The one-way rela­tion­ship between mod­ernist painters and the CIA—only recent­ly con­firmed by for­mer case offi­cer Don­ald Jameson—supposedly enabled the agency to make the work of Sovi­et Social­ist Real­ists appear, in Jameson’s words, “even more styl­ized and more rigid and con­fined than it was.” (See Evdokiya Usikova’s 1959 Lenin with Vil­lagers below, for exam­ple). For a longer expla­na­tion, read the full arti­cle at The Inde­pen­dent. It’s the kind of sto­ry Don DeLil­lo would cook up.

 

William Emp­son goes on to say that “a Tory audi­ence sub­ject­ed to Tory pro­pa­gan­da of the same inten­si­ty” as Russ­ian imports, “would be extreme­ly bored.” If he is cor­rect, it’s like­ly that the aver­age true believ­er social­ist in Europe was already bored sil­ly by Sovi­et-approved art. What sur­pris­es in these rev­e­la­tions is that the avant-garde works that so rad­i­cal­ly altered the Amer­i­can art world and enraged the aver­age con­gress­man and tax­pay­er were co-opt­ed and col­lect­ed by suave U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cers like so many Shep­ard Fairey posters.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When the State Depart­ment Used Dizzy Gille­spie and Jazz to Fight the Cold War (1956)

Dis­cov­er the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

How “America’s First Drug Czar” Waged War Against Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends

How the CIA Secret­ly Used Jack­son Pol­lock & Oth­er Abstract Expres­sion­ists to Fight the Cold War

The CIA’s Style Man­u­al & Writer’s Guide: 185 Pages of Tips for Writ­ing Like a Spook

How the CIA Fund­ed & Sup­port­ed Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zines World­wide While Wag­ing Cul­tur­al War Against Com­mu­nism

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. 

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John Cage’s Silent, Avant-Garde Piece 4′33″ Gets Covered by a Death Metal Band

in Music | April 7th, 2026

When we think of silence, we think of med­i­ta­tive stretch­es of calm: hikes through desert­ed for­est paths, an ear­ly morn­ing sun­set before the world awakes, a stay­ca­tion at home with a good book. But we know oth­er silences: awk­ward silences, omi­nous silences, and—in the case of John Cage’s infa­mous con­cep­tu­al piece 4’33”—a mys­ti­fy­ing silence that asks us to lis­ten, not to noth­ing, but to every­thing. Instead of focus­ing our aur­al atten­tion, Cage’s for­mal­ized exer­cise in lis­ten­ing dis­pers­es it, to the ner­vous coughs and squeak­ing shoes of a rest­less audi­ence, the cease­less ebb and flow of traf­fic and breath­ing, the ambi­ent white noise of heat­ing and AC…

and the sus­pend­ed black noise of death met­al….

We’re used to see­ing 4’33” “per­formed” as a clas­si­cal exer­cise, with a dig­ni­fied pianist seat­ed at the bench, osten­ta­tious­ly turn­ing the pages of Cage’s “score.” But there’s no rea­son at all the exercise—or hoax, some insist—can’t work in any genre, includ­ing met­al. NPR’s All Songs TV brings us the video above, in which “64 years after its debut per­for­mance by pianist David Tudor,” death met­al band Dead Ter­ri­to­ry lines behind their instru­ments, tunes up, and takes on Cage: “There’s a set­up, earplugs go in, a brief gui­tar chug, a drum-stick count-off and… silence.”

As in every per­for­mance of 4’33”, we’re drawn not only to what we hear, in this case the sounds in what­ev­er room we watch the video, but also to what we see. And watch­ing these five met­al­heads, who are so used to deliv­er­ing a con­tin­u­ous assault, nod their heads solemn­ly in silence for over four min­utes adds yet anoth­er inter­pre­tive lay­er to Cage’s exper­i­ment, ask­ing us to con­sid­er the per­for­ma­tive avant-garde as a domain fit not only for rar­i­fied clas­si­cal and art house audi­ences but for every­one and any­one.

Also, despite their seri­ous­ness, NPR reminds us that Dead Territory’s take is “anoth­er in a long line of 4′33″ per­for­mances that under­stand Cage had a sense of humor while expand­ing our musi­cal uni­verse.” Cage hap­pi­ly gave his exper­i­ments to the world to adapt and impro­vise as it sees fit, and—as we see in his own per­for­mance of 4’33” in Har­vard Square—he was hap­py to make his own changes to silence as well.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch John Cage Play His “Silent” 4′33″ in Har­vard Square, Pre­sent­ed by Nam June Paik (1973)

The Curi­ous Score for John Cage’s “Silent” Zen Com­po­si­tion 4′33″

When the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic Per­formed John Cage’s Icon­ic Piece 4′33″, Cap­tur­ing the Soli­tude of the Pan­dem­ic (2020)

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

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Discover Gadsby: The 50,000-Word Novel Written Without Using the Letter E (1939)

in Books, Literature | April 7th, 2026

“If Youth, through­out all his­to­ry, had had a cham­pi­on to stand up for it; to show a doubt­ing world that a child can think; and, pos­si­bly, do it prac­ti­cal­ly; you would­n’t con­stant­ly run across folks today who claim that ‘a child don’t know any­thing.’ ” Ranked along­side the oth­er notable open­ing sen­tences of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture, this falls some­what short of, say, “Call me Ish­mael.” The entire nov­el that fol­lows is writ­ten in the same odd­ly stilt­ed, cir­cum­loc­u­tive prose, and a read­er who skips the author’s intro­duc­tion may not per­ceive just what has set it askew for some time. They’d also have to be read­ing an edi­tion oth­er than the first, with its bold promise of a “50,000 WORD NOVEL WITHOUT THE LETTER ‘E.’ ”

The book is Ernest Vin­cent Wright’s Gads­by (1939). Though self-pub­lished in the late nine­teen-thir­ties to no fan­fare, it’s now acknowl­edged more or less wide­ly as a lit­er­ary odd­i­ty, far more often cit­ed as a piece of triv­ia than actu­al­ly read. (I first learned of it from a list of fun facts on the back of a cere­al box, which, look­ing back now, seems cul­tur­al­ly appro­pri­ate.) As the Dis­am­bi video above explains, in deny­ing him­self e, the sin­gle most com­mon let­ter in the Eng­lish lan­guage, Wright denied him­self the, as well as “the major­i­ty of pro­nouns, like he, she, they, them, theirs,” and so on. “Past-tense words that use -ed are out of the ques­tion, as is any num­ber between six and thir­ty.”

To some, more sur­pris­ing than the fact that Wright man­aged to com­pose a full-length nov­el this way (over­look­ing three thes and an offi­cer that slipped into the ini­tial print run) is the nature of the sto­ry he chan­neled this con­sid­er­able effort into telling. John Gads­by — not to be con­fused with the sim­i­lar­ly named, much more famous title char­ac­ter of anoth­er nov­el from the pre­vi­ous decade — returns in mid­dle age to his home­town of Bran­ton Hills, which has slid into a state of advanced dis­so­lu­tion. In despair, he assem­bles a youth league ded­i­cat­ed to breath­ing life back into the place, and before those 50,000 very near­ly e‑less words have passed, the pop­u­la­tion has grown thir­ty­fold, and he’s become the may­or.

In truth, Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry is lit­tered with Gads­bys; it’s just that none of the authors of those for­got­ten hom­i­lies on civic-mind­ed boos­t­er­ism thought to use so strik­ing a gim­mick. Tech­ni­cal­ly called a lipogram, the tech­nique of omit­ting a par­tic­u­lar let­ter has since been used since to greater lit­er­ary effect. With their char­ac­ter­is­tic weak­ness for Amer­i­can eccen­tric­i­ty, cer­tain French intel­lec­tu­als even­tu­al­ly took up Gads­by as a kind of mod­el. In 1969, Georges Perec pub­lished the longer but sim­i­lar­ly e‑less La Dis­pari­tion, which would have been much more chal­leng­ing to write, giv­en the French lan­guage’s even greater reliance on that miss­ing vow­el. Far from a par­lor trick, its lipogram res­onates with both the con­tent of the sto­ry and sense of absence felt by the author, who’d lost both par­ents in World War II. As for this post, per­haps you’ve noticed that it’s been writ­ten thus far with­out a sin­gle instance of the let­ter z. Please clap.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Jump­start Your Cre­ative Process with William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Tech­nique

An Intro­duc­tion to the Codex Seraphini­anus, the Strangest Book Ever Pub­lished

The Strangest Books in the World: Dis­cov­er The Madman’s Library, a Cap­ti­vat­ing Com­pendi­um of Pecu­liar Books & Man­u­scripts

Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture, From the Begin­nings to the Civ­il War: A Free Online Course from NYU

The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945: A Free Yale Course on Nov­els by Nabokov, Ker­ouac, Mor­ri­son, Pyn­chon & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch 434 Avant-Garde and Surreal Short Films Online: Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Luis Buñuel and Many More

in Film | April 6th, 2026

Much has been writ­ten late­ly about the cri­sis in Hol­ly­wood, which has left many appar­ent­ly sure-fire block­busters floun­der­ing, the­aters emp­ty, and pro­duc­tion jobs lost. There are many fac­tors in play — some of them, as few diag­noses fail to point out, struc­tur­al — but can we ignore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fatigue, per­haps even bore­dom, with film itself? We’ve post­ed in recent years here on Open Cul­ture about the decay of cin­e­ma, the rise of “visu­al muzak” on Net­flix, why movies don’t feel real any­more, and why movies don’t even feel like movies any­more. Even if they’ve lim­it­ed their expo­sure to big-bud­get spec­ta­cles, most once-avid cinephiles will have felt all those phe­nom­e­na for them­selves by now, and many will be con­sid­er­ing whether to look for a new art form to enjoy. But some will won­der: maybe there’s a cure?

There could well be, and a brac­ing one. If you seek a re-enchant­ment with film, there could be few bet­ter places to look than in the work of film­mak­ers who have bro­ken that medi­um down to its very com­po­nents and put it togeth­er again in uncon­ven­tion­al ways. Some of the results shocked audi­ences fifty, six­ty, sev­en­ty, even a hun­dred years ago — and indeed, some retain that pow­er today.

You can take a jour­ney through the his­to­ry of such exper­i­men­tal, avant-garde, and sur­re­al motion pic­tures with the YouTube playlist at the top of the post, which com­pris­es 434 such videos. The exact num­ber will vary depend­ing upon your region of the world, as well as upon how many of them have come and gone since the playlist’s cre­ation. What­ev­er the total, not even a fringe-cin­e­ma habitué will have seen every­thing on it (at least, not more than once).

Long­time Open Cul­ture read­ers may rec­og­nize on the playlist the work of Dadaist Hans Richter and Mar­cel Duchamp, abstrac­tion pio­neer Viking Eggeling, ear­ly fem­i­nist film­mak­er Ger­maine Dulac, and ani­ma­tor (as well as city sym­phon­ist) Wal­ter Ruttmann, not to men­tion Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel.

They may or may not already have encoun­tered the cin­e­mat­ic lega­cy of, say, Shūji Ter­aya­ma, the all-around avant-gardist and provo­ca­teur whose influ­ence is still felt in Japan­ese art today; Stan Brakhage, who forewent even the use of a cam­era and cre­at­ed his own cin­e­ma by manip­u­lat­ing film direct­ly; or Michael Snow, whose Wave­length tells a sto­ry with­out leav­ing a sin­gle room in which very lit­tle hap­pens. But then, after enough of these exper­i­men­tal, avant-garde, and sur­re­al view­ing expe­ri­ences, you’ll remem­ber that there are many ways for a film to tell a sto­ry — and much, much more that film can do besides sto­ry­telling, if only we’d let it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Page of Mad­ness: The Lost Avant Garde Mas­ter­piece from Ear­ly Japan­ese Cin­e­ma (1926)

The Evoca­tive­ness of Decom­pos­ing Film: Watch the 1926 Hol­ly­wood Movie The Bells Become the Exper­i­men­tal 2004 Short Film Light Is Call­ing

Watch the Med­i­ta­tive Cinepo­em “H20”: A Land­mark Avant-Garde Art Film from 1929

Watch 3000 Years of Art, a 1968 Exper­i­men­tal Film That Takes You on a Visu­al Jour­ney Through 3,000 Years of Fine Art

Watch Mesh­es of the After­noon, the Exper­i­men­tal Short Vot­ed the 16th Best Film of All Time

Paul Schrad­er Cre­ates a Dia­gram Map­ping the Pro­gres­sion of Art­house Cin­e­ma: Ozu, Bres­son, Tarkovsky & Oth­er Auteurs

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Survive the Atomic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

in History | April 6th, 2026


Not too far back, we revis­it­ed some Cold War pro­pa­gan­da that taught upstand­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zens How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism. It’s a gem, but it has noth­ing on the 1954 film, The House in the Mid­dle. Select­ed for preser­va­tion in the Nation­al Film Reg­istry by the Library of Con­gress, the short doc­u­men­tary makes the ulti­mate case for clean­li­ness. Bring­ing view­ers to the Neva­da Prov­ing Grounds, the 12-minute film shows what hap­pens when clean, white hous­es are sub­ject­ed to heat waves from an atom­ic blast, ver­sus what hap­pens when a dingy, ill-kept house goes through the same drill. It turns out that neat peo­ple can not only claim moral vic­to­ry (as they always do). They also get to live anoth­er day. Con­sid­er it proof of the sur­vival of the tidi­est.

The film was pro­duced by the Nation­al Clean Up-Paint Up-Fix Up Bureau with sup­port from the Fed­er­al Civ­il Defense Admin­is­tra­tion. The Nation­al Paint, Var­nish and Lac­quer Asso­ci­a­tion also appar­ent­ly played a role, sug­gest­ing that cor­po­rate inter­ests were cap­i­tal­iz­ing on wartime fear. Not the first time that’s hap­pened in Amer­i­ca. Or that last…

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!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ducked and Cov­ered: A Sur­vival Guide to the Post Apoc­a­lypse (A Lit­tle NSFW)

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist by Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Ani­mat­ed Films Made Dur­ing the Cold War Explain Why Amer­i­ca is Excep­tion­al­ly Excep­tion­al

The Red Men­ace: A Strik­ing Gallery of Anti-Com­mu­nist Posters, Ads, Com­ic Books, Mag­a­zines & Films

Watch “Don’t Be a Suck­er!,” the 1947 US Gov­ern­ment Anti-Hatred Film That’s Rel­e­vant All Over Again

How Dis­ney Fought Fas­cism with Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Dur­ing World War II & Avert­ed Finan­cial Col­lapse

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Watch the Titanic and Lusitania Sink in Real Time: One Fast, One Slow

in History | April 3rd, 2026

Asked to name famous ship­wrecks at a bar triv­ia night, a fair few par­tic­i­pants might think imme­di­ate­ly of Pearl Har­bor, whether or not they can recall that it was the USS Ari­zona bombed there. More firm­ly with­in liv­ing mem­o­ry sits the SS Andrea Doria, though she’s hard­ly the cul­tur­al ref­er­ence she used to be. The wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzger­ald passed its fifti­eth anniver­sary just last year, which gave a boost to its remem­brance, if most­ly by Gor­don Light­foot fans. There is, of course, the Endurance, though the ship her­self has always been over­shad­owed by the efforts of her cap­tain to get the whole crew home alive. The schooner Hes­pe­rus does come to mind as a par­tic­u­lar­ly unfor­tu­nate ves­sel, per­haps all the more so because she did­n’t actu­al­ly exist.

Near­ly every­one at the bar is, of course, going to put down the RMS Titan­ic first. Even before she received the James Cameron treat­ment, that “unsink­able” ocean lin­er was eas­i­ly the most famous ship­wreck of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, and quite pos­si­bly of all his­to­ry. But sec­ond place has to go to the RMS Lusi­ta­nia, which went under just three years after the Titan­ic. As close as the year 1915 may sound to 1912, devel­op­ments in Europe had rearranged the world in the mean­time. The Titan­ic met her end by col­lid­ing with an ice­berg, and about two and a half hours lat­er, as you can see in the real-time sink­ing video at the top of the post, it was on the bot­tom of the North Atlantic. When the Lusi­ta­nia was tor­pe­doed by a Ger­man U‑boat, by con­trast, she went down in just eigh­teen min­utes.

You can wit­ness those min­utes re-cre­at­ed in the ani­mat­ed video from Ocean­lin­er Designs just above. Though the Great War was rag­ing, the ship had­n’t yet been com­mis­sioned as an armed mer­chant cruis­er, but was con­duct­ing her usu­al transat­lantic pas­sen­ger ser­vice while — as the Ger­man side insist­ed and the British at first denied — car­ry­ing war mate­ri­als on the side. She’d been trav­el­ing due east for six days when U‑20 sight­ed her; after an hour of track­ing came the launch of the fate­ful under­wa­ter mis­sile and its 160-kilo­gram explo­sive pay­load. The video shows and explains not just how the Lusi­ta­nia slipped below the water, but also the break­down along the way of her var­i­ous struc­tur­al ele­ments and mechan­i­cal sys­tems, includ­ing the ele­va­tors that had once seemed such mar­velous inno­va­tions.

It seems that after the tor­pe­do hit, prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing that could have con­se­quent­ly gone wrong did, right down to the few deploy­able lifeboats drop­ping cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly from their davits. The crew of the Titan­ic man­aged to launch most of her lifeboats, but there weren’t enough of them in the first place. That con­tributed to a final death toll of around 1,500, as com­pared with 1,197 on the Lusi­ta­nia. Though sim­i­lar in scale and his­tor­i­cal tim­ing, these two mar­itime dis­as­ters end­ed up with very dif­fer­ent mean­ings. The wreck of the Titan­ic con­tin­ues to cap­ture imag­i­na­tions by res­onat­ing with the indus­tri­al romance, class strat­i­fi­ca­tion, and impe­r­i­al hubris of the long nine­teenth cen­tu­ry; that of the Lusi­ta­nia, whose sink­ing played a major role in bring­ing the Unit­ed States into what we now call World War I, shows us noth­ing so clear­ly as the mer­ci­less geopo­lit­i­cal log­ic of the twen­ti­eth.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia Ani­mat­ed in Real Time (1915)

How James Cameron Shot Titan­ic’s Huge­ly Com­plex Sink­ing Scene

The Sink­ing of the Bri­tan­nic: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Titanic’s For­got­ten Sis­ter Ship

The Cos­ta Con­cor­dia Ship­wreck Viewed from Out­er Space

The First Full 3D Scan of the Titan­ic, Made of More Than 700,000 Images Cap­tur­ing the Wreck’s Every Detail

A New 3D Scan, Cre­at­ed from 25,000 High-Res­o­lu­tion Images, Reveals the Remark­ably Well-Pre­served Wreck of Shackleton’s Endurance

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Everything in a Medieval Castle Worked, from Its Moats to Its Dungeons

in Architecture, History | April 2nd, 2026

Very few of us have ever set foot near a gen­uine medieval cas­tle, espe­cial­ly if we don’t hap­pen to live in Europe. Yet prac­ti­cal­ly all of us still, here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, refer with some fre­quen­cy to their com­po­nents in our every­day speech. When we invoke moats, draw­bridges, dun­geons, and even cat­a­pults, we almost always do so metaphor­i­cal­ly — assum­ing we’re not active mem­bers of a his­tor­i­cal re-cre­ation soci­ety — yet we also have no prob­lem see­ing them before our mind’s eye with what feels like per­fect clar­i­ty. The dif­fi­cul­ty comes if we attempt to inte­grate all of those images, absorbed hap­haz­ard­ly from folk tales and pop­u­lar cul­ture, into a func­tion­ing whole.

The fact of the mat­ter is that peo­ple in the Mid­dle Ages real­ly did live and work in cas­tles, and occa­sion­al­ly had to defend them, or indeed attack them. Using a 3D-ren­dered repli­ca con­struct­ed to reflect how those struc­tures were built in the frag­ment­ed Europe of the eleventh through four­teenth cen­turies after the fall of the Car­olin­gian Empire, the Decon­struct­ed video above explains every­thing about how they worked in the span of about twen­ty min­utes.

This tour begins with the bar­bi­can: not the cel­e­brat­ed Bru­tal­ist com­plex in Lon­don, but the exte­ri­or for­ti­fied pas­sage “designed to expose attack­ers to defen­sive fire before they even reach the main gate.” And it only gets hard­er for would-be cas­tle cap­tors from there.

Para­pets with cutouts through which archers could fire their arrows, the moat that made under­min­ing (a term com­mon enough in mod­ern lan­guage that few now rec­og­nize its ori­gins) next to impos­si­ble, the draw­bridge that could be pulled up, the walls slant­ed to repel bat­ter­ing rams, the spiked portcullis­es that could be slammed down: these are just a few of the myr­i­ad defens­es that made invaders’ lives dif­fi­cult — and, in many cas­es, short, espe­cial­ly when “mur­der holes” were involved. (Now there’s a term just wait­ing for inclu­sion in our lex­i­con.) The exam­ple con­struct­ed here rep­re­sents the zenith of cas­tle design, the cul­mi­na­tion of an evo­lu­tion­ary process that began in the tenth cen­tu­ry with a struc­ture called the motte and bai­ley: a term that, if you don’t already know it from oth­er con­texts, you prob­a­bly just don’t do enough ver­bal bat­tle on the inter­net.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

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

How Medieval Cathe­drals Were Built With­out Sci­ence, or Even Math­e­mat­ics

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Discover the Retirement Home for Elderly Musicians Created by Giuseppe Verdi: Created in 1899, It Still Lives On Today

in Life, Music | April 2nd, 2026

Among my works, the one I like best is the Home that I have had built in Milan for accom­mo­dat­ing old singers not favored by for­tune, or who, when they were young did not pos­sess the virtue of sav­ing. Poor and dear com­pan­ions of my life! 

—Giuseppe Ver­di

Is there a rem­e­dy for the iso­la­tion of old age?

What about the jol­ly fra­ter­ni­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness of an art col­lege dorm, as envi­sioned by opera com­pos­er Giuseppe Ver­di?

Short­ly before his death, the com­pos­er donat­ed all roy­al­ties from his operas to the con­struc­tion and admin­is­tra­tion of a lux­u­ri­ous retreat for retired musi­cians, designed by his librettist’s broth­er, archi­tect Camil­lo Boito.

Com­plet­ed in 1899, Casa Ver­di still serves elder­ly musi­cians today—up to 60 at a time. Res­i­dents of Casa Ver­di include alum­nae of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera and the Roy­al Opera House. Guests have worked along­side such nota­bles as Chet Bak­er and Maria Callas.

Com­pe­ti­tion for res­i­den­tial slots is stiff. To qual­i­fy, one must have been a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian or music teacher. Those select­ed enjoy room, board, and med­ical treat­ment in addi­tion to, writes The New York Times, “access to con­certs, music rooms, 15 pianos, a large organ, harps, drum sets and the com­pa­ny of their peers.” Musi­cal pro­gram­ming is as con­stant as the fine view of Verdi’s grave.

Din­ing tables are named in hon­or of Verdi’s works. Those inclined to wor­ship do so in a chapel named for San­ta Cecil­ia, the patron saint of musi­cians.

Prac­tice rooms are alive with the sound of music and crit­i­cism. As Casa Verdi’s music ther­a­pist told the Finan­cial Times, “They are very com­pet­i­tive: they are all pri­ma don­nas.”

When mem­o­ry fails, res­i­dents can tune in to such doc­u­men­taries as actor Dustin Hoffman’s Tosca’s Kiss, below

Get a peek inside Verdi’s retire­ment home for artists, com­pli­ments of Urban Sketch­ers here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Dutch “Demen­tia Vil­lage” Improves Qual­i­ty of Life with Inten­tion­al Design

Meet Nadia Boulanger, “The Most Influ­en­tial Teacher Since Socrates,” Who Men­tored Philip Glass, Leonard Bern­stein, Aaron Cop­land, Quin­cy Jones & Oth­er Leg­ends

How Music Can Awak­en Patients with Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

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How James Cameron Shot Titanic’s Hugely Complex Sinking Scene

in Film, History | April 1st, 2026

The dark arts of “Hol­ly­wood account­ing” make it dif­fi­cult to deter­mine film bud­gets with pre­ci­sion. But accord­ing to rea­son­able reck­on­ings, James Cameron may have direct­ed not just one but sev­er­al of the most expen­sive movies of all time. The under­wa­ter sci-fi spec­ta­cle that was The Abyss neces­si­tat­ed one of the biggest pro­duc­tion bud­gets of the eight­ies, but it looked straight off Pover­ty Row when com­pared to Cameron’s next project just two years lat­er. Ter­mi­na­tor 2: Judg­ment Day was the first film to cost more than $100 mil­lion; True Lies, his next Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger vehi­cle, could have cost as much as $120 mil­lion. What chal­lenge remained for Cameron at that point? Why, re-cre­at­ing the most famous ship­wreck in his­to­ry.

Such an improb­a­ble-sound­ing ambi­tion did­n’t come out of nowhere. Fas­ci­nat­ed with the Titan­ic since child­hood, Cameron even­tu­al­ly found him­self able to make mul­ti­ple expe­di­tions of his own to its final rest­ing place in deep-sea sub­mersibles. He was­n’t just well placed to gath­er the infor­ma­tion nec­es­sary to bring it back to life on screen, but also to imple­ment and indeed devel­op the tech­niques to film it believ­ably, pow­er­ful­ly, and with a high degree of his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy.

It per­haps does Cameron a dis­ser­vice to refer to him only as a film­mak­er, since through­out his career he’s dis­played just as much the mind of an engi­neer, char­ac­ter­ized by the will­ing­ness to make his own tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments in the ser­vice of bring­ing his vision to the screen. You can get some insight into that mind at work in the Stu­dio Binder video above on how he direct­ed the Titan­ic’s sink­ing scene.

Titan­ic cost $200 mil­lion, more than the ship her­self. In 1997, that was an eye-water­ing sum, but giv­en the movie’s even­tu­al take of $2.264 bil­lion, it seems mon­ey well spent. A non-triv­ial amount of those prof­its came from view­ers who bought a tick­et — again and again, in some cas­es — express­ly to see their favorite heart­throb. But Cameron must have known full well that most movie­go­ers turned up to see the ship go down; every­thing thus rode on that one hour of the film’s 195-minute run­time. Its unprece­dent­ed­ly com­plex shoot involved, among oth­er things, hun­dreds of stunt per­form­ers and extras, the lat­est in CGI tools, and a 775-foot-long repli­ca of the Titan­ic installed in a cus­tom-built sea­side set in Mex­i­co. The scene, as well as the film that con­tains it, holds up near­ly thir­ty years lat­er in part due to this com­bi­na­tion of dig­i­tal and ana­log effects, a fusion of almost exper­i­men­tal­ly cut­ting-edge dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and old-fash­ioned, thor­ough­ly ana­log movie mag­ic — some­thing Cameron under­stands just as well as he does under­sea explo­ration.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Engi­neer­ing of the Titan­ic: How the Great Ocean Lin­er Was Built

Watch 80 Min­utes of Nev­er-Released Footage Show­ing the Wreck­age of the Titan­ic (1986)

The First Full 3D Scan of the Titan­ic, Made of More Than 700,000 Images Cap­tur­ing the Wreck’s Every Detail

Titan­ic Sur­vivor Inter­views: What It Was Like to Flee the Sink­ing Lux­u­ry Lin­er

Watch the Titan­ic Sink in Real-Time

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Discover the First Horror & Fantasy Magazine, Der Orchideengarten, and Its Bizarre Artwork (1919–1921)

in Art, Literature, Magazines | April 1st, 2026

Der_Orchideengarten,_1920_cover_(Leidlein)

From the 18th cen­tu­ry onward, the gen­res of Goth­ic hor­ror and fan­ta­sy have flour­ished, and with them the sen­su­al­ly vis­cer­al images now com­mon­place in film, TV, and com­ic books. These gen­res per­haps reached their aes­thet­ic peak in the 19th cen­tu­ry with writ­ers like Edgar Allan Poe and illus­tra­tors like Gus­tave Dore. But it was in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry that a more pop­ulist sub­genre tru­ly came into its own: “weird fic­tion,” a term H.P. Love­craft used to describe the pulpy brand of super­nat­ur­al hor­ror cod­i­fied in the pages of Amer­i­can fan­ta­sy and hor­ror mag­a­zine Weird Tales—first pub­lished in 1923. (And still going strong!)

Orchid_2

A pre­cur­sor to EC Comics’ many lurid titles, Weird Tales is often con­sid­ered the defin­i­tive ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry venue for weird fic­tion and illus­tra­tion.

But we need only look back a few years and to anoth­er con­ti­nent to find an ear­li­er pub­li­ca­tion, serv­ing Ger­man-speak­ing fans—Der Orchideen­garten (“The Gar­den of Orchids”), the very first hor­ror and fan­ta­sy mag­a­zine, which ran 51 issues from Jan­u­ary 1919 to Novem­ber 1921.

Orchid_3

The mag­a­zine fea­tured work from its edi­tors Karl Hans Strobl and Alfons von Czibul­ka, from bet­ter-known con­tem­po­raries like H.G. Wells and Karel Capek, and from fore­fa­thers like Dick­ens, Pushkin, Guy de Mau­pas­sant, Poe, Voltaire, Wash­ing­ton Irv­ing, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and oth­ers. “Although two issues of Der Orchideen­garten were devot­ed to detec­tive sto­ries,” writes 50 Watts, “and one to erot­ic sto­ries about cuck­olds, it was a gen­uine fan­ta­sy mag­a­zine.” And it was also a gallery of bizarre and unusu­al art­work.

04-Der-Orchideengarten--1919--German-magazine-cover_900

50 Watts quotes from Franz Rottensteiner’s descrip­tion of the magazine’s art, which ranged “from rep­re­sen­ta­tions of medieval wood­cuts to the work of mas­ters of the macabre such as Gus­tave Dore or Tony Johan­not, to con­tem­po­rary Ger­man artists like Rolf von Hoer­schel­mann, Otto Lenneko­gel, Karl Rit­ter, Hein­rich Kley, or Alfred Kubin.” These artists cre­at­ed the cov­ers and illus­tra­tions you see here, and many more you can see at 50 Watts, the black sun, and John Coulthart’s {feuil­leton}.

Orchid_5

“What strikes me about these black-and-white draw­ings,” like the dense, fren­zied pen-and-ink scene above, Coulthart com­ments, “is how dif­fer­ent they are in tone to the pulp mag­a­zines which fol­lowed short­ly after in Amer­i­ca and else­where. They’re at once far more adult and fre­quent­ly more orig­i­nal than the Goth­ic clichés which padded out Weird Tales and less­er titles for many years.” Indeed, though the for­mat may be sim­i­lar to its suc­ces­sors, Der Orchideen­garten’s cov­ers show the influ­ence of Sur­re­al­ism, “some are almost Expres­sion­ist in style,” and many of the illus­tra­tions show “a dis­tinct Goya influ­ence.”

Orchid_1

Pop­u­lar fan­ta­sy and hor­ror illus­tra­tion has often leaned more toward the soft-porn of sev­en­ties air­brushed vans, pulp-nov­el cov­ers, or the gris­ly kitsch of the comics. Rot­ten­stein­er writes in his 1978 Fan­ta­sy Book that this “large-for­mat mag­a­zine… must sure­ly rank as one of the most beau­ti­ful fan­ta­sy mag­a­zines ever pub­lished.” It’s hard to argue with that assess­ment. View, read (in Ger­man), and down­load orig­i­nal scans of the magazine’s first sev­er­al issues over on this Prince­ton site.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

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:

How Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon Became the First Sci-Fi Film & Changed Cin­e­ma For­ev­er (1902)

Read Mar­garet Cavendish’s The Blaz­ing World: The First Sci-Fi Nov­el Writ­ten By a Woman (1666)

The First Work of Sci­ence Fic­tion: Read Lucian’s 2nd-Cen­tu­ry Space Trav­el­ogue A True Sto­ry

Free: 356 Issues of Galaxy, the Ground­break­ing 1950s Sci­ence Fic­tion Mag­a­zine

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

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