Stanley Kubrick Faked the Apollo 11 Moon Landing in 1969, Or So the Conspiracy Theory Goes

in Film, History | July 23rd, 2014

This week is the anniver­sary of the Apol­lo 11 jour­ney to the moon. And while most peo­ple will cel­e­brate the event by acknowl­edg­ing the abil­i­ties and courage of Neil Arm­strong and com­pa­ny in this land­mark of human endeav­or, a small, though vocal, group of peo­ple will decry the moon land­ing as a fraud.

In that spir­it, French film­mak­er William Karel spins an elab­o­rate tale of intrigue in Dark Side of the Moon. (See out­takes above.) The 2002 film posits that the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing was staged by none oth­er than Stan­ley Kubrick. How else did the direc­tor get his hands on a super advanced lens from NASA to shoot those gor­geous can­dle-lit scenes in Bar­ry Lyn­don? The film is slick­ly pro­duced and fea­tures an impres­sive array of inter­vie­wees from Hen­ry Kissinger, to Buzz Aldrin to Chris­tiane Kubrick. Some of the oth­er peo­ple inter­viewed include Jack Tor­rance and David Bow­man. If that’s not a tip off that the whole movie is fake, then the bloop­er reel at the end dri­ves the point home. Only a lot of peo­ple didn’t get the joke. Con­spir­a­cy enthu­si­asts Wayne Green cit­ed the movie as fur­ther proof that the moon land­ing was faked.

Moon hoax­ers like to point to The Shin­ing as a con­fes­sion by Kubrick that he was forced into a Big Lie. In the doc­u­men­tary Room 237, Jay Wei­d­ner claims as much. And Michael Wys­mier­s­ki argues the same in The Shin­ing Code 2.0, a fea­ture length video that you can watch below. Or get right to the meat of things here.

And just in case you get swept up in Wysmierski’s loony log­ic, film­mak­er S. G. Collins makes the very com­pelling argu­ment that the tech­nol­o­gy sim­ply didn’t exist to fake the moon land­ing in 1969. Case closed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Room 237: New Doc­u­men­tary Explores Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing and Those It Obsess­es

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

 

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Dante’s Divine Comedy Illustrated in a Remarkable Illuminated Medieval Manuscript (c. 1450)

in Art, Literature, Poetry | July 23rd, 2014

YT 36

Few writ­ers have inspired so many artists, so deeply and for so long, as Dante Alighieri. His epic poem the Divine Com­e­dy (find in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks) has received strik­ing illu­mi­na­tions at the hands of Gus­tave Doré, San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li, Alber­to Mar­ti­ni, and Sal­vador Dalí — to name only those we’ve fea­tured before here on Open Cul­ture. The names Pri­amo del­la Quer­cia and Gio­van­ni di Pao­lo may mean rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle to you right now, but they’ll mean much more once you’ve tak­en a look at the illus­tra­tions fea­tured here and at The World of Dante, which come from an illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script of the Divine Com­e­dy at the British Library known as Yates Thomp­son 36. Pro­duced in Siena around 1450 for an unknown orig­i­nal patron, “the codex belonged to Alfon­so V, king of Aragon, Naples, and Sici­ly,” and includes “110 large minia­tures and three his­to­ri­at­ed ini­tials.” (See all here.) Del­la Quer­cia illus­trat­ed the Infer­no and Pur­ga­to­rio and all three his­to­ri­at­ed ini­tials; di Pao­lo illus­trat­ed Par­adiso.

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“This makes for two dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent styles,” con­tin­ues The World of Dan­te’s page. “Pri­amo’s work reflects the more real­is­tic style of late fif­teenth-cen­tu­ry Flo­ren­tine paint­ing, an influ­ence which is par­tic­u­lar­ly notice­able in his use of con­tours and out­lines in the depic­tion of nudes. Gio­van­ni di Paolo’s style is clos­er to that of late four­teenth-cen­tu­ry Sienese artists,” pro­duc­ing results “great­ly admired for their visu­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the poem: the artist does­n’t just tran­scribe Dan­te’s words but seeks to ren­der their mean­ing.”

The British Library’s medieval man­u­scripts blog describes it as “cer­tain­ly a lav­ish pro­duc­tion” that “must have been an expen­sive under­tak­ing,” giv­en the sta­tus of the men doing the illu­mi­nat­ing as “two of the pre­em­i­nent artists of the day.” But when it came to visu­al­iz­ing Dan­te’s jour­ney, quite lit­er­al­ly, to hell and back in 15th-cen­tu­ry Italy, no artist ranked too high­ly. Even today, I can’t imag­ine any artist read­ing the Divine Com­e­dy, illu­mi­nat­ed or no, with­out get­ting a few vivid ideas of their own.

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More images can be found on the British Library web site (scroll down the page). A Yale course entire­ly ded­i­cat­ed to Dante appears in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Botticelli’s 92 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Gus­tave Doré’s Dra­mat­ic Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Alber­to Martini’s Haunt­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1901–1944)

Sal­vador Dalí’s 100 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s The Divine Com­e­dy

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The First Animations of Mike Judge, Creator of Beavis and Butt-head & Office Space (1991)

in Animation, Comedy | July 22nd, 2014

Mike Judge first became famous for cre­at­ing the crude and crude­ly drawn car­toon series Beav­is and Butt-head (find com­plete episodes online here). The show was about two high school burnouts whose run­ning com­men­tary on the lat­est music videos was so bone­head­ed and bald­ly vul­gar that you couldn’t help but laugh. Pris­sy cul­ture war­riors point­ed to the show as yet anoth­er symp­tom of America’s decline while legions of stoned col­lege stu­dents glee­ful­ly tuned in. In 1998, Judge made the jump to live action fea­tures with Office Space, a hilar­i­ous, if uneven, take on the banal­i­ties of Amer­i­can cor­po­rate cul­ture. It’s one of those movies that no one saw in the the­ater but, thanks to cable, every­one of a cer­tain age can quote. (“If you can come in on Sat­ur­day, that would be great.”) Cur­rent­ly, he is the cre­ator for the hit HBO series Sil­i­con Val­ley.

Judge start­ed in ani­ma­tion after work­ing for a spell as first a com­put­er pro­gram­mer and then a blues bassist. After see­ing an ani­ma­tion cel on dis­play in a local movie the­ater in 1989, he ran out and bought a Bolex 16mm cam­era and start­ed mak­ing movies. Two years lat­er, he was pro­duc­ing odd, thor­ough­ly unpol­ished ani­mat­ed shorts that made the rounds in film fes­ti­vals, even­tu­al­ly launch­ing a career in Hol­ly­wood.

Above is a short about Mil­ton, the neb­bish sta­pler-obsessed cubi­cle dweller who was the gen­e­sis for Office Space. Stephen Root played him in the movie. His boss is the same pas­sive-aggres­sive prick as in the movie though played with less unc­tu­ous zeal as Gary Cole’s per­for­mance. The short proved to be such a suc­cess that MTV’s Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion ordered more.

Next is The Honky Prob­lem, about an emo­tion­al­ly unbal­anced coun­try singer named ‘Inbred Jed.’ He wants you to know that he is real­ly, real­ly, real­ly hap­py to be play­ing at a remote trail­er park­er pop­u­lat­ed by a bunch of char­ac­ters out of a David Lynch movie. In fact, if it weren’t for the jokey voice over at the end, this short is creepy enough to almost pass for an episode of Lynch’s own ani­mat­ed series, Dum­b­land.

And there’s this short also from 1991 called sim­ply Huh?, which pits the shrill against the obliv­i­ous.

You can find more Ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dum­b­land, David Lynch’s Twist­ed Ani­mat­ed Series (NSFW)

Watch All of Ter­ry Gilliam’s Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions in a Row

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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T.S. Eliot Reads Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats & Other Classic Poems (75 Minutes, 1955)

in Poetry | July 22nd, 2014

eliot cats readNot only did T.S. Eliot draw the cov­er for the first edi­tion of his Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats, fea­tured yes­ter­day, he even read it aloud for the audio­book edi­tion. You may think the time of the audio­book, now a pop­u­lar form on dig­i­tal audio devices every­where, must have begun long after the time of Eliot had already end­ed. (Eliot died in 1965.) But as we know from hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured their mid-1970s albums of Leonard Nimoy read­ing Ray Brad­bury, the record label Caed­mon posi­tioned them­selves well ahead of the audio­book game. Using record­ings made from read­ings giv­en in Lon­don in 1955, Caed­mon man­aged to release albums of Eliot speak­ing his own work aloud. Today we offer you T.S. Eliot Reads T.S. Eliot, made avail­able via Spo­ti­fy. The 18 tracks, run­ning some 75 min­utes, most­ly fea­tures Eliot read­ing from Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats. But he also recites a hand­ful of oth­er clas­sic poems. (If you need Spo­ti­fy, you can down­load the soft­ware here):

Oth­er audio edi­tions of Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats (some includ­ing a score) would come out lat­er, but, for many Eliot enthu­si­asts, noth­ing else can quite match hear­ing the man him­self intro­duce the likes of Rum Tum Tug­ger, Mr. Mistof­felees, and Busto­pher Jones. Lis­ten­ers in most geo­gra­phies should be able to access the Spo­ti­fy playlist. But if you live in Cana­da and South Africa (where some read­ers have report­ed prob­lems) we can rec­om­mend that you lis­ten (or re-lis­ten) to Eliot’s read­ings of his mod­ernist mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, plus his Four Quar­tets. And if, by chance, you feel like hear­ing Eliot’s verse but not Eliot’s voice, how about let­ting Bob Dylan take over read­ing duties?

Eliot’s read­ing of Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed con­tent:

T.S. Eliot Illus­trates His Let­ters and Draws a Cov­er for Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The New Yorker Web Site is Entirely Free This Summer (Until It Goes Behind a Paywall This Fall)

in Magazines, Media | July 22nd, 2014

newyorker-logo

Yes­ter­day, The New York­er mag­a­zine pub­lished “A Note to Read­ers,” announc­ing the new strat­e­gy behind its web site. The site now has a dif­fer­ent look and feel. It will also be gov­erned by a new set of eco­nom­ics, which will include putting the entire site behind a pay­wall. The edi­tors write, “in the fall, we [will] move to a sec­ond phase, imple­ment­ing an eas­i­er-to-use, log­i­cal, metered pay­wall. Sub­scribers will con­tin­ue to have access to every­thing; non-sub­scribers will be able to read a lim­it­ed num­ber of pieces—and then it’s up to them to sub­scribe. You’ve like­ly seen this sys­tem elsewhere—at the Times, for instance—and we will do all we can to make it work seam­less­ly.”

But, until then, the site won’t be half open (as it has been dur­ing recent years). It’ll be entire­ly open. Again, the edi­tors write: “Begin­ning this week, absolute­ly every­thing new that we publish—the work in the print mag­a­zine and the work pub­lished online only—will be unlocked. All of it, for every­one. Call it a sum­mer-long free-for-all. Non-sub­scribers will get a chance to explore The New York­er ful­ly and freely, just as sub­scribers always have.”

What should you read while The New York­er is open? I’d focus on the old stuff, which will pre­sum­ably get locked up too. Here are a few quick sug­ges­tions: Tru­man Capote’s In Cold Blood seri­al­ized in the pages of the mag­a­zine in 1965; J.D. Salinger’s Jan­u­ary 1948 pub­li­ca­tion of his endur­ing short sto­ry “A Per­fect Day for a Banana Fish;” and, of course, Han­nah Arendt’s orig­i­nal arti­cles on “the Banal­i­ty of Evil”?  If you have prob­lems read­ing the text (in the lat­ter two cas­es), be sure to click the pages to zoom in.

via Gal­l­ey­Cat

 

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Stephen Fry Explains the Rules of Cricket in 10 Animated Videos

in Animation, Sports | July 21st, 2014

Found­ed in Lon­don in 1787, The Maryle­bone Crick­et Club (MCC) began pub­lish­ing The Laws of Crick­et in 1788, and lat­er became the gov­ern­ing body of the game. More than two cen­turies lat­er, the MCC has passed gov­ern­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties to The Inter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil. But it still pub­lish­es The Laws of Crick­et and helps young play­ers and casu­al fans learn more about the bat-and-ball game that dates back to ear­ly 16th-cen­tu­ry Eng­land, if not before. And let’s face it, if you did­n’t grow up in a coun­try that fig­ured into the British Empire, you can prob­a­bly use a primer. Or maybe 10 ani­mat­ed ones nar­rat­ed by actor, writer, crick­et lover and occa­sion­al umpire Stephen Fry. Click the play but­ton on the video above, and you can watch the col­lec­tion of ani­ma­tions, cov­er­ing every­thing from what hap­pens when a “wick­et is down” to when the “bats­man is out his ground.” When you’re done, you can enjoy some oth­er Fry nar­ra­tions we’ve fea­tured in blog posts past. See the “relat­eds” below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince”

Stephen Fry Intro­duces the Strange New World of Nanoscience

Stephen Fry Explains Cloud Com­put­ing in a Short Ani­mat­ed Video

Stephen Fry Reads the Leg­endary British Ship­ping Fore­cast

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Sun Ra’s Full Lecture & Reading List From His 1971 UC Berkeley Course, “The Black Man in the Cosmos”

in Music, Philosophy, UC Berkeley | July 21st, 2014

A pio­neer of “Afro­fu­tur­ism,” band­leader Sun Ra emerged from a tra­di­tion­al swing scene in Alaba­ma, tour­ing the coun­try in his teens as a mem­ber of his high school biol­o­gy teacher’s big band. While attend­ing Alaba­ma Agri­cul­tur­al and Mechan­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty, he had an out-of-body expe­ri­ence dur­ing which he was trans­port­ed into out­er space. As biog­ra­ph­er John Szwed records him say­ing, “my whole body changed into some­thing else. I land­ed on a plan­et that I iden­ti­fied as Sat­urn.” While there, aliens with “lit­tle anten­na on each ear. A lit­tle anten­na on each eye” instruct­ed him to drop out of col­lege and speak through his music. And that’s just what he did, chang­ing his name from Her­man Blount and nev­er look­ing back.

Whether you believe that sto­ry, whether Sun Ra believes it, or whether his entire per­sona is a the­atri­cal put-on should make no dif­fer­ence. Because Sun Ra would be a vision­ary either way. Com­bin­ing Afro­cen­tric sci­ence fic­tion, eso­teric and occult phi­los­o­phy, Egyp­tol­ogy, and, with his “Arkestra,” his own brand of free jazz-futur­ism that has no equal on earth, the man is tru­ly sui gener­is. In 1971, he served as artist-in-res­i­dence at UC Berke­ley and offered a spring semes­ter lec­ture, African-Amer­i­can Stud­ies 198, also known as “Sun Ra 171,” “The Black Man in the Uni­verse,” or “The Black man in the Cos­mos.” The course fea­tured read­ings from—to name just a few—theosophist Madame Blavatsky, French philoso­pher Con­stan­tin Fran­cois de Chas­se­boeuf, black Amer­i­can writer and poet Hen­ry Dumas, and “God,” whom the cos­mic jazz the­o­rist report­ed­ly list­ed as the author of The Source Book of Man’s Life and Death (oth­er­wise known as the King James Bible).

Now we have the rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear a full lec­ture from that class, thanks to Ubu.com. Lis­ten to Sun Ra spin his intri­cate, bizarrely oth­er­world­ly the­o­ries, drawn from his per­son­al phi­los­o­phy, pecu­liar ety­molo­gies, and idio­syn­crat­ic read­ings of reli­gious texts. Hear­ing him speak is a lit­tle like hear­ing him play, so be pre­pared for a lot of free asso­ci­a­tion and jar­ring, unex­pect­ed jux­ta­po­si­tions. Szwed describes a “typ­i­cal lec­ture” below:

Sun Ra wrote bib­li­cal quotes on the board and then ‘per­mu­tat­ed’ them—rewrote and trans­formed their let­ters and syn­tax into new equa­tions of mean­ing, while mem­bers of the Arkestra passed through the room, pre­vent­ing any­one from tap­ing the class. His lec­ture sub­jects includ­ed Neo­pla­ton­ic doc­trines; the appli­ca­tion of ancient his­to­ry and reli­gious texts to racial prob­lems; pol­lu­tion and war; and a rad­i­cal rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible in light of Egyp­tol­ogy.

Luck­i­ly for us, some sly stu­dent cap­tured one of those lec­tures on tape.

For more of Pro­fes­sor Ra’s spaced out pre­sen­ta­tion, see the Helsin­ki inter­view above, also from 1971. And if you decide you need your own edu­ca­tion in “Sun Ra 171,” see the full read­ing list from his Berke­ley course below, cour­tesy of the blog New Day.

The Egypt­ian Book of the Dead

Radix

Alexan­der His­lop: Two Baby­lons

The Theo­soph­i­cal works of Madame Blavatsky

The Book of Oah­spe

Hen­ry Dumas: Ark of Bones

Hen­ry Dumas: Poet­ry for My Peo­ple eds. Hale Charfield & Eugene Red­mond, Car­bon­dale: South­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty Press 1971

Black Fire: An Anthol­o­gy of Afro-Amer­i­can Writ­ing, eds. Leroi Jones & Lar­ry Neal, New York: William Mor­row 1968

David Liv­ingston: Mis­sion­ary Trav­els

Theodore P. Ford: God Wills the Negro

Rut­ledge: God’s Chil­dren

Sty­lus, vol. 13, no. 1 (Spring 1971), Tem­ple Uni­ver­si­ty

John S. Wil­son: Jazz. Where It Came From, Where It’s At, Unit­ed States Infor­ma­tion Agency

Yosef A. A. Ben-Jochan­nan: Black Man of the Nile and His Fam­i­ly, Alk­ibu Ian Books 1972

Con­stan­tin Fran­cois de Chas­se­boeuf, Comte de Vol­ney: The Ruins, or, Med­i­ta­tion on the Rev­o­lu­tions of Empires, and the Law of Nature, Lon­don: Pio­neer Press 1921

The Source Book of Man’s Life and Death (Ra’s descrip­tion; = The King James Bible)

Pjotr Demi­anovitch Ous­pen­sky: A New Mod­el of the Uni­verse. Prin­ci­ples of the Psy­cho­log­i­cal Method in Its Appli­ca­tion to Prob­lems of Sci­ence, Reli­gion and Art, New York: Knopf 1956

Fred­er­ick Bod­mer: The Loom of Lan­guage. An Approach to the Mas­tery of Many Lan­guages, ed. Lancelot Hog­ben, New York: Nor­ton & Co. 1944

Black­ie’s Ety­mol­o­gy

Count­less oth­er free cours­es from UC Berke­ley can be found in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds and audio cour­tesy of Sen­si­tive Skin Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Her­bie Han­cock Presents the Pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Lec­tures at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty: Watch Online

Son­ic Youth Gui­tarist Thurston Moore Teach­es a Poet­ry Work­shop at Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty: See His Class Notes (2011)

Space Jazz, a Son­ic Sci-Fi Opera by L. Ron Hub­bard, Fea­tur­ing Chick Corea (1983)

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

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Wearable Books: In Medieval Times, They Took Old Manuscripts & Turned Them into Clothes

in Design, History, Letters, Life | July 21st, 2014

I like old news­pa­per, smooth­ing it out to read about what was hap­pen­ing on the day an old­er rel­a­tive packed away the good crys­tal or some oth­er frag­ile tchotchke.

Trav­el­ing in India, I dug how the snacks I pur­chased to eat on the train came wrapped in old book pages. When my trav­el­ing com­pan­ion real­ized he had lost his jour­nal, there was com­fort in know­ing that it would be rein­car­nat­ed as cones to hold deli­cious chana jor garam.

Tak­ing a thrift store frame apart, I was thrilled to dis­cov­er that behind the pre­vi­ous own­ers kit­tens in a bas­ket print lurked a home­made Moth­er’s Day card from the 40’s and a cal­en­dar page that not­ed the date some­one named David quit drink­ing. (I sent it along to Found Mag­a­zine.)

What I would­n’t give to stum­ble upon a dress lined with a 13th-cen­tu­ry man­u­script. Or a bishop’s miter stiff­ened with racy 13th-cen­tu­ry Norse love poet­ry!

Appar­ent­ly, it’s a rich tra­di­tion, putting old pages to good use, once they start feel­ing like they’ve out­lived their intend­ed pur­pose. The bish­op like­ly did­n’t know the specifics on the mate­r­i­al that made his hat stand up. I’ll bet the  sis­ters of the Ger­man Cis­ter­cian con­vent where the dress above orig­i­nat­ed were more con­cerned with the out­ward appear­ance of the gar­ments they were stitch­ing for their wood­en stat­ues than the not-for-dis­play lin­ing.

As Dutch art his­to­ri­an Erik Kwakkel explains on his medieval­frag­ments blog, the inven­tion of the Guten­berg press demot­ed scads of hand­writ­ten text to more pro­le­tar­i­an pur­pose. Ulti­mate­ly, it’s not as grim as it sounds:

the dis­mem­bered books were to have a sec­ond life: they became trav­el­ers in time, stow­aways… with great and impor­tant sto­ries to tell. Indeed, sto­ries that may oth­er­wise not have sur­vived, giv­en that clas­si­cal and medieval texts fre­quent­ly only come down to us in frag­men­tary form. The ear­ly his­to­ry of the Bible as a book could not be writ­ten if we were to throw out frag­ment evi­dence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

Dutch Book From 1692 Doc­u­ments Every Col­or Under the Sun: A Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­ors

Archive of Hand­writ­ten Recipes (1600 – 1960) Will Teach You How to Stew a Calf’s Head and More

The British Library Puts Online 1,200 Lit­er­ary Trea­sures From Great Roman­tic & Vic­to­ri­an Writ­ers

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er and the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of The East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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