The Only Illustrated Manuscript of Homer’s Iliad from Antiquity

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Despite its sta­tus as one of the most wide­ly known and stud­ied epic poems of all time, Home­r’s Ili­ad has proven sur­pris­ing­ly resis­tant to adap­ta­tion. How­ev­er much inspi­ra­tion it has pro­vid­ed to mod­ern-day nov­el­ists work­ing in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent tra­di­tions, it’s trans­lat­ed some­what less pow­er­ful­ly to visu­al media. Per­haps peo­ple still watch…

The Great Gatsby: A Free Audio Book

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April 10th will mark the 100th anniver­sary of F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s clas­sic Amer­i­can nov­el, The Great Gats­by. As A.O. Scott notes in a recent trib­ute, when first pub­lished, The Great Gats­by got off to a slow start. Ini­tial­ly, “Review­ers shrugged. Sales were slug­gish. The nov­el and its author slid toward obscu­ri­ty.”

It…

Did the Tower of Babel Actually Exist?: A Look at the Archaeological Evidence

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For all the means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and exchange we’ve estab­lished between the cul­tures of the world, no mat­ter how dis­tant they may be from one anoth­er, we still have no tru­ly uni­ver­sal sin­gle human lan­guage. The rea­son could date back to antiq­ui­ty, when we first attempt­ed a grand col­lec­tive project: that of build­ing a tow­er…

A Rare Smile Captured in a 19th Century Photograph

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Just look at this pho­to. Just look at this young girl’s smile. We know her name: O‑o-be’, accord­ing to the Smith­son­ian. And we know that she was a mem­ber of the Kiowa tribe in the Okla­homa Ter­ri­to­ry. And we know that the pho­to was tak­en in 1894. But that smile is like…

Superman vs. the KKK: Hear the 1946 Superman Radio Show That Weakened the Klan

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Years ago, back in 2016, we fea­tured a 1950 Super­man poster that urged stu­dents to defend the Amer­i­can way and fight dis­crim­i­na­tion every­where. Today, we present anoth­er chap­ter from Super­man’s lit­tle-known his­to­ry as a Civ­il Rights defend­er.

The year is 1946. World War II has come to an end. And now mem­ber­ship in…