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

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If you hap­pen to vis­it the Ciné­math­èque Française in Paris, do take the time to see the Musée Méliès locat­ed inside it. Ded­i­cat­ed to la Magie du ciné­ma, it con­tains arti­facts from through­out the his­to­ry of film-as-spec­ta­cle, which includes such pic­tures as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Run­ner. Its focus on the evo­lu­tion of visu­al…

Isaac Newton Creates a List of His 57 Sins (Circa 1662)

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Sir Isaac New­ton, arguably the most impor­tant and influ­en­tial sci­en­tist in his­to­ry, dis­cov­ered the laws of motion and the uni­ver­sal force of grav­i­ty. For the first time ever, the rules of the uni­verse could be described with the supreme­ly ratio­nal lan­guage of math­e­mat­ics. Newton’s ele­gant equa­tions proved to be one of the…

How Rasputin Inspired the “Fictitious Persons” Disclaimer Commonly Seen in Movies

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“This is a work of fic­tion,” declares the dis­claimer we’ve all noticed dur­ing the end cred­its of movies. “Any sim­i­lar­i­ty to actu­al per­sons, liv­ing or dead, or actu­al events, is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal.” In most cas­es, this may seem so triv­ial that it hard­ly mer­its a men­tion, but the very same dis­claimer also rolls up after…

14 Self-Portraits by Pablo Picasso Show the Evolution of His Style: See Self-Portraits Moving from Ages 15 to 90

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15 years old (1896)

It’s pos­si­ble to look at Pablo Picas­so’s many for­mal exper­i­ments and peri­od­ic shifts of style as a kind of self-por­trai­ture, an exer­cise in shift­ing con­scious­ness and try­ing on of new aes­thet­ic iden­ti­ties. The Span­ish mod­ernist made a career of sweep­ing dra­mat­ic ges­tures, announce­ments to the world that he…

How Ancient Romans Traveled Without Maps

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In an age when many of us could hard­ly make our way to an unfa­mil­iar gro­cery store with­out rely­ing on a GPS nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem, we might well won­der how the Romans could estab­lish and sus­tain their mighty empire with­out so much as a prop­er map. That’s the ques­tion addressed by the His­to­ria Mil­i­tum video…