A rare object joins the Tower of London's collection 📖 Curator Kate Clements show us a first edition of Walter Raleigh's The History of the World, written whilst he was imprisoned here at the Tower in the 1600s. @HRP_palaces #Elizabethan #Tudors

Celebrating the 811th Anniversary of the #MagnaCarta on this #ManuscriptMonday & #MedievalMonday. 📜 #medievaltwitter @Harvard_Law @Harvard @HarvardLibrary @PalmeriJoAnn @StuartKells @JanPauwelsKBR @BooksTeaFilms @PiersatPenn @Peripheralpal @Medievalists

Want to start urban sketching? If so, you’ll want to know how to draw buildings. My Modern Met Academy has three classes that demystify the complex subject. trib.al/WKk9Agj

Honestly, same.

CONGRATS AGAIN to "DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF ME REIMAGINED" by Talissa Mehringer, an Honorable Mention, Internet Archive’s 2026 Public Domain Film Remix Contest 🏅 A short music-film remix celebrating 1930s choreography, lavish sets, and the versatility of early screen performers. Watch the full short film ⤵️ archive.org/details/dream-a-… #PublicDomain #PublicDomainDay

We know you have a lot on your plate, so this is coming from a place of support... Use 'Scot-free' instead of 'Scotch-free.' Use ‘shoo-in’ instead of ‘shoe-in.’ Use ‘piqued my interest’ instead of ‘peaked my interest.’ Use ‘case in point’ instead of ‘case and point.’

This is Noah Webster's definition of 'cat' from his 1828 dictionary. Don't worry. We like cats more than he did.

In 1903, the French government expelled the Carthusian monks from their monastery in the Alps and seized everything they owned. The monastery. The distillery. The equipment. All of it. There was just one little problem. Only two monks in the entire order knew the recipe for Chartreuse, and they had memorized it. There was nothing written down that the government could take. The French government hired chemists to reverse-engineer it. They analyzed every bottle they could find. They ran every test available to early 20th Century science. They could not replicate it. The liqueur they produced under the Chartreuse name was so inferior that it destroyed the brand almost immediately. Sales collapsed. The company the government set up to produce it went bankrupt in 1929. The monks, meanwhile, had relocated to Tarragona in Spain and were producing the real thing the entire time. In 1929, the same year the French government's operation went under, the monks quietly bought back the rights to their own name and returned to their monastery. The recipe is still known by exactly two monks at any given time. When one dies or becomes too ill to continue, he passes his portion to a successor. The full recipe has never been written down in a form that has left the order. Chartreuse is made from 130 Alpine plants and herbs. The monks tend the distillery themselves. They take no outside employees into the production process. The 1605 manuscript that started all of this is still held in the monastery archive. The French Third Republic lasted from 1870 to 1940. The monks are still there, still making Chartreuse. © Eats History #drthehistories

A statue with owls for eyes.

Tengo una colección de ranas.

In Japan, the gorilla Kiyomasa was captured on video lost in deep thought after an argument with his friend.

You've probably heard that daddy longlegs are the most venomous spider alive, saved only by fangs too small to break your skin. Every part of that is wrong. The common daddy long leg isn't a spider. It's a harvestman, a different arachnid with one round body instead of two, and it can't spin silk. It has no fangs or venom glands. But you should love it anyway. It spends its days eating dead bugs and rot off the ground, which makes it part of your yard's cleanup crew. If you see one of these guys in your yard, don't squish it! Count yourself lucky.

For no reason at all, here are 5 cool things about Vikings: 1. Vikings didn’t call themselves “Vikings.” The word viking meant “piracy” or “freebooting voyage” in Old Norse and was something one would do. “Bjørn is going on a viking.”

The holy well is not just sacred to the Christian. Part of my witchery involves obtaining water from certain springs. Of course, this means part of my witchery also involves carrying a bolt cutter. – #EmilyCBanting, 1981 #Witchcraft

A herring is a fish. When a herring is preserved by salting and smoking, it turns red and smells. It's so pungent that it's a great diversion to distract hunting dogs from their trail. Now, a ‘red herring’ refers to anything that diverts attention from the issue at hand.

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Book Review: The Board of Longitude: Science Innovation and Empire, (CUP, 2025) thonyc.wordpress.com/2026/05…

How to keep a baby entertained on a flight for hours

"The Alchemist Who Has Achieved Illumination", a famous historical illustration found within the 18th-century alchemical manuscript known as the Clavis Artis.

Dumpster Divers in the Soviet Union would save x-ray films to make bootleg records of banned music. They called it Bone Music and this act of rebellion produced over a million records. I have 500 (getting more). Quality is not great but I also some English spoke word stuff.