Open Culture

Scholars disagree on when, exactly, Rome fell. But if you watch the new video from City 3D Timelapse above, you’ll understand the l...

Sir Christopher Lee and Edgar Allan Poe went way back. Or at least they went as far back as 1969, the year of

Latin is a language

As dead as dead can be;

It killed the Romans long ago,

And now it’s killing me.

That famed ditty isn’t likely to resonate with many modern school ...

Any reader of Victorian literature will wonder how much a ha’penny was actually worth in those days. For a little more than a year at the very end of that period, it could buy you a cup of coffee, cocoa, milk, tea, or “fluid beef” — which would pour out of a lamppost on the corner. The Pluto Lamp, as it was branded, made its debut at the Victorian Era Exhibition, whic...

Two of the books that most shaped American culture both happened to bear the nickname “The Big Book.” While the second of these, the A.A. Manual, published in 1939, changed the country with 12-Step recovery groups, the first of these...