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James Lucas

@JamesLucasIT • 817,581 subscribers

Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

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The most famous keyhole in Rome Through the Aventine Keyhole, you’ll see a perfectly framed view of St. Peter’s Basilica, aligned through the beautiful gardens of the Priory of the Knights of Malta.

The most famous keyhole in Rome Through the Aventine Keyhole, you’ll see a perfectly framed view of St. Peter’s Basilica, aligned through the beautiful gardens of the Priory of the Knights of Malta.

25,754,153 просмотров

Penguin leaps to safety as ice breaks

Penguin leaps to safety as ice breaks

9,629,215 просмотров

This is what Canada looked like in the 1920s Real footage of people presenting their passes to a ticket inspector before boarding a train at Windsor Street Station in Montreal

This is what Canada looked like in the 1920s Real footage of people presenting their passes to a ticket inspector before boarding a train at Windsor Street Station in Montreal

522,857 просмотров

Thread of the most surreal sky phenomena ever caught on camera 🧵 1. The coolest meteor video ever

Thread of the most surreal sky phenomena ever caught on camera 🧵 1. The coolest meteor video ever

22,548,980 просмотров

This is the Devil’s footprint It is one of Germany's most famous legends: when Munich’s Frauenkirche was being built in the 15th century, the architect made a deal with the Devil. The church would be funded... but only on one condition: it could have no windows. When construction was finished, the Devil stood at a precise spot near the entrance and saw nothing but bare walls. Convinced he had won, he stomped his foot into the floor so hard that it left the dark imprint visitors still see today. But when he stepped forward, he discovered the truth. The "windowless" church was an illusion, created by perfectly positioned columns that hid the stained glass windows from his view. Realizing he had been tricked, the Devil fled in fury, leaving only his scorched footprint behind. Some ghost tours in Munich add even more to the myth. Guides claim the air near the entrance is strangely cold, as if the Devil still circles the church, searching for a way back in. In winter, they say, the snow at the doorway is always last to melt. History tells us it's just a legend... but the footprint is real, the illusion is real, and the story continues to haunt the cathedral to this day.

This is the Devil’s footprint It is one of Germany's most famous legends: when Munich’s Frauenkirche was being built in the 15th century, the architect made a deal with the Devil. The church would be funded... but only on one condition: it could have no windows. When construction was finished, the Devil stood at a precise spot near the entrance and saw nothing but bare walls. Convinced he had won, he stomped his foot into the floor so hard that it left the dark imprint visitors still see today. But when he stepped forward, he discovered the truth. The "windowless" church was an illusion, created by perfectly positioned columns that hid the stained glass windows from his view. Realizing he had been tricked, the Devil fled in fury, leaving only his scorched footprint behind. Some ghost tours in Munich add even more to the myth. Guides claim the air near the entrance is strangely cold, as if the Devil still circles the church, searching for a way back in. In winter, they say, the snow at the doorway is always last to melt. History tells us it's just a legend... but the footprint is real, the illusion is real, and the story continues to haunt the cathedral to this day.

3,161,071 просмотров

The most surreal beaches on Earth 🧵 1. Navagio beach in Zakynthos, Greece

The most surreal beaches on Earth 🧵 1. Navagio beach in Zakynthos, Greece

6,319,214 просмотров

In South America, there is a place where 275 waterfalls cascade together. It is called Iguazu Falls, and it is the largest waterfall system in the world.

In South America, there is a place where 275 waterfalls cascade together. It is called Iguazu Falls, and it is the largest waterfall system in the world.

3,076,015 просмотров

15 streets that don’t look real 🧵 1. Hanoi Train Street, Vietnam

15 streets that don’t look real 🧵 1. Hanoi Train Street, Vietnam

6,388,921 просмотров

The castles of Europe are some of the most amazing things we’ve inherited from history Between 75,000 and 100,000 castles were built in Western Europe during the medieval period, with around 1,700 in England and Wales alone, and roughly 14,000 in German-speaking areas... Most of them rose between the 9th and 15th centuries after the collapse of centralized Roman authority and the rise of fragmented feudal power. As attacking armies grew more sophisticated, so did the walls meant to stop them. The cost was staggering: from 1179 to 1188, King Henry II of England spent over £6,500 on Dover Castle alone — an enormous sum given that his entire annual revenue was around £10,000. That figure was more than three times what he spent on any other building project in his reign, and more than four times what went into grand royal residences like Windsor. And then there is Malbork... Built by the Teutonic Knights in what is now Poland, Malbork is the largest castle in the world measured by land area. It covers 52 acres and once housed approximately 3,000 knights. A medieval visitor reportedly noted it seemed "more a city enclosed by walls than a single castle." In 950, Provence was home to just 12 castles. By 1000, the number had risen to 30. By 1030, it was over 100. The pace was not driven by a single empire with a plan, but by thousands of individual decisions made by lords, bishops, and kings who each decided, in their own time and place, that stone was the only reliable answer to an uncertain world... The word castle is derived from the Latin word castellum, which is a diminutive of the word castrum, meaning "fortified place". Between seventy-five thousand and a hundred thousand of these fortresses were built over six centuries as a reminder that every civilization eventually decides what it will leave behind. Europe decided on this. And the castles are still here.

The castles of Europe are some of the most amazing things we’ve inherited from history Between 75,000 and 100,000 castles were built in Western Europe during the medieval period, with around 1,700 in England and Wales alone, and roughly 14,000 in German-speaking areas... Most of them rose between the 9th and 15th centuries after the collapse of centralized Roman authority and the rise of fragmented feudal power. As attacking armies grew more sophisticated, so did the walls meant to stop them. The cost was staggering: from 1179 to 1188, King Henry II of England spent over £6,500 on Dover Castle alone — an enormous sum given that his entire annual revenue was around £10,000. That figure was more than three times what he spent on any other building project in his reign, and more than four times what went into grand royal residences like Windsor. And then there is Malbork... Built by the Teutonic Knights in what is now Poland, Malbork is the largest castle in the world measured by land area. It covers 52 acres and once housed approximately 3,000 knights. A medieval visitor reportedly noted it seemed "more a city enclosed by walls than a single castle." In 950, Provence was home to just 12 castles. By 1000, the number had risen to 30. By 1030, it was over 100. The pace was not driven by a single empire with a plan, but by thousands of individual decisions made by lords, bishops, and kings who each decided, in their own time and place, that stone was the only reliable answer to an uncertain world... The word castle is derived from the Latin word castellum, which is a diminutive of the word castrum, meaning "fortified place". Between seventy-five thousand and a hundred thousand of these fortresses were built over six centuries as a reminder that every civilization eventually decides what it will leave behind. Europe decided on this. And the castles are still here.

1,922,101 просмотров

This is a statue of the only man in Troy who saw the trap. He tried to warn everyone, and this is what the gods did to him because of it... His name was Laocoön, a Trojan priest. When the Greek army vanished and left a giant wooden horse outside the city gates, all of Troy celebrated. Only Laocoön refused to believe it. He warned his people the horse was a trick and, to prove it was hollow, hurled his spear into its side. In Virgil's telling, he spoke a line that has outlasted almost everything else about Troy: "I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts." He was right. The horse was packed with soldiers, and Troy was hours from destruction. This sculpture shows what he got for it. Two enormous sea serpents rise out of the sea and coil around him and his young sons, dragging all three down together. The father's whole body is knotted in the struggle, every muscle straining, his face locked in a scream. The gods wanted Troy to fall, and Laocoön was in the way. The Trojans watched him die in agony and drew exactly the wrong conclusion: they decided the gods were punishing him for attacking a holy gift. So they pulled the horse inside their own walls, and that night, Troy burned... The statue is called Laocoön and His Sons. It is the work of three Greek sculptors from the island of Rhodes, Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus, and dates to the Hellenistic period, making it well over two thousand years old. Buried for more than a thousand years, it was dug out of a Roman vineyard in 1506, and Michelangelo rushed across Rome to see it the day it was found. It has been called the single greatest depiction of human suffering in the history of art, but it endures because of what it is really about: the man who sees the truth, says it out loud, and is destroyed for being right while the crowd watches... It is one of the oldest patterns there is, and it has never stopped repeating. There is nothing new under the sun.

This is a statue of the only man in Troy who saw the trap. He tried to warn everyone, and this is what the gods did to him because of it... His name was Laocoön, a Trojan priest. When the Greek army vanished and left a giant wooden horse outside the city gates, all of Troy celebrated. Only Laocoön refused to believe it. He warned his people the horse was a trick and, to prove it was hollow, hurled his spear into its side. In Virgil's telling, he spoke a line that has outlasted almost everything else about Troy: "I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts." He was right. The horse was packed with soldiers, and Troy was hours from destruction. This sculpture shows what he got for it. Two enormous sea serpents rise out of the sea and coil around him and his young sons, dragging all three down together. The father's whole body is knotted in the struggle, every muscle straining, his face locked in a scream. The gods wanted Troy to fall, and Laocoön was in the way. The Trojans watched him die in agony and drew exactly the wrong conclusion: they decided the gods were punishing him for attacking a holy gift. So they pulled the horse inside their own walls, and that night, Troy burned... The statue is called Laocoön and His Sons. It is the work of three Greek sculptors from the island of Rhodes, Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus, and dates to the Hellenistic period, making it well over two thousand years old. Buried for more than a thousand years, it was dug out of a Roman vineyard in 1506, and Michelangelo rushed across Rome to see it the day it was found. It has been called the single greatest depiction of human suffering in the history of art, but it endures because of what it is really about: the man who sees the truth, says it out loud, and is destroyed for being right while the crowd watches... It is one of the oldest patterns there is, and it has never stopped repeating. There is nothing new under the sun.

498,905 просмотров

A Roman emperor ate his meals in a sea cave, a few feet from a massive marble sculpture of the moment Odysseus blinds the Cyclops. Eventually it lay shattered in thousands of pieces on the floor of that cave, and stayed there until 1957... The emperor was Tiberius, who ruled Rome after Augustus, and the cave is at Sperlonga, on the coast between Rome and Naples. It was a natural grotto opening onto the sea, and he turned it into a private dining hall, with pools of water reaching into the mouth of the cave and a platform where he and his guests reclined to eat, the waves echoing off the rock around them... Definitely not a bad place to host dinner. The sculpture stood at the deepest point of the cave and it showed the most terrifying scene in Homer's poem, when Odysseus and his men are trapped inside the cave of Polyphemus, a one-eyed man-eating giant who has sealed them in with a boulder too heavy to move and is eating the crew alive, one by one. Odysseus cannot simply kill him in his sleep, or they will be entombed with the corpse forever. So he gets the giant drunk, waits for him to pass out, hardens the tip of an olive-wood stake in the fire, and drives it into the Cyclops's single eye. The sculptors depicted the instant just before the stake goes in... The colossal figure of Polyphemus sprawls backward, drunk and unaware. Odysseus, the one closest to the Cyclops, and three of his men strain upward with the spike. It was carved larger than life and set in shadow at the back of the grotto, so that as the lamplight shifted, the whole scene seemed to move over the emperor's dinner. The Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius both record that in the year 26 AD, while Tiberius was dining there, rocks fell from the roof of the grotto, crushing several of his attendants and nearly killing the emperor, who was shielded and dragged out. In that collapse, or in a later one, the great marble scenes were smashed into thousands of fragments. There they lay, at the bottom of the cave, until 1957, when workers building a coastal road cut into the ground and found them. Among the rubble they pulled out the colossal head of the giant himself, and slowly, piece by piece, the scene was put back together. The cave gave up two more secrets: the first was an inscription, ten lines of Latin verse, praising the grotto and saying that only a new Virgil could do justice to its statues of Scylla and the blinding of the monster by the man from Ithaca. It told the archaeologists exactly what they had found. The second was carved into the base of the neighbouring ship: three names, Athenodoros, Agesander, and Polydorus, the same sculptors the Roman writer Pliny had named as the creators of the Laocoön, the statue I wrote about yesterday. Homer's Odyssey is one of the oldest stories in the world, and it has outlived the emperor, the civilization that first told it, and every person who has ever loved it. Nearly three thousand years later, we are still telling the story of a man lost far from home, because some part of us always is... I started my newsletter because the past is full of stories like this one, and so few people ever stop to tell us why they matter. Every week I try to. If that is something you'd like to be part of, you can join through the link in my bio, and if you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible. Thanks for reading.

A Roman emperor ate his meals in a sea cave, a few feet from a massive marble sculpture of the moment Odysseus blinds the Cyclops. Eventually it lay shattered in thousands of pieces on the floor of that cave, and stayed there until 1957... The emperor was Tiberius, who ruled Rome after Augustus, and the cave is at Sperlonga, on the coast between Rome and Naples. It was a natural grotto opening onto the sea, and he turned it into a private dining hall, with pools of water reaching into the mouth of the cave and a platform where he and his guests reclined to eat, the waves echoing off the rock around them... Definitely not a bad place to host dinner. The sculpture stood at the deepest point of the cave and it showed the most terrifying scene in Homer's poem, when Odysseus and his men are trapped inside the cave of Polyphemus, a one-eyed man-eating giant who has sealed them in with a boulder too heavy to move and is eating the crew alive, one by one. Odysseus cannot simply kill him in his sleep, or they will be entombed with the corpse forever. So he gets the giant drunk, waits for him to pass out, hardens the tip of an olive-wood stake in the fire, and drives it into the Cyclops's single eye. The sculptors depicted the instant just before the stake goes in... The colossal figure of Polyphemus sprawls backward, drunk and unaware. Odysseus, the one closest to the Cyclops, and three of his men strain upward with the spike. It was carved larger than life and set in shadow at the back of the grotto, so that as the lamplight shifted, the whole scene seemed to move over the emperor's dinner. The Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius both record that in the year 26 AD, while Tiberius was dining there, rocks fell from the roof of the grotto, crushing several of his attendants and nearly killing the emperor, who was shielded and dragged out. In that collapse, or in a later one, the great marble scenes were smashed into thousands of fragments. There they lay, at the bottom of the cave, until 1957, when workers building a coastal road cut into the ground and found them. Among the rubble they pulled out the colossal head of the giant himself, and slowly, piece by piece, the scene was put back together. The cave gave up two more secrets: the first was an inscription, ten lines of Latin verse, praising the grotto and saying that only a new Virgil could do justice to its statues of Scylla and the blinding of the monster by the man from Ithaca. It told the archaeologists exactly what they had found. The second was carved into the base of the neighbouring ship: three names, Athenodoros, Agesander, and Polydorus, the same sculptors the Roman writer Pliny had named as the creators of the Laocoön, the statue I wrote about yesterday. Homer's Odyssey is one of the oldest stories in the world, and it has outlived the emperor, the civilization that first told it, and every person who has ever loved it. Nearly three thousand years later, we are still telling the story of a man lost far from home, because some part of us always is... I started my newsletter because the past is full of stories like this one, and so few people ever stop to tell us why they matter. Every week I try to. If that is something you'd like to be part of, you can join through the link in my bio, and if you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible. Thanks for reading.

399,527 просмотров

That hauntingly beautiful soprano voice soaring over Faramir's doomed charge on Osgiliath in Return of the King belongs to Ben Del Maestro, a young soprano whose vocals in Howard Shore's score turn one of the film's most tragic moments into pure poetry.

That hauntingly beautiful soprano voice soaring over Faramir's doomed charge on Osgiliath in Return of the King belongs to Ben Del Maestro, a young soprano whose vocals in Howard Shore's score turn one of the film's most tragic moments into pure poetry.

199,217 просмотров

This is the only existing footage of Mark Twain. It was filmed in 1909, and within a year, he was gone... The man walking there, in the white suit with the cigar, and sitting outside at a table with his two daughters, is Samuel Clemens, the legendary writer the world knew as Mark Twain. By 1909 he was one of the most famous men alive. The footage was shot by Thomas Edison himself, who visited Twain at Stormfield, his home in Redding, Connecticut. It is in black and white, it flickers with age, and it is the only known film of Twain ever made. The father of American literature has been gone for more than a century, but here, for a few flickering seconds, he is still alive.

This is the only existing footage of Mark Twain. It was filmed in 1909, and within a year, he was gone... The man walking there, in the white suit with the cigar, and sitting outside at a table with his two daughters, is Samuel Clemens, the legendary writer the world knew as Mark Twain. By 1909 he was one of the most famous men alive. The footage was shot by Thomas Edison himself, who visited Twain at Stormfield, his home in Redding, Connecticut. It is in black and white, it flickers with age, and it is the only known film of Twain ever made. The father of American literature has been gone for more than a century, but here, for a few flickering seconds, he is still alive.

451,637 просмотров

Why does Mary look younger than Jesus in Michelangelo's Pietà? The answer is one of the most beautiful in art history... Mary is holding the body of her 33 year old son, but she looks 20. Critics noticed it the moment the sculpture was unveiled in 1499. The mother of a man who has just been crucified would have been in her late forties or early fifties. Michelangelo had carved her as a girl. His own biographer, Ascanio Condivi, was the one who finally asked him why. The answer Michelangelo gave is preserved in Condivi's Life of Michelangelo and has been repeated for centuries: "Do you not know that chaste women stay fresh much more than those who are not chaste? How much more in the case of the Virgin, who had never experienced the least lascivious desire that might change her body?" Most modern critics treat this answer as a half-serious deflection. Michelangelo was famous for his sharp tongue and refused to explain himself to people he considered beneath his intellect. The deeper answer is older, and it lies inside one of the greatest poems ever written. In the final canto of Dante's Paradiso, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux begins his prayer to the Virgin with one of the most extraordinary lines in Italian literature: "Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio." "Virgin mother, daughter of your own son." Michelangelo, who knew Dante by heart, was carving that line into stone. Mary is younger than Jesus because Jesus is older than the universe... because she gave birth to her own creator. But there is another reading, simpler than either of those, and it is the one I find myself thinking of today. Every mother who has held her child has held them at every age at once. The infant is still inside the toddler. The toddler is still inside the teenager. The young man on her lap, even dead, is also the boy she nursed and the baby she first carried home. And maybe that's why Michelangelo did not carve Mary as the years had aged her. He carved her as love had kept her: outside of time, outside of grief, holding her son the way she had always held him... Happy Mother's Day. -- -- -- If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us here: I write about beauty in all its forms. If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.

Why does Mary look younger than Jesus in Michelangelo's Pietà? The answer is one of the most beautiful in art history... Mary is holding the body of her 33 year old son, but she looks 20. Critics noticed it the moment the sculpture was unveiled in 1499. The mother of a man who has just been crucified would have been in her late forties or early fifties. Michelangelo had carved her as a girl. His own biographer, Ascanio Condivi, was the one who finally asked him why. The answer Michelangelo gave is preserved in Condivi's Life of Michelangelo and has been repeated for centuries: "Do you not know that chaste women stay fresh much more than those who are not chaste? How much more in the case of the Virgin, who had never experienced the least lascivious desire that might change her body?" Most modern critics treat this answer as a half-serious deflection. Michelangelo was famous for his sharp tongue and refused to explain himself to people he considered beneath his intellect. The deeper answer is older, and it lies inside one of the greatest poems ever written. In the final canto of Dante's Paradiso, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux begins his prayer to the Virgin with one of the most extraordinary lines in Italian literature: "Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio." "Virgin mother, daughter of your own son." Michelangelo, who knew Dante by heart, was carving that line into stone. Mary is younger than Jesus because Jesus is older than the universe... because she gave birth to her own creator. But there is another reading, simpler than either of those, and it is the one I find myself thinking of today. Every mother who has held her child has held them at every age at once. The infant is still inside the toddler. The toddler is still inside the teenager. The young man on her lap, even dead, is also the boy she nursed and the baby she first carried home. And maybe that's why Michelangelo did not carve Mary as the years had aged her. He carved her as love had kept her: outside of time, outside of grief, holding her son the way she had always held him... Happy Mother's Day. -- -- -- If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us here: I write about beauty in all its forms. If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.

800,108 просмотров

In 1504, Michelangelo finished a sculpture that contained a fact medical science would not catch up with for another 124 years. No doctor noticed it for centuries... The sculpture is the David, in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence. The fact, hidden in plain sight on his neck, was finally observed in 2019 by an American cardiologist named Daniel Gelfman, a clinical professor at the Marian University College of Osteopathic Medicine. Gelfman had gone to the museum like millions of visitors before him. But where most people see a perfect male body carved out of stone, he saw something only a heart specialist could see: the external jugular vein on the right side of David's neck is distended, raised visibly above the collarbone, exactly as it would appear on a real human being in a state of intense physical excitement. In ordinary anatomy, this vein is not visible. It only stands out under specific conditions — adrenaline, fear, exertion, the cardiovascular surge that comes before great physical effort. In other words, exactly the state a young man would be in moments before facing a giant. Gelfman published the finding in JAMA Cardiology, one of the most respected medical journals in the world. He called it the David Sign, and noted that it had been hiding in plain sight for more than 500 years. What makes this detail extraordinary is when Michelangelo carved it... The mechanics of the human circulatory system — the way blood actually returns to the heart through the venous network — were not formally described until 1628, when the English physician William Harvey published De Motu Cordis. Michelangelo finished David in 1504. He had sculpted, with anatomical precision, a circulatory phenomenon that medicine would not understand for over a century. "Michelangelo, like some of his artistic contemporaries, had anatomical training," Gelfman wrote. "I realized that he must have noticed temporary jugular venous distension in healthy individuals who are excited." He had. And he carved it into the marble. His contemporaries knew they were watching something more than a sculptor at work... They called him Il Divino, the divine one. In a letter dated September 1537, the poet Pietro Aretino wrote: "The world has many kings, and only one Michelangelo." If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us here: For the full breakdown of Michelangelo's David, check out today’s article: 5 details hidden inside what many consider the greatest work of art ever created by man. And if you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it all possible.

In 1504, Michelangelo finished a sculpture that contained a fact medical science would not catch up with for another 124 years. No doctor noticed it for centuries... The sculpture is the David, in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence. The fact, hidden in plain sight on his neck, was finally observed in 2019 by an American cardiologist named Daniel Gelfman, a clinical professor at the Marian University College of Osteopathic Medicine. Gelfman had gone to the museum like millions of visitors before him. But where most people see a perfect male body carved out of stone, he saw something only a heart specialist could see: the external jugular vein on the right side of David's neck is distended, raised visibly above the collarbone, exactly as it would appear on a real human being in a state of intense physical excitement. In ordinary anatomy, this vein is not visible. It only stands out under specific conditions — adrenaline, fear, exertion, the cardiovascular surge that comes before great physical effort. In other words, exactly the state a young man would be in moments before facing a giant. Gelfman published the finding in JAMA Cardiology, one of the most respected medical journals in the world. He called it the David Sign, and noted that it had been hiding in plain sight for more than 500 years. What makes this detail extraordinary is when Michelangelo carved it... The mechanics of the human circulatory system — the way blood actually returns to the heart through the venous network — were not formally described until 1628, when the English physician William Harvey published De Motu Cordis. Michelangelo finished David in 1504. He had sculpted, with anatomical precision, a circulatory phenomenon that medicine would not understand for over a century. "Michelangelo, like some of his artistic contemporaries, had anatomical training," Gelfman wrote. "I realized that he must have noticed temporary jugular venous distension in healthy individuals who are excited." He had. And he carved it into the marble. His contemporaries knew they were watching something more than a sculptor at work... They called him Il Divino, the divine one. In a letter dated September 1537, the poet Pietro Aretino wrote: "The world has many kings, and only one Michelangelo." If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us here: For the full breakdown of Michelangelo's David, check out today’s article: 5 details hidden inside what many consider the greatest work of art ever created by man. And if you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it all possible.

795,336 просмотров

15 castles that look too magical to be real🧵 1. Neuschwanstein Castle

15 castles that look too magical to be real🧵 1. Neuschwanstein Castle

2,980,389 просмотров

For decades, the greatest church in Florence stood open to the sky. There was a hole at its centre, forty-five metres across, and nobody alive knew how to close it… They had done it on purpose. A model approved in 1367 called for a dome wider than any built since ancient Rome, and the Florentines put up the walls anyway, leaving the problem to whoever came next. The Roman method had been lost for a thousand years. Every dome since had been raised on centering, an enormous wooden scaffold built underneath to hold the masonry until it set. For a span this size, no forest in Tuscany could supply the timber. So the cathedral waited, with rain falling into it… In 1418 the city announced a competition. A goldsmith named Filippo Brunelleschi told them he would build the dome with no centering at all. The masonry would hold itself up as it rose. Many of his contemporaries decided he was a lunatic. One rival, Giovanni da Prato, wrote a public sonnet calling him a "dark, deep wellspring of ignorance" and a "miserable and imbecile beast," and rashly promised to kill himself if the plan ever worked. Brunelleschi answered with a sonnet of his own, advising him to destroy his poems, "lest they sound ridiculous when all the dancing starts, in celebration of that which he now thinks impossible." It took sixteen years. Over four million bricks, laid in a herringbone pattern so each ring locked and carried itself, in two shells, one inside the other, weighing something over twenty-five thousand tons. He designed the hoists that lifted the materials, machines Leonardo da Vinci would later sit and copy into his notebooks. It was finished in 1436. Six hundred years later it is still the largest masonry dome on earth… The director Franco Zeffirelli, a Florentine, once said what that dome does to a person who looks up at it: "When I feel depression creeping in, I return to Florence to gaze at Brunelleschi's dome. If human genius was able to achieve something so great, then I too can and must try to create, to act, to live."

For decades, the greatest church in Florence stood open to the sky. There was a hole at its centre, forty-five metres across, and nobody alive knew how to close it… They had done it on purpose. A model approved in 1367 called for a dome wider than any built since ancient Rome, and the Florentines put up the walls anyway, leaving the problem to whoever came next. The Roman method had been lost for a thousand years. Every dome since had been raised on centering, an enormous wooden scaffold built underneath to hold the masonry until it set. For a span this size, no forest in Tuscany could supply the timber. So the cathedral waited, with rain falling into it… In 1418 the city announced a competition. A goldsmith named Filippo Brunelleschi told them he would build the dome with no centering at all. The masonry would hold itself up as it rose. Many of his contemporaries decided he was a lunatic. One rival, Giovanni da Prato, wrote a public sonnet calling him a "dark, deep wellspring of ignorance" and a "miserable and imbecile beast," and rashly promised to kill himself if the plan ever worked. Brunelleschi answered with a sonnet of his own, advising him to destroy his poems, "lest they sound ridiculous when all the dancing starts, in celebration of that which he now thinks impossible." It took sixteen years. Over four million bricks, laid in a herringbone pattern so each ring locked and carried itself, in two shells, one inside the other, weighing something over twenty-five thousand tons. He designed the hoists that lifted the materials, machines Leonardo da Vinci would later sit and copy into his notebooks. It was finished in 1436. Six hundred years later it is still the largest masonry dome on earth… The director Franco Zeffirelli, a Florentine, once said what that dome does to a person who looks up at it: "When I feel depression creeping in, I return to Florence to gaze at Brunelleschi's dome. If human genius was able to achieve something so great, then I too can and must try to create, to act, to live."

272,096 просмотров

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This is real footage of Paris from 100 years ago

This is real footage of Paris from 100 years ago

17,504,494 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад

This is real footage from 81 years ago Penn Station in 1945

This is real footage from 81 years ago Penn Station in 1945

3,053,702 просмотров • 18 дней назад

Today at noon thousands of red rose petals will flutter down through the oculus of the Pantheon in Rome. This spectacular tradition is held each year on the feast of Pentecost.

Today at noon thousands of red rose petals will flutter down through the oculus of the Pantheon in Rome. This spectacular tradition is held each year on the feast of Pentecost.

10,575,309 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад

Leonardo da Vinci invented the self supporting bridge in the 1400s. Here’s how it works:

Leonardo da Vinci invented the self supporting bridge in the 1400s. Here’s how it works:

6,867,725 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад

This is real footage of Brazil from 117 years ago Rio De Janeiro in 1909

This is real footage of Brazil from 117 years ago Rio De Janeiro in 1909

4,082,269 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад

This is real footage from 120 years ago. None of the people in it knew that the city around them had four days left... What you are watching is a cable car gliding down Market Street in San Francisco, filmed on the 14th of April, 1906. The camera was mounted on the front of the car, so you see the city exactly as it was: the crowds, the horse-drawn carriages, the early automobiles weaving through traffic, the men in hats, the great buildings rising on either side. An ordinary spring afternoon in a thriving American city. Four days later, on the morning of the 18th of April, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck. The shaking lasted under a minute, but it ignited fires that burned through the city for days... By the time it was over, more than 3,000 people were dead and roughly 80 percent of San Francisco had been destroyed. Almost every building you see in this footage was gone. And the film itself nearly went with it. The negative was placed on a train bound for New York on the 17th of April, the day before the earthquake. Had it left a single day later, it would have burned in the fire along with the studio that made it. This entire moving record of a lost city survives because of one day...

This is real footage from 120 years ago. None of the people in it knew that the city around them had four days left... What you are watching is a cable car gliding down Market Street in San Francisco, filmed on the 14th of April, 1906. The camera was mounted on the front of the car, so you see the city exactly as it was: the crowds, the horse-drawn carriages, the early automobiles weaving through traffic, the men in hats, the great buildings rising on either side. An ordinary spring afternoon in a thriving American city. Four days later, on the morning of the 18th of April, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck. The shaking lasted under a minute, but it ignited fires that burned through the city for days... By the time it was over, more than 3,000 people were dead and roughly 80 percent of San Francisco had been destroyed. Almost every building you see in this footage was gone. And the film itself nearly went with it. The negative was placed on a train bound for New York on the 17th of April, the day before the earthquake. Had it left a single day later, it would have burned in the fire along with the studio that made it. This entire moving record of a lost city survives because of one day...

2,755,865 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад

This is real WWII footage of a young German soldier surrendering to the US Army in 1945.

This is real WWII footage of a young German soldier surrendering to the US Army in 1945.

4,304,829 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад

Life in America 40 to 100+ years ago 🧵 1. This was Los Angeles in the 1950s

Life in America 40 to 100+ years ago 🧵 1. This was Los Angeles in the 1950s

17,804,975 просмотров • 1 год назад

This is real footage from 80 years ago A residential street in Los Angeles, 1940s

This is real footage from 80 years ago A residential street in Los Angeles, 1940s

1,149,136 просмотров • 1 месяц назад

This is real footage from nearly 100 years ago A street in Shanghai, China

This is real footage from nearly 100 years ago A street in Shanghai, China

1,023,324 просмотров • 1 месяц назад

Dolly Parton wrote "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" on the same day Rest in peace legend

Dolly Parton wrote "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" on the same day Rest in peace legend

160,131 просмотров • 7 дней назад

Colorized historical photos and videos that will make you feel like you're in a time machine 🧵 1. Jerusalem, April 1897

Colorized historical photos and videos that will make you feel like you're in a time machine 🧵 1. Jerusalem, April 1897

25,546,968 просмотров • 1 год назад

This is real footage from 115 years ago New York City in 1911

This is real footage from 115 years ago New York City in 1911

39,795 просмотров • 2 дней назад

This is what London looked like in the 1970s

This is what London looked like in the 1970s

1,462,163 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад

The greatest warrior who ever lived was told, after his death, that he should be happy. His answer is one of the most devastating things ever written... Achilles had been given a choice while alive: a long, quiet, forgotten life at home, or a short one at Troy that would make his name immortal. He chose glory. He chose to die young and be remembered forever. In the Odyssey, Odysseus goes down into the land of the dead, and Achilles comes to meet him. Odysseus tries to comfort him. He tells him he has nothing to mourn: "For of old, when thou wast alive, we Argives honored thee even as the gods, and now that thou art here, thou rulest mightily among the dead. Wherefore grieve not at all that thou art dead, Achilles." You are the most blessed man who ever lived, he says. You were worshipped in life, and now you are a king among the dead. What is there to grieve? Achilles answers immediately: "Nay, seek not to speak soothingly to me of death, glorious Odysseus. I should choose, so I might live on earth, to serve as the hireling of another, of some portionless man whose livelihood was but small, rather than to be lord over all the dead that have perished." He would rather be a day labourer, working someone else's field, for a master so poor he can barely feed him. He would take that life over ruling every soul that ever died... Achilles chose to die young so that his name would live forever. And then, in the Odyssey, Homer let him speak from the other side of that choice. And this is his answer, to Odysseus and to us: being remembered is not the same as being alive. And the ordinary day you are living right now is the thing the greatest hero in the world would trade eternity to have back.

The greatest warrior who ever lived was told, after his death, that he should be happy. His answer is one of the most devastating things ever written... Achilles had been given a choice while alive: a long, quiet, forgotten life at home, or a short one at Troy that would make his name immortal. He chose glory. He chose to die young and be remembered forever. In the Odyssey, Odysseus goes down into the land of the dead, and Achilles comes to meet him. Odysseus tries to comfort him. He tells him he has nothing to mourn: "For of old, when thou wast alive, we Argives honored thee even as the gods, and now that thou art here, thou rulest mightily among the dead. Wherefore grieve not at all that thou art dead, Achilles." You are the most blessed man who ever lived, he says. You were worshipped in life, and now you are a king among the dead. What is there to grieve? Achilles answers immediately: "Nay, seek not to speak soothingly to me of death, glorious Odysseus. I should choose, so I might live on earth, to serve as the hireling of another, of some portionless man whose livelihood was but small, rather than to be lord over all the dead that have perished." He would rather be a day labourer, working someone else's field, for a master so poor he can barely feed him. He would take that life over ruling every soul that ever died... Achilles chose to die young so that his name would live forever. And then, in the Odyssey, Homer let him speak from the other side of that choice. And this is his answer, to Odysseus and to us: being remembered is not the same as being alive. And the ordinary day you are living right now is the thing the greatest hero in the world would trade eternity to have back.

837,944 просмотров • 1 месяц назад

Atomic veterans describe what nukes feel like “When the flash hit you, you could see the X-rays of your hand through your closed eyes.” “If I was looking at you now I would see all your bones, the blood vessels and everything.”

Atomic veterans describe what nukes feel like “When the flash hit you, you could see the X-rays of your hand through your closed eyes.” “If I was looking at you now I would see all your bones, the blood vessels and everything.”

3,407,539 просмотров • 5 месяцев назад

This Robin Williams thread will brighten up your day 🧵 1. His improvised scene in Good Will Hunting made the cameraman laugh so hard the camera started shaking. Matt Damon's reaction is authentic.

This Robin Williams thread will brighten up your day 🧵 1. His improvised scene in Good Will Hunting made the cameraman laugh so hard the camera started shaking. Matt Damon's reaction is authentic.

19,993,862 просмотров • 2 лет назад

In 1984 a German reporter in Paris explains how to cross Place de la Concorde: "Walk steadily across and never look at the drivers. If you do, they'll think you've seen them and won't stop."

In 1984 a German reporter in Paris explains how to cross Place de la Concorde: "Walk steadily across and never look at the drivers. If you do, they'll think you've seen them and won't stop."

3,506,061 просмотров • 5 месяцев назад

Robin Williams would’ve turned 74 today This thread will brighten up your day 🧵 1. His improvised scene in Good Will Hunting made the cameraman laugh so hard the camera started shaking. Matt Damon's reaction is authentic.

Robin Williams would’ve turned 74 today This thread will brighten up your day 🧵 1. His improvised scene in Good Will Hunting made the cameraman laugh so hard the camera started shaking. Matt Damon's reaction is authentic.

8,833,348 просмотров • 1 год назад