internet explorers club | building and shaping our history
How on earth is it July? I simply refuse to believe it. Let’s get to the links!
A famous statue of King George III that was famously torn down from its place in Bowling Green, in Manhattan, is being restored. What’s fascinating to me—and not included in this piece—is that the statue itself showed the King in Roman robes, but all later lithographs of it being torn down had him in his regnal glory. While we’re thinking about ye olden colonial tymes, here’s a JSTOR essay on when America gained “linguistic independence,” which breaks down the myths of what colonial accents actually sounded like, among other things.
A lovely series of cigarette cards that give everyday instructions for tasks.
A love letter to the em dash (the only kind of letter to write about the em dash honestly), and one about the en space, which gives a lovely history of typesetting as well. The Atlantic dives into whether or not the internet has killed curly quotes.
I love weird demonyms—I’m sure it comes from “Los Angeles” turning into “Angeleno”—so of course Why People From Manchester Are Mancunians, Not Manchesterians is precisely up my alley.
Some delightful long reads for you to take to the beach, two from one of my new favorite publications, The Bitter Southerner, which gives these wonderful insightful, critical, immensely readable essays about the South. The first, on F. Scott Fitzgerald and his brief time spent in Louisville during WWI (9 minutes)—where he got kicked out of the USO at the hotel pictured four times!—is a delightful look at Fitzgerald’s potential inspirations and life.
Secondly, a look into the world of law clerks in London (16 minutes), who operate as agents and assistants for their respective barristers. This was a world I knew nothing about before reading, and it’s unlike any other. My favorite bit of trivia is that new clerks are given new names if they arrive at an office that has a clerk with their given name (!)
The last, titled “Good Luck, Morons,” (26 minutes) is about the Barkley Marathons, an ultramarathon (that’s 100 miles, though there is a “fun run” that’s 60 miles) through the Tennessee wilderness. It’s not your average ultramarathon, though—only 14 people have ever finished, out of 1,000 who have attempted it. The rules are also, to put it lightly, tricky:
The race will begin sometime between midnight and noon on Saturday; no one knows exactly when. All they know is that at some point in those 12 hours, Laz will blow a conch shell, which means the runners have exactly one hour to be at the starting gate. The race starts when Laz lights his cigarette. This keeps runners on their toes. Laz likes it that way.
I just found out that the Inuit people in Greenland
carve three-dimensional maps out of driftwood and… they’re incredible.
Etcetera: Rabbit hole leads to 'Knights Templar' cave. Salvador Dalí’s Body Will Be Exhumed Because a Tarot Card Reader Claims He’s Her Father. Sometimes Nature is Morbid. That’s Why There’s #BestCarcass (FYI this one is a little gruesome!).
