MetaFilter posts tagged with writing and history

Quoth the Raven, Baltimore!?!

Artw — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:12:01 -0800

Today marks the 200th birthday of Edgar Alan Poe, and as happens every year the mysterious Poe Toaster marked the date by placing three red roses and a half-filled bottle of cognac at his Baltimore grave. The identity of the toaster isn't the only question surrounding Poe - his presence in Baltimore and the circumstances of his death remain a mystery. Some speculate that he may have had rabies, others that he may have been a victim of cooping. And while Baltimore embarks on a year long celebration of Poe some argue that his body shouldn't be there at all.

2008 AD: Horace Rumpole makes an FPP

Horace Rumpole — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:18:53 -0800

70,000 BC: The Earliest Known Examples of Paleolithic Art
668 BC: Ashurbanipal Attempts to Collect all Knowledge
150 BC: Earliest Analog Computer
593 AD: First Mention of Printing in China
1454 AD: The Gutenberg Bible
1964 AD: Creation of ARPANET
From Cave Paintings to the Internet, a timeline of the history of information technology. In addition to a straight chronological order, the timeline can be explored along categories such as Artificial Intelligence, Book History, Censorship, Human-Computer Interaction, and Writing.

20 significant American comics

Artw — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:42:43 -0800

The 20 most significant comics in American comics history, according to Steven Grant.

"The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor..."

dersins — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:23:45 -0800

The Willa Cather Archive is an incredible resource provided by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, including biographies, letters, photos, and even full (often annotated) text of much of her writing, including scholarly editions of two of her greatest (and most famous) works, My Antonia and O Pioneers. About the archive.

We hold thefe truthfs to be felf-evident...

Miko — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 12:59:43 -0800

Paleography: Reading Old Handwriting, 1500-1800. And don't forget to use your new skills to save the accused woman from the Ducking Stool.

This is fiction

0bvious — Wed, 10 May 2006 18:27:00 -0800

Writing has been around for a long time, but that doesn't mean we've mastered it yet. Want to make fiction? Perhaps it makes itself, perhaps it makes you... Self reference breeding infinite hyperrealities. Which world will you choose?

Verne's Cerntury

matteo — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 11:44:57 -0800

Mythmaker of the Machine Age. In the statue erected above his grave in Amiens, in Picardy, Jules Verne, who died exactly 100 years ago, resembles God. He is, after all, the second-most-translated author on earth, after Agatha Christie. To celebrate the anniversary, there's a Verne exhibition at the Maritime Museum in Paris, one of a series of events from Paris to the western city of Nantes, where Verne was born on Feb. 8, 1828, to the northern town of Amiens, where he died on March 24, 1905. His many fans, some of them quite famous, will be treated to exhibits, concerts, films and shows in Verne's honor. “Underground City”, a lost classic written by Verne and never before published unabridged in English, emerges this month in not one but two new unique editions.
100 years later, questions remain about his life: Why did he have two homes in Amiens? Why did he burn all his private papers? Why was he shot in the foot by his nephew, Gaston, in 1886? Gaston was locked in an asylum for 54 years after his attack on L'Oncle Jules. Was Gaston, in fact, Verne's natural son? More inside.

Ye Olde Writings

falconred — Fri, 07 May 2004 10:34:24 -0800

AncientScripts.com : discover introductions to more than 70 ancient and modern writing systems, from LinearB to hPhags-pa to Cherokee. View languages by type, family, or region. Many links to further reading on each subject, plus other goodies.

memento mori

stupidsexyFlanders — Tue, 02 Sep 2003 07:15:13 -0800

Obitpage, dedicated to the writer's art of the obituary. Recommended among the greats in the (partial) "hall-of-fame" archive is Idi Amin's: "One of the Most Reviled Figures In Recent History."

pmurray63 — Mon, 20 May 2002 18:34:01 -0800

A sad day for lovers of good writing. In addition to Stephen Jay Gould, historian Walter Lord has died. (NYT, blah blah) Lord's 1955 book A Night to Remember arguably touched off the modern world's fascination with the Titanic, and his 1957 Day of Infamy is an exciting account of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Yelling At Nothing — Sat, 26 Jan 2002 23:51:05 -0800

Great article about the decline of obituary writing in American journalism. Notable obits it names include Hunter Thompson's unflattering rendition of Nixon and H.L. Mencken's scathing posthumous indictment of William Jennings Bryan.

Should we go back to obits like these? Damn right we should, says suck.com.