1. A Secret Underground Staircase outside the Louvre Revealed
Spotted by a tourist, this is a hidden tunnel network for emergency. Much of the museum and its stores are underground and they are all connected to a big tunnel that you need to follow to exit safely the facility in case of a fire. The network also leads to some technical rooms of the Louvre. They are scattered around the different parts of the museum.
Found on Reddit.
2. A 16th Century Comet Book
‘Kometenbuch’ 1587, is available online from Universitätsbibliothek Kassel in Germany.
3. Handy Mnemonics: The Five-Fingered Memory Machine
Before humans stored memories as zeroes and ones, we turned to digital devices of another kind — preserving knowledge on the surface of fingers and palms. Kensy Cooperrider leads us through a millennium of “hand mnemonics” and the variety of techniques practised by Buddhist monks, Latin linguists, and Renaissance musicians for remembering what might otherwise elude the mind.
Discover the full article on Public Domain Review.
4. Medieval Recycling
When the printing press made its debut in Europe in the 15th century, thousands of old texts were ‘recycled’ for use as binding material for newer books. In 2015, researchers at Leiden University started using an x-ray technique to reveal these texts. Some are up to 1,300 years old. Find more about it here.
5. Nüshu, a 19th-Century near-extinct Chinese Writing System That Only Women Knew How to Write
As a rule, women once weren’t taught the thousands of logographic characters necessary to read and write in the language. But in one particular section of the land, Jiangyong County in Hunan province, some did master the 600 to 700 characters of a phonetic script made to reflect the local dialect and now called Nüshu (女书), or “women’s writing.”
Its greatest concentration of practitioners lived in “the village of Shangjiangxu, where young girls exchanged small tokens of friendly affection, such as fans decorated with calligraphy or handkerchiefs embroidered with a few auspicious words.”
Found on Open Culture.
6. In 1975 only two countries in the world had a minister of women’s affairs; France and Iran. Meet Mahnaz Afkami
Mahnaz Afkhami, pictured here at the UN, is an Iranian women’s rights activist who served in the Cabinet of Iran from 1976 to 1978. She is founder and president of Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP), executive director of the Foundation for Iranian Studies and former Minister of Women’s Affairs in Iran’s pre-Revolution government. She has lived in exile in the United States since 1979.
Found on Wikipedia.
7. This Guy is walking every block of NYC
8. A town in New York entirely filled with book stores
Once a booming Catskills farming community before it dwindled into a ghost town, Hobart in Delaware County is now a book lover’s paradise. Find a book lover’s guide to the town here.
9. A list of the Best US Islands, From Hawaii To The Midwest
Find it on Condé Nast Traveller.
10. Word of the Day: Pareidolia
A psychological phenomenon that causes people to see patterns in a random stimulus, assigning human characteristics to objects and seeing faces in objects where there isn’t one.
Found on Wikipedia.
11. DIY Upholstered Frames
Have a go, tutorial found on Honestly WTF
12. How This Chair Conquered the World
13. America’s creepy clown craze, explained
Happy Halloween, one and all!
