Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
Victorians watched animation by staring into mirrors
Nineteenth-century entertainment was mostly just finding new ways to give yourself a migraine. To watch the very first animation loops, upper-class citizens…
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Before board games, Milton Bradley sold spinning illusions
Before they cornered the market on family board games, Milton Bradley sold paper strips of dancing figures for wealthy families to spin in wooden drums. The…
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When a satellite hijacked your HBO movie
Imagine settling in for a premium cable movie in the late 90s, only for a rogue satellite to violently overwrite your signal. Thanks to accidental feed slip…
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The Atari console that turned music into shapes
Back in 1977, Atari decided the world needed a dedicated wood-paneled console whose sole purpose was turning stereo audio into seizure-inducing geometric…
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Narcisa Hirsch used apples to lure people into cinema
Experimental filmmakers have always loved subjecting audiences to weird stunts, but Narcisa Hirsch really took it to the streets. During the military…
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The artist who attacked a TV with a magnet
Nam June Paik looked at a brand new, expensive cathode-ray tube television and decided it needed to be violently assaulted with a giant horseshoe magnet. By…
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When rock stars had to mime their own songs
Forcing rock stars to fake playing their instruments was a logistical necessity because 1964 television studios simply couldn't mix live bands. Thanks to…
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The orchestra that lost the plot mid-performance
If you think modern technical glitches are bad, wait until you hear about the 1930 premiere of The New Babylon. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote a brilliantly…
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The 1968 catalog Steve Jobs called a paper search engine
Decades before Silicon Valley decided they needed to "disrupt" everything, a bunch of back-to-the-land hippies dropped the Whole Earth Catalog in 1968. It was…
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Mary Field disguised science films with silly voiceovers
Long before David Attenborough became the voice of God, Mary Field was out here in the 1920s pioneering time-lapse micro-cinematography. She was doing…
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Pierre Schaeffer built a keyboard out of tape loops
Decades before hip-hop producers started mashing up samples on an MPC, a French radio engineer named Pierre Schaeffer built a Frankenstein machine called the…
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Alberta Hunter relaunched her career in her eighties
Talk about a ruthless career pivot. Alberta Hunter was a massive blues star in the 1920s, but when the gigs dried up in the 50s, she simply lied about her…
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How Maya Deren distributed her own films
Maya Deren didn't just pioneer the American avant-garde with her surreal 1943 film Meshes of the Afternoon; she practically invented the relentless…
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He thought terrible movies were accidental masterpieces
Long before it was trendy to ironically watch The Room, Greek-French surrealist Ado Kyrou was making a career out of praising absolute cinematic garbage. As a…
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George Lucas built a futuristic audio editor—and lost
Leave it to George Lucas's empire to invent the future of film sound and entirely botch the landing. In the early 1980s, his tech division created SoundDroid,…
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The scandals that buried Charlie Chaplin's mentor
Imagine being the biggest comedy star on earth, only to have your career obliterated by a string of unsolved murders you didn't commit. Mabel Normand wasn't…
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When a BBC drama triggered nuclear panic
A television network accidentally convinced half the country the world was ending because nobody bothers to read the TV Guide. Blurring the lines between news…
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How Loie Fuller turned fabric into stage lighting
A theatrical mastermind accidentally invented modern lighting design by violently thrashing around in miles of silk. In the 1890s, Loie Fuller became a…
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When Asta Nielsen played Hamlet as a woman
The first true international movie star was a Danish icon who decided the best way to play Shakespeare was to crossdress. Long before Hollywood established…
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How Carmen Miranda's fruit hats became propaganda
The woman famous for balancing a fruit salad on her head was actually a meticulously engineered geopolitical asset. Carmen Miranda is remembered for her…
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How Christine Jorgensen beat the tabloids at their own game
Long before influencers learned to manipulate algorithms, Christine Jorgensen was playing the 1950s press like a fiddle. Upon returning from Denmark after…
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How Oscar Micheaux built a cinema outside Hollywood
Oscar Micheaux didn't just break into Hollywood; he built a completely separate, untouchable cinema ecosystem. In the 1920s, white-owned theater chains…
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The projector that electrified a layer of oil
If you wanted to watch a boxing match on a massive cinema screen in the 1950s, you were relying on a machine that sounded like a supervillain weapon. The…
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A blacklisted writer won Oscars under fake names
The 1950s Red Scare was supposed to permanently ruin the careers of accused communists in Hollywood, but the studios were way too greedy to let good talent go…
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