Tag: history

A History of Japan by Bill Wurtz

The fist day of every history class should include watching a video in this format on whatever the subject the teacher intends to cover.




by Jonathan Frei

Color explosion

Crayola

There has been an explosion in the number of colors offered by Crayola since the crayons were introduced in 1903. Slate has an article about the colors added more recently.

First invented in 1903, the original Crayola box contained only eight colors, including red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, brown, and black. It sold for only a nickel.

A chart posted on Reddit shows how Crayola crayon colors have grown from eight basic hues to dozens in a little over 100 years.

Now, there are 120 colors in the Crayola color wheel. The names have evolved as well to include colors like “denim,” “screamin’ green,” “dandelion,” and “razzle dazzle rose.”

by Jonathan Frei

Coffee houses were the distracting social media of the 1600s

Coffee houses were the distracting social media of the 1600s

Tom Standage:

With the promise of a constant and unpredictable stream of news, messages and gossip, coffeehouses offered an exciting and novel platform for sharing information. So seductive was this new social environment — you never knew what you might learn on your next visit, or who you might meet — that coffeehouse denizens found themselves whiling away hours in reading and discussion, oblivious to the passage of time.

Social media today is not about the hot new site. The coffee-house social media of the 1600s were not about the coffee. What makes it social is that people with diverse points of view and varying knowledge convene and converse in public.

by Jonathan Frei