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Why Are There So Many 17th Century Paintings of Monkeys Getting Drunk?
One cold Friday in 1660, Samuel Pepys encountered two unpleasant surprises. "At home found all well," he wrote in his diary, "but the m...
Res Obscura
A compendium of obscure things.
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Visit resobscura.blogspot.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Dec 2014 – Nov 2019
History & Retro Computing 5Society, Policy & Culture 1Design & UX 1
2
On the Women’s Petition Against Coffee of 1674
“That Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called COFFEE.” Imagine a space where you can bet on bear fights, warm your legs by th...
3
The Most Wonderful Map in the World: Urbano Monte's Planisphere of 1587
At some point in 1589, a Milanese cartographer named Urbano Monte made up his mind: his self-portrait needed updating. Monte carefully ...
4
Early Chinese World Maps (2010)
I recently came across this fascinating world map while researching the history of the Jesuit missions in seventeenth century China . Appar...
5
A Spaniard in Samarkand, 1404 (2012)
Special note: an earlier version of this post appeared on a new blog I helped develop in partnership with Not Even Past of the Univer...