Though not officially recognised as part of the Calendar of the Saints until Pope John Paul II made it official in 1984 and followed up with a visit to the island, Saint Þorlákur Þórhallsson—Thorlak Thornhallsson, Bishop of Skálholt, had been considered the patron of Iceland for the greater part of a millennia.
Sunday 23 December 2018
þorláksmessa
catagories: 🇮🇸, holidays and observances, religion
Saturday 22 December 2018
wiener methode der bildstatistik
Having had a previous encounter with the ISOTYPEs of Marie and Otto Neurath (*1882 – †1945), we appreciated revisiting this subject with an in depth exploration from Open Culture that regards the universal character set as yet another among many earnest attempts to foster peace and empathy through an international language, a utopian effort like Esperanto and others. With the help of woodcut artist Gerd Arntz, this visual vocabulary grew to over four thousand pictograms to structure and address every facet of society and of course prefigures our contemporary use of symbols and data visualisations.
latimeria chalumnae
On this day in 1938, the a trawler on a fishing expedition in South Africa caught the first specimen of what would later be identified as an extant species of a type of primitive, limbed fish though to have died out in the Cretaceous Era, some sixty-five million years ago. Having more than a passing interest in the sciences, the captain of the vessel often shared unusual finds with the curator of a local natural history museum, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, who eventually recognised the sample as a coelacanth, coining the phrase a “living fossil.”
catagories: 🌍, environment, libraries and museums, ⓦ
5x5
their santatanic majesties request: the Rolling Stone album had the working title of Cosmic Christmas
tinsel: a gallery of Mid-Century Modern aluminum Christmas trees
tinsel town: 1930s Hollywood in its heydays recreated as a diorama
brick & mortar: a bookshop in Tokyo now has a cover-charge
aðventuljós: a handy guide to the holidays in Iceland
Friday 21 December 2018
twelfth night
Driving home for the holidays, we really enjoyed listening to this Royal Christmas Special from Rex Factor (previously) that examines the celebration, traditions and historical happenstance—births, coronations, etc.—from a courtly point of view. We think you’ll like this entertaining and informative episode as well, travelling or otherwise.
early modern
catagories: architecture, libraries and museums