Smart News Arts & Culture

Thank Andrey Markov for your smartphone's predictive text feature—and also somewhat sillier uses.

Three Very Modern Uses For A Nineteenth-Century Text Generator

Andrey Markov was trying to understand poems with math when he created a whole new field of probability studies

Catalonia

First House Designed by Antoni Gaudí to Open as a Museum

The vibrant Casa Vicens was an early hallmark of Gaudí’s unique style

A Bear and Her Cubs Took Over Vlad the Impaler’s Castle

Romania’s Poenari Castle was shut down to visitors after authorities had “close encounters” with the creatures

New Report Ranks Easiest and Hardest Places to Be a Kid

Save the Children compares 172 countries based on factors like child mortality rates and adolescent birth rates

Canada

En Garde! (Nonviolent) Dueling Will Soon Be Legal in Canada

The government is ridding the Criminal Code of obsolete laws—like ones that prohibit dueling and witchcraft

Aerial view of the wooden circle site

New Research

Massive Wooden Fire Monument Is Older Than Stonehenge

Carbon dating shows that the site dates back to 3300 B.C.

The dachshund leaps down with his prize.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

In 1913, One Gluttonous Pupper Changed the Course of Animation History

Years before "Steamboat Willie," this animated dog hammed it up onscreen

257-Year-Old Coloring Book Rediscovered in St. Louis

The Florist contains 60 drawings, and recommends watercolor pigments like “gall-stone brown”

The new rule also bans breeds like the Tibetan Mastiff, pictured here.

Trending Today

Chinese City Institutes One-Dog Policy

Officials in Qingdao say they are trying to limit the amount of disturbance caused by an ever-growing pooch population

1937 Elsa Schiaparelli art-deco evening coat

Cool Finds

Google Digitizes 3,000 Years of Fashion History

The massive "We Wear Culture Project" includes 30,000 online artifacts from over 180 institutions

Damian Le Bas' "Globe IV" (2016) on display at the launch event for the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture.

Trending Today

First-Ever Roma Cultural Institution Opens in Europe

It’s a step toward cultural inclusion for Europe’s largest minority group

Could you go a day #WithoutNews?

Trending Today

Newseum Ditches Headlines for a Day Without News

It’s a stark reminder of the journalists who've died doing their jobs

Hattie McDaniel was the first black actor to ever win an Oscar, but she was criticized for the roles she played.

What Hattie McDaniel Said About Her Oscar-Winning Career Playing Racial Stereotypes

Hattie McDaniel saw herself as a groundbreaker for black Americans

This Museum Was the World’s Most-Visited in 2016

According to a new report ranking the most popular international museums

Compare two paintings of zebras with new IIIF functionality.

Cool Finds

This Tool Makes it Easy to Compare Art From Different Museums

IIIF frees images from the confines of individual websites

Dr. Seuss Museum Opens in Massachusetts

The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss features a life-sized Wump of Gump, a recreation of Sala-ma-Sond, and replicas of the author’s childhood haunts

Sliver of Saint’s Brain Stolen From Italian Basilica

Police are looking for the person or persons who swiped the sacred relic from the Don Bosco Basilica

Anthony Burgess at the PEN International 1985 in Lugano

Trending Today

Anthony Burgess' Legendary Dictionary of Slang Lives

The author and linguist gave up the book after realizing how enormous the task of keeping up with slang would be

An excerpt from the first road map of Britain, published by John Ogilby when Fiennes was 15, in 1675. No word on whether Fiennes ever saw it, although she did write about visiting a college in Manchester that had a map collection.

See 17th-Century England Through the Eyes of One of the First Modern Travel Writers

Celia Fiennes traveled and wrote about her adventures—including a bit of life advice

The recovered artwork.

Professor Helps Bust Italian Art Theft Ring

The professor noticed that a rare manuscript had been stamped with the seal of the Royal Library of Turin, leading him to believe that it had been stolen

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