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Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

Spandex, under the brand name Lycra, quickly took off after it was introduced in 1962. This ad was published in Good Housekeeping in October of that year.

Thank(?) Joseph Shivers For Spandex

From Spanx to space suits, spandex has shaped modern garments

Janelle Shane's neural network needs a lot of first lines before it can teach itself to write good ones.

This Neural Network Can (Maybe) Start a Novel Better Than You

As the end of NaNoWriMo draws near, take a look at one researcher’s effort to help find that perfect first line

Close-up of tent detail in Verplancks Point watercolor

Newly Discovered 235-Year-Old Watercolor Shows Off General Washington’s Wartime Tent

The painting offers a unique glimpse into the Revolutionary War

The 1848 "Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World."

Museum Restores North America’s Longest Painting

Completed in 1848, the quarter-mile-long panorama deteriorated after it toured the country on wagons and trains

Tibetan manuscripts

A Look Inside China’s Effort to Preserve Historical Mongolian Manuscripts

Various projects are attempting to digitize the more than 200,000 volumes of Mongolian books and documents in the country

A cumulonimbus cloud formation, AKA a thunderstorm.

Our Cloud Names Come From a 1700s Amateur Meteorologist

Luke Howard’s nomenclature inspired writers as well as scientists

The Codex Quetzalecatzin

Behold the Newly Digitized 400-Year-Old Codex Quetzalecatz

The manuscript dates back to the late 1500s, and was recently acquired by the Library of Congress

Female match workers in the 1870s.

Friction Matches Were a Boon to Those Lighting Fires–Not So Much to Matchmakers

Those who worked in match factories were exposed to white phosphorus, which caused a debilitating and potentially deadly condition

Virginians may have celebrated early Thanksgivings with wild turkey, like this one. Other historical accounts say the first Thanksgiving was scraped together from ship rations, oysters, and ham.

The Pilgrims Weren’t the First to Celebrate Thanksgiving

Virginia has a claim to an earlier Christian Thanksgiving celebration

Screenshot of a new, interactive website devoted to Pablo Picasso's most famous work.

Cool Finds

You Can’t Get Closer to Picasso’s “Guernica” Than This 436-Gigabyte Image

The new “Rethinking Guernica” website also includes 2,000 documents and photos charting the painting’s 80-year history

Among the artifacts was a pair of John Lennon's glasses, complete with his optometrist's prescription.

100 Stolen John Lennon Items Found in Berlin

The trove of memorabilia, which was stolen from Yoko Ono, includes Lennon’s diaries, glasses and handwritten music scores

A cameraman at the coronation of King George V.

Why Do We Call TV Watchers ‘Viewers’?

It all goes back to a quirky BBC subcommittee working in the 1930s to change the English language

Portrait of Don Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. Oil on canvas, in a carved and gilt wood frame.

“Lost” 17th-Century Portrait by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo Found in a Welsh Castle

The portrait, which depicts a Spanish writer and historian, has now been added to a Murillo exhibition in New York

Voltaire was enabled to become an old and famous aristocrat by his lottery winnings.

Voltaire: Enlightenment Philosopher and Lottery Scammer

The French government was trying to raise money by running a bond lottery, but a group of intellectuals had other ideas

Thanksgiving in the 19th century was less Norman Rockwell, more Mardi Gras.

The First Thanksgiving Parades Were Riots

The Fantastics parades were occasions of sometimes-violent revelry

A vintage Thanksgiving postcard featuring pardoned turkeys.

Presidents From Lincoln to FDR Kept the Thanksgiving Tradition Going

Lincoln started the process of making it a federal holiday in 1863, crystallizing something that had been around since the days of the Pilgrims

A mermaid eats an apple at the bottom of the (artificial) sea in this late 1940s postcard.

The Historic Tail of the Weeki Wachee Mermaids

You can even learn to “mermaid” yourself, if the fancy takes you

The marshmallows are essential, but the sweet potato is the heart of this classic dish.

How Marshmallow-Topped Sweet Potato Casserole Became a Thanksgiving Classic

Sweet potato pudding has been a part of American cuisine for a century

Born in 1888, author Raymond Chandler was best known for his detective novels.

Newly Discovered Raymond Chandler Story Skewers U.S. Healthcare System

It’s titled ‘It’s All Right – He Only Died’

A radio built in the 1930s.

How a New Accent Overturned BBC Tradition and Messed With the Nazis

A man with the name of Wilfred Pickles brought regional dialect to the BBC as part of an anti-Nazi-propaganda strategy

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