Category: History
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Simon Garfield’s On the Map
Cartographers, like nature, abhor a vacuum and have traditionally filled the empty spaces on maps with large lettering, descriptive passages, drawings and/or certain labels that many of us may be familiar with, such as terra incognita (“unknown land”) or hic sunt dracones (“here be dragons”). However, as Simon Garfield tells us in his breezy romp…
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Ibn Khaldun: The First Urban Sociologist
Ibn Khaldun belonged to an aristocratic family from Seville, Spain but he was born in 1332 in modern-day Tunisia. In 1362, at the age of 30, he moved back to Spain and entered into the service of the Sultan of Granada where he served as Secretary of State and an Ambassador to the court of Pedro the King of…
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More on Grand Central…
WRITTEN BY ALINE FADER For those of you who missed the on air version and need the videos to go with our Grand Central 100th Anniversary post, this news series from Channel 7 is pretty neat! Unfortunately, I can’t embed it, but it is a nice historical review and there is some cool video of the…
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Grand Central Terminal Celeberates its 100 Anniversary
Grand Central Terminal, New York The Grand Central Terminal is New York City’s grandest train station, located at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in mid-town Manhattan.
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The Dome of the Rock – Jerusalem: The First Piece of Monumental Architecture in Islam
The Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount was the first monumental piece of architecture in Islam. It is odd that it was not a mosque or mausoleum but a structure to shelter a rock. It stands at the site of the First Temple built by Solomon and covers a rock which, according to tradition was the…
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WWMLKJrD?
WRITTEN BY ALINE FADER Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so firstly, huzzah! to all of you who are taking this opportunity to participate in a day of service in honor of his legacy. Secondly, today of all days seems to be a good moment to reflect on the racial diversity (or lack there…