History

Podcast of the Week: David McWilliams & The Wizard of Oz

You may be aware that the game Monopoly was actually invented by Lizzy Magie to highlight the inequalities of landlordism. This week in his podcast David McWilliams shares a similar bizzare historical origins story, this time about The Wizard of Oz which was actually a satircal commentary on the gold standard.

Business

History

Podcast

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Pandemic History

#208

Visual Capitalist published an informative infograph showing the different pandemics throughout history with the size scaled to the number of deaths.

Data Vis

History

Life

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Cummins Sports Cork Photography Archive

#205

Cummins Sports, a Cork sportswear and equipment retailer, have published their photo archive online. The photos, taken by Kevin Cummins, capture a range of aspects of Cork life from the 1960s onwards, including when JFK visited Cork! (H/T to Vicky Langan for sharing).

History

Photo

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Old Book Illustrations

#201

Old Book Illustrations is a searchable database of scanned old book illustrations. Included on the site are a number of illustrations from Irish artist Harry Clarke.

Design

History

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PS3 Supercomputers

#194

The Verge posted an interesting article on the story of how, for a few years, Playstation 3 games consoles were used by researchers and the U.S. Airforce as supercomputers to work on black hole calculations, win cryptography contests and process images from surveillance drones.

History

Innovation

Tech

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Zero Is The Hero

#193

Atlantic Philathropies, the organisation setup by Chuck Feeney to give away his huge fortune, has published their final report titled Zero Is The Hero. The report gives an overview of the amounts invested around the world in different industries. The fascinating story of Chuck Feeney is told excellently in the book The Billionaire Who Wasn't (affiliate link) by Conor Clery.

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The History of Ketchup

#192

The Saturday Evening Post has an interesting article on the history of Ketchup. It originated in 17th century China as a fermented fish sauce, without tomatoes, called ke-tsiap before travelling along the British empire to the west.

History

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Marc Mc Menamin on Smart Thinking Books

#189

Marc Mc Menamin, author of the fantastic Irish History book Codebreaker, answered some questions for me about books over on smartthinkingbooks.com. Check out his recommendations and his great book!

History

Life

Review

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Youth Assembly on Climate in Dáil Éireann

#186

Last week as part of the centenary of Dáil Éireann, the first ever youth assembly on climate took place in the Dáil. Young people from all over the country gathered in thematic groups, discussed options and submitted a list of recommendations to the Oireachtas and the government.

Environment

History

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Lines of Code That Changed The World

#183

Slate.com have put together a fascinating list of lines of code that changed the world. The list starts with Basile Bouchon's binary punch cards from 1725, ends with the Boeing 737 Max software error, and includes everything in between such as Hello World, the hyperlink, the first popup and Bitcoin.

History

Tech

Web Dev

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