What's the Legend Behind the Bogey-Owl?
It creeps through the ... air? Rather than under your bed? Regardless, it’s a terrifying thing to be following you around.
What's Going On In This Picture of Demons Dancing in the Moonlight?
Under a full moon, the demons gather in a circle. They dance until a mysteroius power lifts them off the ground, and they float above us all. What do you think is happening in this picture? And what happens to the people who encounter these demons?
What Is This Thing?
Come, tell us tales about the invasion of the seven-foot tall aliens with a single weak spot right in the center of its forehead. And the single-use weapon we made to kill it.
Here's a Drawing of a Guinea Pig on a Skateboard From 1899
I don’t know what to tell you. It is what it is.
When the Monk Caught a Sprite in the Kitchen
It’s a folktale that’s been reworked and re-told for centuries. Disney’s making it into an animated film slated for next year (the live-action version is scheduled for two years after that). The monk, caught in a life of contemplation, hears a sound in the kitchen. Grabbing a spoon for protection, he encounters a…
The Death Rays the Victorians Used to Conquer the Moon
Do you remember when the Moon was conquered in 1889 and, to cement their victory, a number of giant dishes were erected?
Write Your Own Stories Based on These Public Domain Images
The British Library has used its flickr page to upload over a million obscure images that have passed into the public domain. It is an amazing collection, and I’m going to be featuring a bunch of them in the coming weeks.
A Creepy-Cute Vintage Illustration Of A Vampire Bat
From the British Library archives comes this delightful plate from naturalist J. Leyland's "Adventures in the far interior of South Africa; including a journey to Lake Ngami, and rambles in Honduras," circa 1866.
The Magna Carta marks its 800th anniversary, and the four surviving O.G. copies are currently being displayed together for the first time at London's British Library. "The birth certificate of democracy" contains the groundbreaking declaration that no one (including the king) is above the law.
British Library Fights To Preserve Historic Recordings Archive
As part of its vast collection of literary and historic treasures (the Magna Carta, Leonardo da Vinci's notebook), the British Library owns some six million sound recordings, including significant theater productions, famous voices (like J.R.R. Tolkien's), and field recordings of extinct animals. Some of them…
The British Library Unveils a New Show Devoted to Gothic Literature
Two hundred rare objects will trace 250 years of Gothic literature, in the British Library's forthcoming exhibition, Terror and Wonder. Dave McKean has designed this image to promote the event, inspired by Frankenstein, Dracula and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
This Is What Comic Books Looked Like in the Middle Ages
Curators at the British Library have compiled a list of the manuscripts in their collection which they believe are among the best examples of Ye Olde Comick Bookes, rife with superheroes, supervillains, origin stories, drama and, of course, blood and gore.
12 Stunning Data Visualizations That Put Boring Spreadsheets to Shame
We're living smack dab in the middle of a golden age of data viz—or peak data viz, depending on your point of view. Beautiful Science, a new exhibition at the British Library, offers a glimpse at how complex info was presented before technology made infographics so inescapably ubiquitous.
15 of the Weirdest Images in the British Library’s New Digital Trove
Digging through the archives of old libraries is a blast. Depending on the library, you'll find everything from dated architectural drawings to snippets of old children's books. You can just imagine the treasures to be found in the British Library's ancient archive. And, now, you don't even have to get your fingers…
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Adventure Diary
The British Library is producing a facsimile copy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's diary from his days as a ship's doctor in the arctic sea. The Sherlock Holmes creator spent most of a year on the whaler Hope, while still a medical student. It sounds like his time aboard involved lots of falling into icy water and patching…
Google's Helping the British Library Digitize 250,000 Books
250,000 of the British Library's out-of-copyright books from 1700 to 1870 will be digitized by Google, both sides confirmed today. This means the whole world will get access to important tomes, pamphlets and periodicals spanning some 40 million pages, via Google Books and the British Library's website.
The Brontës invented imaginary realms, and created some of the first fan-fiction
The Brontë sisters are best known as the authors of literary gothic tales like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, but in their childhood, they worked with their brother to invent the made-up realm of the Glass Town Federation.
