In addition to the traditional piano player, each (film) theatre in Saragossa was equipped with its explicador, or narrator, who stood next to the screen and “explained” the action to the audience. “Count Hugo sees his wife go by on the arm of another man,” he would declaim. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, you will see how he opens the drawer of his desk and takes out a revolver to assassinate his unfaithful wife!” It’s hard to imagine today, but when the cinema was in its infancy, it was such a new and unusual narrative form that most spectators had difficulty understanding what was happening. Now we’re so used to film language, to the elements of montage, to both simultaneous and successive action, to flashbacks, that our comprehension is automatic; but in the early years, the public had a hard time deciphering this new pictorial grammar. They needed an explicador to guide them from scene to scene.
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- New GAIKA record. I met him once. Talked for some hours. Lovely guy.
- 12,000 year old flutes made from bird bones
- Edvard Munch’s summer house

70s Sci-Fi art shows off a small collection of what are probably now curiosities. Here in Britain, weekly comics (which they mostly were) did both a Summer Special issue and a big hardback Annual at Christmas. One of the things I looked forward to at Xmas as a kid was getting one or two Annuals. It was really nice to see some again. That’s a Brian Bolland cover. I was lucky enough to hit a bucket list item very early in my career – Brian Bolland did the cover for the first issue of my first monthly comics job, HELLSTORM for Marvel.
American comics sometimes did annuals – I think they went out of fashion at some point there. But British comics were anthologies, and so the summer specials annuals had really wide ranges of material. often by new or obscure artists, and were stuffed with articles. Garth Ennis and I both learned out to write comics from the printing of one page of John Wagner/Alan Grant script in a 2000AD Summer Special.

Speaking of organ adoration, and despite the book’s title, there is very little explicitly sexual here. Describing the lingam worship of Hindu Shivaism, which takes place under “an umbrageous Bael” or “fine Ficus” — and, if both are lacking, “the poor god is often reduced to the stump of a tree” — the author cautions a potentially salacious audience: “My readers must not fancy that this worship is indecent, or even productive of licentiousness. It is conducted by men, women and children of modest mien, and pure and spotless lives.” He proceeds to admit that, at certain seasons, “the passions are roused and the people proceed to excesses” — but these are, he thinks, significantly less common than in the rites of Eastern Christianity.
Although published anonymously, the Phallic Series is undoubtedly the work of Hargrave Jennings (1817–1890), whom Paschal Beverly Randolph heralded as “the chief Rosicrucian of all England”.
St. Andrew’s Cathedral was believed to be haunted as early as 1890. Construction had only just begun on the new cathedral, when a lone gunman shot and killed an innocent man—David Fee—as Christmas Eve Mass was letting out. According to court records, during the subsequent trial, the defendant’s lawyer argued that his client had mistaken David Fee for “a ghost.”
I just found this story buried at the bottom of my email – seems I sent myself the link at some point.
It wasn’t long before Francis Fuller—the Irishman—began to demonstrate symptoms of “insanity.” By today’s standards, Fuller would have likely been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He heard voices, for example, saying that his travel companions were part of a conspiracy to kill him. When the French labourer disappeared, the priests believed that he had simply become tired of Fuller’s increasing instability. In later years, reporters would speculate that he might have been Fuller’s first victim.
Bishop Seghers believed he could control Fuller, despite the concerns of the other priests. Frustrated with the situation, the bishop sent the priests on a side mission while he and Fuller carried on with three First Nation guides. One of the guides left the party at a trading station. The remaining members continued on their way. Fuller began to act more and more erratic.
On the morning of November 28, 1886, Fuller shot Bishop Seghers through the heart as he leaned over to gather his gear. The man died instantly in front of the two horrified guides. Fuller immediately began to act even more bizarre, shaking one of the guide’s hands while expressing to them that “the man” needed to be killed. The guides wrapped up the body and left to get help with Fuller accompanying them willingly.
The party reached the village that day. No one knew what to do with Fuller. He wasn’t immediately incarcerated, but was instead sent to another village for the winter, away from two local white women who had expressed “terror” at being in his presence. Fuller continued to act strangely over the duration of the winter, apparently changing his story as to what had happened several times.
The largest bronze mirror and largest dakō iron sword in Japan were discovered at a late-fourth century tomb mound in the city of Nara, its board of education and an archeological institute that supported the excavation said Wednesday.

Mirror and shields are considered to be tools to protect the dead from evil spirits. The sword is thought to have been enlarged to increase its power…

Norwegian archaeologists believe they have found the world’s oldest runestone inscribed almost 2,000 years ago, making it several centuries older than previous discoveries, they announced on Tuesday.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2’); });The square brown sandstone rock, measuring about 30 by 30 centimeters (12 by 12 inches), was found during the excavation of an ancient burial ground in late 2021, at Tyrifjorden northwest of Oslo, ahead of construction on a railway line.
Carbon dating of bones and wood found in a grave beside the rune suggest that it was inscribed sometime between year one and 250 AD, Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History said.
Headline: The Oldest Art In The World Wasn’t Made By Humans:
One of the most hotly debated questions in the history of Neanderthal research has been whether they created art. In the past few years, the consensus has become that they did, sometimes. But, like their relations at either end of the hominoid evolutionary tree, chimpanzees and Homo sapiens, Neanderthals’ behavior varied culturally from group to group and over time.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2’); });Their art was perhaps more abstract than the stereotypical figure and animal cave paintings Homo Sapiens made, after the Neanderthals disappeared about 30,000 years ago. But archaeologists are beginning to appreciate how creative Neanderthal art was in its own right.

In 1921, two skeletons were found in St Osyth while building renovations were taking place. The elbows and knees of the two women’s skeletons were riveted through with iron pins, to prevent them walking as ‘living dead’.
A primitive writing system used by ice age hunter-gatherers appears to have been uncovered by an amateur archaeologist, who concluded that the 20,000-year-old markings were a form of lunar calendar.
The research suggests cave drawings were not only a form of artistic expression but also used to record sophisticated information about the timing of animals’ reproductive cycles.
Ben Bacon spent countless hours trying to decode the “proto-writing” system, which is believed to predate other equivalent record-keeping systems by at least 10,000 years.
So much to unpack here. “Proto-writing.” European Ice Age informational markings.
I glanced at the title of a book the other day: something about a history of magic from the Ice Age to the present day. I wonder how this folds in with that.
While similar art has been found at other ancient settlements in the region, the Sayburç images are unique in that they appear to be related to one another. The two panels are horizontally adjacent, creating a progressing scene. Each features similar images—someone facing off against dangerous animals—also indicating a coherent narrative.
“These figures, engraved together to depict a narrative, are the first known examples of such a holistic scene,” said archaeologist Dr. Eylem Özdoğan, from Istanbul University, “This was a picture of the stories that formed the ideology of the people of that period.”
