history
 Here is a pictorial history of how the Joker evolved from campy, annoying prankster to murderous, dark villain. Link.
Any reviews on The Dark Knight? Share it in the comments.
Historians have found the earliest digital computer music recording, which was made in 1951 by the BBC for a musical performance in a children's radio show.
The recording captures one of the earliest computers to use short term random access memory playing God Save the King, Baa Baa Black Sheep and a short piece of Glenn Miller's In The Mood.
The Ferranti Mark 1 computer was built by UK electrical engineering firm Ferranti in collaboration with Manchester University, UK. It was the world's first commercial computer, and nine were sold between 1951 and 1957.
Link to article. Link to mp3 file of recording [via MeFi]
 Here is a map which shows the first moonwalk done on July 21, 1969. Link to full image.
 Here is an animated mockumentary that omaggs2000 put together explaining the history of evil in western civilization from Ancient Greece to present day. If you don't enjoy the story, you will enjoy the animation. Link.
After 85 years since he was discovered, King Tut's face is finally being unveiled to the public.
Archaeologists took the mummy from its stone sarcophagus and placed it in a climate-controlled case inside his tomb in Luxor's Valley of the Kings.
Until now, only about 50 living people have seen the face of the boy king, who died more than 3,000 years ago.
As experts lifted Tutankhamun from his coffin they briefly set aside the white linen covering his remains, revealing a shrivelled black face and body.
The move is part of a plan to protect the remains. Archaeologists say they are under threat from the heat and the humidity brought into the tomb by the vast numbers of tourists visiting each year.
Link
 For those of you who like history and also enjoy hairy upper lips then you will enjoy the daily blog Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century. So what will you find on the site? Lots and lots of hair.
Dear Gentle Reader,
Many of the following pages have graphic and clear images of the masculine mustache in all its forms, both sublime and grotesque. My intent is not to shock or titillate, but merely to inform on the subject. The Nineteenth Century gave us many things, but above all it was a hotbed of facial hair experimentation and this is but a poor sampling of those many lost forms.
I don't know if I can handle all of this facial hair masculinity. [via delicious]
 Illustrator James Turner created The Map of Humanity in order to describe the human condition in an organized map form based on names from history and fiction. Here James Turner describes the map in his own words.
In December of 2006, a former United States Army Intelligence officer donated photographs of German SS officers in the notorious Auschwitz he had found more than 60 years ago while serving in Germany.
As Ms. Erbelding and other archivists reviewed the album, they realized they had a scrapbook of sorts of the lives of Auschwitz’s senior SS officers that was maintained by Karl Höcker, the adjutant to the camp commandant. Rather than showing the men performing their death camp duties, the photos depicted, among other things, a horde of SS men singing cheerily to the accompaniment of an accordionist, Höcker lighting the camp’s Christmas tree, a cadre of young SS women frolicking and officers relaxing, some with tunics shed, for a smoking break.
 Joe Clark wrote an interesting and extensive article, Inscribed in the Living Tile - Type in the Toronto Subway, on the history and degradation of typography in the Toronto Subway.
The Toronto subway has a typographic heritage all its own, starting with a unique font. But, with renovation after renovation and after a series of new station additions, signage and wayfinding in the system are a total mess. The latest “standard” in Toronto subway signage uses fake Helvetica and is a clone of Massimo Vignelli’s work from 40 years ago.
It's a long read, but an interesting one. [via digg]
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