Philip B. Downing (1857-1934) was an African American inventor from Providence, Rhode Island. He best known for his two most significant inventions, the street letter box, and operating street railway switches. Collection mailboxes, adopted by the postal service in the 1850’s, were made for the public to deposit outgoing mail…
Often, outsider art overlaps with terms such as “self-taught art” or “ contemporary folk art .” Some of the first American artists to be identified under this movement include Horace Pippin, William Edmondson, and John Kane. John Kane, “ In a Library ,” 1860-1934. Third, outsider artists are often motivated…
The Monroe Doctrine was the declaration by President James Monroe, in December 1823, that the United States would not tolerate a European nation colonizing an independent nation in North or South America.The United States warned it would consider any such intervention in the Western Hemisphere to be a hostile act.…
In the more than 40 years since its creation by Dr. Sheila Eyberg at the Oregon Health Sciences University, PCIT has been studied worldwide in connection with a variety of populations and has been found to be an efficacious and effective intervention for a myriad of emotional and behavioral difficulties.…
The first vampire started out as not a vampire at all, but as a human man named Ambrogio. He was an Italian-born adventurer who fate brought to Delphi, in Greece. You can read the full story here, but in a nutshell a series of blessings and curses transformed this young…
Photobucket was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal and received funding from Trinity Ventures. It was acquired by Fox Interactive Media in 2007. In December 2009, Fox’s parent company, News Corp, sold Photobucket to Seattle mobile imaging startup Ontela. Ontela then renamed itself Photobucket Inc. Photobucket is…
Larry Adelman was Series Executive Producer of RACE – The Power of an Illusion and co-director of California Newsreel. RACE—The Power of an Illusion was first broadcast and released back in 2003. The three-part documentary series asks a question so basic it’s rarely raised: What is this thing called ’race’?…
The Federalist, commonly referred to as the Federalist Papers, is a series of 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison between October 1787 and May 1788. The essays were published anonymously, under the pen name “Publius,” in various New York state newspapers of the time. &…
Each day, approximately 1 million pizzas are consumed in Italy. Pizza here is popular both among locals and tourists who want to try a taste of authentic Italian cuisine. There are around 63,000 pizzerias in Italy, employing about 100,000 pizza makers. Which Country Eats the Most? According to FAO consumption…
Abstract Theater by Juliette Loubens. Vasily Kandinsky backdated this work to 1910 (in the signature at the lower right), probably in order to claim that he was the first abstract artist — most art historians believe it dates to 1913. His 1909 text On the Spiritual in Art justifies abstraction…