NEW ESSAY — “Men with Queer Nerves”: Ross Bullen on the odd phenomenon of “Jumping Frenchmen”, French-Canadian lumberjacks in 19th-c Maine who, at the slightest stimulus, seemed to jump, strike out w/ their limbs, or mimic languages they could not speak: publicdomainreview.org/essay…

Clear Shadows (1867) is a book of silhouette portraits (and riddles) by Ochiai Yoshiiku, depicting members of Edo's “kyōga-awase” club, who played a game similar to Pictionary — illustrating a subject but without drawing the subject itself. More here: publicdomainreview.org/colle…

A few of the many great photos by Heinrich Hamann of Hamburg’s St. Pauli gymnastics society (Turnverein), circa 1900. More than a set of techniques to improve individual fitness, “Turnverein” gymnastics were meant to train a new form of body politic: publicdomainreview.org/colle…

Illuminations by Evrard d'Espinque for a circa 1480 French translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus' 13th-century De Proprietatibus Rerum. More marvellous maps from the manuscript here: publicdomainreview.org/colle…

Would he make your hot celeb liszt? Happy birthday to Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, and famed heartthrob Franz Liszt, born #onthisday in 1811. Leon Botstein explores what we can still learn from "possibly the greatest pianist that has ever lived” publicdomainreview.org/essay…

Edgar Allan Poe was big into code cracking. He once challenged readers of a Philadelphia paper to stump him with coded messages, deciphering dozens before having to “swear off” cryptograms forever. More on how code factors into his stories here: publicdomainreview.org/colle…

Experiment carried out according to the ideas of the French physiologist Charles Richet (1850–1935) who believed in thought transmission. One person makes a drawing, after which another person tries to copy it without seeing the originally drawn picture: publicdomainreview.org/colle…

Colour plates from Edwin D. Babbitt’s Principles of Light and Color (1878). Babbit’s 600-page tome begins as a somewhat sober primer on color theory but goes on to explore the idea that our physical and psychic ills can be cured via “chromotherapy”: publicdomainreview.org/colle…

Pages from a wonderful Italian book of proverbs made by the engraver and painter Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1634–1718). More here: buff.ly/2uKnDmK

Diagram from Edward Livingston Youmans' Chemical Atlas; or, The Chemistry of Familiar Objects (1856). Buy as a print from our online shop here: publicdomainreview.org/produ…

Raven dives into a whale’s mouth and builds a fire; he travels to a town of ghosts, who rob him blind; he teaches a perpetual loser to be the Greatest Gambler in the World... Read the myths of the Tlingit people of southeastern Alaska: publicdomainreview.org/colle…

After complaints about Timothy Dexter's A Pickle for the Knowing Ones (1797) being entirely devoid of punctuation, in future editions the eccentric businessman supplied a supplemental page so that people “may peper and solt as they please”: publicdomainreview.org/colle…

Engraving of the three Cherokee Indians who visited London in 1762 to meet King George III. Read about this remarkable trip in the memoirs of the Anglo-American colonial officer Lieutenant Henry Timberlake, who travelled with them as their emissary: bit.ly/1OeLGKd

Frontispiece by Jay van Everen for American folklorist Parker Fillmore's The Laughing Prince: A Book of Yugoslav Fairy Tales and Folk Tales (1921). Read the (loosely adapted) stories, and see more illustrations, on our website: publicdomainreview.org/colle…

The “Telephonoscope” — a device imagined in a Punch cartoon from 1879, predicting the advent of video chat more than 100 years before Skype or Zoom. See more here: bit.ly/1O1Kyff

Roger McDonald on the mysterious Dr Daniel Fenberger and his investigations into an archive known as “The Book of Halved Things” — from our Conjectures series: xitter.cf/PublicDomainRev/status…

Happy birthday and deathday to 17th-century polymath Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682). See our Browne related content here, including essays by @HoooAW and Claire Preston: publicdomainreview.org/tags/… #OnThisDay #OTD

“American Maiden-hair Fern Fronds” — one of 15 Karl Blossfeldt prints available in our online shop: publicdomainreview.org/shop/… More about Blossfeldt in our post here: publicdomainreview.org/colle…

#SundayReads: Andrew Hui tracks the rise of the private study by revisiting the bibliographic imaginations of Machiavelli, Montaigne, and W. E. B. Du Bois: publicdomainreview.org/essay…

Vincent Carretta takes a look at the remarkable life of the poet Phillis Wheatley, the first ever African-American woman to be published: publicdomainreview.org/essay…

#OnThisDay in 1871, “father of the computer” Charles Babbage passed away. Upon his death, as he himself requested, his brain was donated to science. Photos and description of the "wetware" behind the "hardware" in this 1909 report: publicdomainreview.org/colle… #OTD