Curated playlist
Memory of the World Register
- SmallpoxA hospital cook in Somalia had the world's last naturally occurring smallpox case in 1977.
- A Doll's HouseIbsen wrote a second ending to A Doll's House and called it a "barbaric outrage" on his own play.
- The Wizard of OzThe Wizard of Oz, a 1939 musical fantasy from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, holds a title few films can claim. According to the U.S. Library of Congress, it is the most seen film in cinematic history. A Kansas farm girl is swept away by a tornado…
- De revolutionibus orbium coelestiumAn unsigned letter in Copernicus' book said its ideas need not be true. A Lutheran preacher added it.
- Bibliotheca CorvinianaAfter the Battle of Mohács in 1526, Ottoman forces carried King Matthias's famous library to Istanbul.
- RigvedaThe Rigveda was recited for most of its life without being written down. Its first word is Agni, the sacrificial fire.
- Baltic WayIn 1989, about two million people joined hands in a 675-kilometer line across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
- Gutenberg BibleThe Gutenberg Bible, also known as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42, first surfaces in the record through a letter written in March 1455. In Frankfurt, pages from the new edition were on display to promote it. A man who…
- Tabula PeutingerianaSeveral scholars think the Roman road map Tabula Peutingeriana was stolen. Conrad Celtes found it in 1494.
- Derveni papyrusThe Derveni papyrus survived because the funeral fire that burned it also charred it.
- International Committee on Intellectual CooperationAlbert Einstein resigned from a League of Nations committee, then rejoined within a year.
- Astrid LindgrenIn 1976, Astrid Lindgren's tax rate hit 102 percent. She answered with a satirical story in a newspaper.