Notices by The Public Domain Review (publicdomainrev@mastodon.social)

Born #onthisday in 1778, Humphry Davy, British chemist and inventor and President of the Royal Society. Read @MikeJayNet's essay on Davy's pioneering early experiments with Nitrous Oxide (AKA Laughing Gas). https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/o-excellent-air-bag-humphry-davy-and-nitrous-oxide #otd

#OnThisDay in 1769, while on Tahiti as part of Captain Cook’s first great voyage to the South Pacific, Joseph Banks gives us the first known written description of #surfing... https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/extracts-from-the-endeavour-journal-of-joseph-banks-1769 #OTD

From our Conjectures series: At the intersection of surfing and medieval cathedrals, from the contents of a suitcase, Melissa McCarthy stages a plot that walks its way across paranoia, language, and the pursuit of knowledge.... https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/an-archaeology-of-surf

Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky (ca. 1816), a painting by Benjamin West featured in our essay by Kevin Duong exploring how French revolutionaries, in need of a symbol for the "will of the people", turned to the thunderbolt: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/flash-mob-revolution-lightning-and-the-people-s-will?utm_content=buffer14d89&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

It was originally made to be hung on the wall and if you would like to do just that, on your very own wall, you can purchase a special edition print — measuring a whopping 64 by 18 inches — from our shop: https://publicdomainreview.org/product/an-anciente-mappe-of-fairyland/

Bernard Sleigh’s Anciente Mappe of Fairyland, originally published in 1917, is a stunning six-foot-long map that depicts the worlds of various myths, fairytales, and folklore on one single landscape: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/an-anciente-mappe-of-fairyland/

#OnThisDay in 1769, in Tahiti, Joseph Banks loses his trousers... https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/extracts-from-the-endeavour-journal-of-joseph-banks-1769 #OTD

An aphrodisiac that sprouts beneath incontinent hanged men? A heady hallucinogen that shrieks so loud it kills humans and dogs? Meet the mandrake, a root steeped in myth that has inspired a rich visual tradition across 12 centuries: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/mandrakes

“So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between House of Have and House of Want, progress is not real” — Henry George, Poverty & Progress, 1879 https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/progress-and-poverty/

19th-century Audible.

Albert Robida illustration from Octave Uzanne’s “The End of Books” (1894), the French bibliophile's story imagining how printed text might disappear in the face of rapid advances in phonographic technology: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/octave-uzannes-the-end-of-books-1894

The Cloud, one of the many lovely illustrations by Robert Anning Bell for a 1902 edition of Shelley poems. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/poems-of-shelley-illustrated-by-robert-anning-bell-1902

Get fit for summer in style with this 1913 book on "Swedish House-Gymnastics" — https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/swedish-house-gymnastics-1913

The village of Eyam has long been considered a case study in self-sacrifice — the 17th-century villagers choosing to quarantine (and so suffer huge losses) in order to protect others in the region from plague. Or so the story goes. But is it a myth? https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/history-and-antiquities-of-eyam

Intaglio print from William Blake’s series For the Children: The Gates of Paradise (1787-93).

More from the series here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/william-blakes-the-gates-of-paradise

Filippo Balbi, Testa Anatomica, 1854.

More on this unique Arcimboldo-esque painting here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/testa-anatomica @ExploreWellcome

From our Conjectures series... Julian Chehirian's “Last Pole”, in which he goes looking for the history of telecommunication, and is left sitting in the slim shadow of a lightening rod, listening to a voice from beyond the grave: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/last-pole

#SundayReads — Katherine Harvey investigates the story of Old Tom Parr (died 1635), who claimed to have lived to 152, and the fraudulent longevity business that became his namesake in the 19th century: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-old-old-very-old-man/

David Ramsay Hay’s mapping of colour onto musical notes, a diagram from his The Laws of Harmonious Colouring (1838).⠀More in @carmelrazmusic's essay “Music of the Squares” on a Hay's attempt to use music theory to evaluate visual beauty — https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/music-of-the-squares-david-ramsay-hay-and-the-reinvention-of-pythagorean-aesthetics

The story of Shen Nong, born of a princess and heavenly dragon, and teacher to the ancient Chinese of agriculture and herbal medicine: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-legend-of-the-divine-farmer @ExploreWellcome

The teenage diaries of Queen Victoria — born #onthisday in 1819. The excerpts included in the 1912 book span from 1832, when Victoria was 13, to 1840, the same year that she married her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha at the age of 20: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/queen-victoria-s-teenage-diaries-1912 #otd