Monday links

Animated map of the changing borders and population of Europe: every year since 400 BC.

Why all the actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age have such a distinct and strange accent.

We All Nearly Missed The Largest Underwater Volcano Eruption Ever Recorded.

Wave tank demonstration showing the impact of coastal defenses on flood risk.

Found: Two New Drawings by Vincent van Gogh

Big Brother on wheels: Why your car company may know more about you than your spouse.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include weird vintage beauty hacks, the birthdays of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Stonewall Jackson (including the story of his left arm's separate grave), how apple pie became "American", and the anniversary of  French King Louis XVI's guillotining.

Tuesday links

It's the anniversary of the birth of Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette. Related: Adrienne de Noailles: Wife of Lafayette.

Images from La Tomatina, the world's largest annual tomato fight.

The Day Van Gogh Cut Off His Ear. Read Paul Gauguin's account of that night and the aftermath.

From 1921, here's the Intelligence Test That Thomas Edison Gave to Job Seekers.

The History of Tater Tots.

A New Experiment Reveals the Secret Behind 200,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Glue.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include V-J Day, cancer treatment in the 1800's, estimated insect deaths due to car windshield collisions, cooking with lava, and competitive rock paper scissors.

Thursday links

It's Vincent Van Gogh’s birthday - here are his rarely-seen sketchbooks and the unexpected math behind Starry Night.

Who Owns Your Face? Advertising companies, tech giants, data collectors, and the federal government, it turns out.

Brutalist Sand Castles.

On March 30, 1848, Niagara Falls Ran Dry. Bonus: Niagara Falls sketch by Abbott & Costello and The Three Stooges.

Great Migrations: Following human genes around the world.

The United States v. Paramount and How Movie Theater Concessions Got So Expensive.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include how big land animals can get, where to hide from nuclear bombs, a collection of vintage celebrity endorsements, and the origin stories of famous sports.

Friday links

Scary-Ass Cow Science: Scientist Draws Eyes on Cow Butts to Protect Them from Lions.

How far would you go for science? Would you shove jellyfish tentacles under your arms?

These Guys Just Built the World’s Largest Nerf Gun.

Bad taxidermy.

Exactly How Much Of His Ear Did Vincent Van Gogh Slice Off?

Testing Mobility in Medieval Armor. Related: a gallery of Medieval Suits of Armor.

ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include a history of trial by combat, a letter from Kurt Vonnegut in 1988 to the Ladies & Gentlemen of A.D. 2088, Bastille Day, the library that the U.S.-Canada border runs through, and how to cook a pig in the ground.

Wednesday links

On March 30, 1848, Niagara Falls Ran Dry, with bonus Niagara Falls sketch by Abbott & Costello and The Three Stooges.

Before computers: Inside the FBI’s Colossal Fingerprint Factory.

In this 2.5 minute video, Carl Sagan lucidly explains how Eratosthenes not only deduced a spherical earth, but accurately calculated its diameter in 200 B.C.

For Van Gogh’s birthday, his recently-discovered sketchbooks and the unexpected math behind "Starry Night"

Prozac in the Water Makes Fighting Fish More Mellow.

The Demonic Origins of Ventriloquism.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include the history and calculations behind Easter's varying dates, a gallery of Easter bunnies terrifying children, and a collection of videos of violence against marshmallow peeps.

Van Gogh’s rarely-seen sketchbooks

The more I am spent, ill, the cracked pot - by so much more am I the artist - the creative artist. 

~ Vincent Willem Van Gogh (wiki) (quoted in Mark Roskill, ed., The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh)

Here is a brain consumed by the fire of a star. It frees itself in its work just before the catastrophe. Deepest tragedy takes place here, real tragedy, natural tragedy, exemplary tragedy.

~ Paul Klee (1879-1940) (of Van Gogh, diary, March 1908)

Dutch painter Vincent Willem Van Gogh (wiki) was born on March 30, 1853 (1853-1890) in Groot Zundert, the Netherlands. The most renowned of the post-impressionist painters, Van Gogh began his career with relatively conventional work, but after moving to Paris and coming under the influence of Pissarro (wiki), he adopted the more colorful style for which he is revered. Most of his best work was done in a frenzied 29-month period that ended in his suicide at Arles in 1890. 

Related: The unexpected math behind Van Gogh's "Starry Night" is a rather fascinating look at the mathematics of turbulence.

Although they'd rarely been seen until recently, Vincent van Gogh kept sketchbooks - in an 1882 letter to his brother Theo, he wrote: “My sketchbook shows that I try to catch things ‘in the act.’” 

At Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, Molly Oldfield, as recounted in The Secret Museum, found the artist’s seven surviving sketchbooks, only four with their original cover, meticulously stored in the prints and drawings archive. She has published them, along with sixty other never-before-seen “treasures too precious to display” from the archives and secret storage locations of some of the world’s top cultural institutions. 

Of Van Gogh's early sketchbooks, Oldfield writes:

The first image he sketched in it was a church in Nuenen (above). He later painted this church in View of the Sea at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen. Curiously, the two paintings once hung in the Amsterdam museum but were stolen in 2002. It remains unknown where they are or who took them, and the pencil sketch from Van Gogh’s notebook endures as the only trace of the missing masterpieces.

‘View of the Sea at Scheveningen’ by Vincent van Gogh, 1882

‘Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen’ by Vincent van Gogh, 1884

Van Gogh’s sunflower sketches from the final sketchbook

The sunflower paintings were actually a series - you can see all of them at Wikipedia, and read the story of how they were inspired by Paul Gauguin (wiki).

Related posts:

The unexpected math behind Van Gogh's "Starry Night".

Vincent van Gogh Possibly Identified in Newly Discovered Group Photo of Famous Artists from 1887.

More on the sketchbooks at Brain Pickings.

Vincent van Gogh Possibly Identified in Newly Discovered Group Photo of Famous Artists from 1887

Interesting (possible) photograph of Vincent Van Gogh (wiki) as an adult:

JULES ANTOINE (1863-1948) ATTR. – Vincent Van Gogh in conversation with friends, Paris, 96 rue Blanche, December 1887 Melanotype, direct positive and reversed image on blackboard (carton photographique), 86×112 mm, “Gautier Martin” stamp, recto. Vincent Van Gogh in conversation with Paul Gauguin, Emile Bernard, Félix Jobbé-Duval. André Antoine is standing between them.

Via This is Colossal:

Some experts believe this recently discovered 1887 tintype showing six men drinking around a table may include a rare sighting of painter Vincent van Gogh. He was known to abhor photography and supposedly never sat for a photo as an adult.

Only two rare photos of the artist as a child are known to exist, taken when he was 13 and 19 (see below). More from Colossal:

The photo went to auction just this weekend and was expected to fetch between $136,000 to $170,000, though a final sale price hasn’t been made public. Still, some experts aren’t convinced. The photo expert for the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam feels it can’t be the artist “because it simply does not look like him,” and also mentions the artist’s desire to never be photographed. Others note that Van Gogh didn’t mention the gathering in his meticulously written letters from the time period.

Van Gogh, Age 13:

And age 19:

More famous, of course, are his self-portraits:

Self Portrait 1889

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889

Lots more self portraits here.