Thursday links

October 17, 1814: the London Beer Flood killed 8 people.

From 1865, Mark Twain's proposal for climate control.

Inside Notre Dame: a blow-by-blow account of the restoration process.

Here, on one sheet of paper, is a map of the entire internet as of 1973.

How to hide a billion dollars.

Lucid Decapitation.

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include that time Columbus (using knowledge of an upcoming eclipse) tricked the Jamaicans into providing supplies, painting zebra stripes on cows to ward off biting flies, everything you wanted to know about eyebrow interpretation from the 16th century, and making a knife out of frozen human poop. 

Here, on one sheet of paper, is a map of the entire internet as of 1973

A bit of internet history, via Twitter user David Newbury (@workergnome):

Going through old papers my dad gave me, I found his map of the internet as of May 1973. 

The entire internet.

Wikipedia's slightly clearer version of the same map used by @workergnome

In the very early years of the Internet, it was the secret and very small ARPANET (wiki) - it had started in the late 1960s, with just four locations (map, right). 

Arpanet's original 4 locations, via @gadgetopia

By 1973, it had expanded to a small handful of government labs, research universities, and private companies, but still so few that the entire network could be mapped on a single sheet of paper.

Recently, Newbury found the map above among his dad’s papers and posted it online. You can find Stanford, UCLA, Utah and UCSB, the original members, but by 1973, ARPANET had expanded east, to Case Western, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, and MIT. There are government labs, like Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the Army’s Aberdeen Ballistic Research Lab, and private research organizations like MITRE and Xerox. 

The map Newbury found was printed in a report from the NASA Ames Research Center, which also included this map, showing the geographical spread of the network:

The network, mapped. NASA

And by 1977, there was this, which claimed it was based on the “best information obtainable”. Larger version here.

No mention of Al Gore, who's actual quote on the subject was, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

via Atlas Obscura

Friday links

Here, on one sheet of paper, is a map of the entire internet as of 1973.

When Americans Outlawed Christmas.

The Island Where Donkeys Wear Pajamas.

Advice from c. 1200: How to Survive the Winter. Don't forget to lay off the purging and blood-letting, and keep your hands and feet covered in wolf grease.

Humans and Cats Have a Strange, Complicated History.

Digital Incarceration: The Finger Pillory.

ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, and include lots of ugly Christmas sweaters (and DIY instructions for making your own), how animals cope with cold, debunking Kwanzaa, and a 1562 map of America showing the homes of giants, mermaids, dragons and cannibals. Also, T'was the Overnight Before Christmas: the merry tale of how air cargo deregulation led to Amazon.