Even before he was old enough to officially rule France and the territories the nation had acquired throughout the world, King Louis XV knew his geography. He was eight years old when Guillaume Delisle, the great mapmaker who pioneered scientific cartography, took the position of Royal Geographer...
As the colonies prepared for a revolution in 1775, Pennsylvania faced a conflict of its own. Dissatisfaction with its conservative governing body, which had not supported any proposals for independence, had led to the formation of local “committees” that were demanding major change. In June 1776...
“A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition—a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of...
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) solved a key puzzle for physicists in 1915 with his celebrated theory of relativity, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, and, most significantly, fundamentally changed our understanding of space and time. Recognized world-wide as a great scientist, Einstein received...
At first glance, it may seem contradictory that celebrated artist Chuck Close is best known for his large-scale portraits. Close has prosopagnosia, which means that he has trouble recognizing faces—even those of people he has known for years. But flattening out a face through the process of painting...
In the case of architect Frank Furness (1839-1912), one can easily see how the buildings are the product of the man. Furness has been described as hotheaded and difficult, as well as pioneering and imaginative. Critics and admirers alike have called his buildings challenging, even outrageous, but...
This Arma Christi Roll arrived at CCAHA as a rolled bundle of parchment, linen, and leather measuring just five inches wide and a few inches tall. When CCAHA Paper Conservator Minah Song unrolled it for examination, she revealed a nearly six-foot-long manuscript—one of just 20 known copies of the...
A couple from the Philadelphia area was wandering through the shops in London’s Kensington district, perusing old maps and prints, when the two came across a piece of history that reminded them of home: an aquatint and etching by T. Cartwright called Philadelphia, from the Great Tree at Kensington...
