Month: March 2015

Today, social media is king. According to a Pew Research Center study, nearly one in three Americans get their news from social media.1 How, though, did colonial Americans get their information? While newspapers were the main source of news, their content was often limited to local happenings and news from London. Pamphlets filled the gap. Ranging […]

Humans have long known that a special relationship exists between the diameter and circumference of a circle. As early as 2000 BCE, some had even found numbers to represent this relationship. By this date, the Babylonians knew that the circumference of a circle was always approximately 3 1/8 times larger than its diameter, while the […]

The Rare Book and Manuscript Library has finished processing an archival collection of French opera autographs donated by Illinois alumnus and operatic sound recording producer Robert Zarbock (’52). The Robert Zarbock collection of opera autographs [Post-1650 MS 0657] is largely composed of letters written by opera singers famous on the Parisian stage in the late-19th […]

Last week on our tumblr, we featured our copy of the Book of Esther to mark the beginning of Purim. When the Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478, many Jews outwardly converted to Catholicism but continued practicing Judaism in secret. Known as anusim, or crypto-Jews, they inserted certain Jewish traditions into Catholic practices. One such […]