History: August 2008 Archives

History's greatest journeys

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The creative folks at Los Angeles-based GOOD magazine have created an interactive infographic documenting "history's greatest journeys," including trips from travelers like Amelia Earhart, Ken Kesey, Columbus, and Jack Kerouac. Click on a journey for a quick introduction and to see the route plotted on a map of the world, then click "explore" to see historical photos and interesting facts along the way.

George Orwell blogs from the dead

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Two weeks ago, George Orwell started blogging.

Yes, the man who gave voice to the barnyard in the anti-Stalinist "Animal Farm" and created the original Big Brother in "1984" has joined the blogosphere -- even though he died 58 years ago.

The group behind The Orwell Prize, which honors political writing in Great Britain, is resurrecting its namesake's writings in real time, publishing Orwell's domestic and political musings exactly 70 years after they were written.

The blog is a handful of posts into the four years' worth of diary entries. The publication mirror the composition dates; Orwell's Aug. 9, 1938, entry went up on Aug. 9.

Orwell continued the domestic and political journals through October 1942, meaning the blog entries will cease in October 2012.

So far, Orwell has spoken of the weather, catching snakes, picking barley, ripening blackberries and the growth of a Sardinian mouflon sheep and an ass-zebra hybrid. And that's just his domestic fare. The political stuff comes Sept. 7.

And if you see a typo, don't go after the site administrator. The diaries are published exactly as Orwell wrote them, errors and all.

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This page is a archive of entries in the History category from August 2008.

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