A Scroll-able History of Earth’s Oceans

For its latest issue “Water,” Nautilus takes a look back at the evolution of our often unpredictable oceans. A short, scrolling interactive history provides playful animated backgrounds to colorfully illustrate each major phase of our seas, beginning with the centuries of rain it required to initially fill in our beaches. Over the next billions of years, varying water temperatures, winds and mass currents all contributed …

100 Years of Tattoos

The NSFW visual history tracks the ever-changing nature of body art, from marks of protest to mainstream obsession

While last year’s Artbook/D.A.P. book “Tattoo” explored the art form’s global beginnings and its many cultural expressions, a new book, “100 Years of Tattoos,” focuses the lens on the recent history of body art. The meaning of tattoos—and the attitudes and perceptions surrounding them—has shifted rapidly as different generations experience changes in politics, beliefs and fashion, and author David McComb has put together a captivating …

Ancient Manuscript Reveals Medicine’s Beginnings

When Syriac scholar Dr Gregory Kessel first handled the ancient medicinal manuscript “On the Mixtures and Powers of Simple Drugs,” he immediately knew he had encountered it before. Kessel recalled a stray page at a Harvard library that looked eerily similar and, it turns out, it was one of seven missing pages from the influential text. An ensuing international page-hunt provided five more strays leaving …