Magna Carta comes to the National Archives in DC

by Grant Martin on

If you were following the Sotheby’s auctions late last year (or listening to NPR the day of the sale), you probably heard that a rare copy of the Magna Carta, one of the most important documents in the history of democracy, was sold to a Mr. David Rubenstien, of the private equity company Carlyle Group.

Speculation on where that version of the document, originally commissioned by the King of England in 1297, would end up, ranged from lost somewhere into a private collection to some sort of public display.

Luckily, this one wont end up on Steven Spielburg’s wall. The generous Mr. Rubenstien announced today that his company was loaning the treasure to the National Archives in Washington DC, where it will soon be put on display for the public to see, along with the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution. How exciting.

The document is slated to go on display on the 12th of this month. Make sure you stop by and take a look if you’re in the neighborhood — admission is free!

Infiltrating North Korea Part 19: A Final Word

by Neil Woodburn on


Infiltrating North Korea is a 19-part series exploring the world’s most reclusive nation and its bizarre, anachronistic way of life. To start reading at the beginning of the series, be sure to click here.

Although it was a short trip of only five days, my time in North Korea proved to be one of the most fascinating journeys I’ve ever taken.

This brief glimpse into the world’s most reclusive nation was a rare opportunity to go back in time and witness what the Soviet Union was like fifty years ago. Everything I’ve ever read about the former USSR was alive and well in the streets of Pyongyang; red banners hanging everywhere, blanket censorship, ubiquitous propaganda, very few automobiles, fantastic and accessible cultural arts, barely any crime, and a tightly controlled populace afraid to even fold a newspaper with an image of Kim Il Sung on the front for fear of doing something sacrilegious to the Great Leader’s image.

The North Koreans, however, have taken this concept of totalitarianism even further than the Soviets ever did. The Korean cult of personality, for example, requires that people not only wear a pin of Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il on their lapel every day, but also that they bow to any statue of the leaders they come across–and there are a lot of statues in North Korea. Not even Stalin nor Lenin were worshipped to such a degree.The North Koreans are also more paranoid about tourists than their Soviet predecessors; we weren’t allowed to speak to anyone during our time in North Korea, we were routinely prohibited from taking photographs, and we couldn’t wander about on our own. We saw only what the government wanted us to see and spoke only to those thoroughly vetted and officially approved to deal with tourists.

Knowing that my journey to North Korea was carefully regulated to reveal only the positive sides of this “socialist paradise” was extraordinarily frustrating. History is full of naïve international observers who were similarly distracted by smoke and mirror tactics, and then reported back to the civilized world about the excellent conditions they witnessed at various prisons, camps, and hellholes.


Totalitarian governments are very effective with their Potemkin villages and deceitful webs and I wanted to make sure I did not fall victim as well. I therefore read everything I could get my hands on before visiting the country. If you plan on going yourself, I highly recommend that you do the same, otherwise you will be won over by singing children, clean streets, well dressed citizens, and a fanatical devotion to socialism.

In fact, I will go so far as to say that it’s criminal to visit North Korea without educating yourself first. Mandatory reading starts with The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Hwan–the son of a privileged Pyongyang family who spent ten years of his life, starting at the age of nine, in a North Korean labor camp. Chol-Hwan is coincidently my age and it was therefore particularly poignant knowing that at the same time I was going to high school homecoming dances and football games in the 1980s, Chol-Hwan was being beaten, brainwashed, and forced to cut trees and dig holes in freezing temperatures without adequate clothing. And, he ate rats to survive.

This certainly raises a moral conundrum; should tourists pay exorbitant prices to visit this totalitarian nation knowing that their hard currency helps support the regime?

I scoffed at this originally because my experience in traveling has taught me that human interaction with supposed “enemies” is the very best diplomacy in the world. In addition, bringing an outside perspective to an imprisoned people can also be extraordinarily powerful. The whole reason East Germany was the first communist country to fall was because they had more access to the outside world than any other communist country–they saw what life was like on the other side of the Wall and they rebelled.


The problem with North Korea, however, is that the people remain isolated even in the presence of foreigners. We were never given a chance to speak or interact with a single person. My initial belief that I could make some type of impact, perhaps by simply giving a child a candy bar, turned out to be an absurd impossibility.

And, as a result, my presence did nothing more than slightly boost the government coffers and help Kim Jong Il purchase more of his beloved premium cognac while the rest of the country starves.

And so, I leave it up to you to decide on whether such a trip is appropriate or not (and if you’d like contact information for my travel agent, please email me). Despite my frustrations, however, I feel fortunate that I was able to go and I can only hope that my injection of hard currency into the Kim Jong Il regime has been negated by this fair and balanced account of my time spent in the Hermit Kingdom.

Yesterday: A Tale of Two Cities

One for the Road: Hotel – An American History

by Kelly Amabile on

A copy of this book, paired with some room reservations at a classic American hotel, might be a nice holiday gift for the history buff in your life: Hotel – An American History is a volume of stories and illustrations that explores how the hotel came to be in this country. The book tracks the invention of hotels in America, as inns and taverns gave way to the creation of majestic architectural masterpieces suited with grand ballrooms and private bed chambers. This review tells more:

Once upon a time, hotels were simply way-stations where weary travelers could stop to rest along a journey that could take many days. But over the centuries, hotels evolved into the symbols of American capitalism and of urban life. The biggest and best of them provided glamour, sophistication, elegance, and excitement, and A. K. Sandoval-Strausz has now given them the recognition they deserve. Beautifully illustrated and engagingly written, Hotel will reward both the specialist and the general reader.-Kenneth T. Jackson, Columbia University

Topics explored include: What it was like to sleep, eat, and socialize at a hotel in the mid-1800s; How hotelkeepers dealt with the illicit activities of adulterers, thieves, and violent guests; The stories behind America’s greatest hotels, including the Waldorf-Astoria, the Plaza, the Willard, the Blackstone, and the Fairmont; and how the development of steamboats and locomotives helped create a nationwide network of hotels.

Bizarre dinosaur on display at National Geographic Museum

by Abha Malpani on


The fact that until about 65-million years ago dinosaurs dominated our land is as fascinating as it is unfathomable.

For anybody even remotely interested in the evolution of life forms on our planet that goes back 230 million years, understanding how dinosaurs existed is enthralling. This is why National Geographic’s latest exhibition that displays original fossils of the Nigersaurus — one of the most bizarre dinosaurs ever, is worth checking out.

Remants of which were first discovered in 1993, the Nigersaurus was bizarre because it had a long shovel shaped vaccum cleaner type muzzle that sucked up plants with its 600-teeth full jaw — hence dubbed by some as the “mesozoic lawnmower”. If broken, these teeth could regenerate rapidly as each tooth had 10 replacement ones behind them. It grazed like a cow with its head down, this was unusual as dinosaurs are known to eat from trees with their necks up long and high. At 30-feet long, you can imagine its bulk, but funnily it had fragile feather-light bones — some of which are transluscent.

The exhibition will feature a life size reconstructed skeleton of the animal, a flesh model of its head and neck, and a cast of its brain.

The exhibition “Extreme Dinosaur: Africa’s Long-Necked Fern Mower” began yesterday at the National Geographic Museum at Explorers Hall (1145 17th Street, N.W., Washington D.C.), and will run until Tuesday March 18, 2008; admission is free. For more information you can visit www.ngmuseum.org.

King Tut: you just can’t get enough!

by Abha Malpani on

Well, I certainly can’t.

I don’t know why, but the whole King Tut deal was one of the very few things that stuck with me in history class.

There is something spooky yet exciting about pharaohs and mummies, and King Tut is the 3500-year old mummy of all mummies. Unbound in the 20th Century by an English dude who died shortly after (apparently from the ‘curse‘ of having the balls to open Tut’s tomb!), his story seems to be forever looming in mummy context.

This probably explains why 225,000 tickets have been pre-sold in London for a Tutankhamun Treasures exhibition that will be held there from November 15, 2007 – August 31, 2008. The exhibition will then move to Dallas for 7-months, sometime in October 2008.

King Tut began his rule in Egypt when he was nine, and died at 19 — how and why remains unclear, but his mummified body lay untouched until 1922. Ever since, forensic scientists have tried to reconstruct his face and body, but not without debate on it’s structure and real skin color. In this exhibition for the first time ever, his ‘true’ face will be revealed!

This is fascinating, and if I was in London I would definitely go, but what I fail to understand is that with over 8.6 million tourists visiting Egypt every year, why does Egypt let this treasure tomb tour the world?