Ikigai DailyThe long now
Empires, inventions, ruptures and overlooked lives that still shape the present tense.
In this room
Cards are connected by subject and by mood. Move through the complete sequence below, or cross into a neighbouring part of the archive.
Q0545The 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo lit the fuse of the First World War — one shot that, through a web of alliances, set the world ablaze.
Q0546When British India split into India and Pakistan in 1947, around 15 million people fled across the new borders and hundreds of thousands died — one of the largest migrations in history.
Q0547Adopted in 1948 after the horrors of the Second World War, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights set out, for the first time, rights meant to belong to every human being.
Q0548For thirteen days in October 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the US and USSR to the edge of nuclear war — the closest the Cold War ever came to catastrophe.
Q0549Completed in 2003, the Human Genome Project produced the first full read of human DNA — a shared reference map that transformed biology, medicine and our sense of ourselves.
Q0550Socrates wrote nothing himself; we know him only through his students, chiefly Plato — so the 'Socrates' we quote is always seen through another's eyes.
Q0551Completed around AD 80, the Colosseum could hold up to 80,000 spectators for gladiator games and spectacles — Roman engineering built for mass entertainment, still standing.
Q0552The Black Death likely began in Central Asia, then travelled trade routes to Europe in the 1340s — carried, in part, along the very networks that made medieval commerce possible.
Q0553The Gutenberg Bible, printed around 1455 with movable metal type, was Europe's first major book from a press — the spark of a revolution in how knowledge spread.
Q0558'Salary' comes from Latin salarium, tied to sal, salt. Salt was so valuable in Rome that it shaped pay and trade — a word still carrying the taste of ancient economics.
Q0560'Quarantine' comes from the Italian for forty days — the time plague-era Venice made arriving ships wait offshore before landing. A public-health word still counting to forty.
Q0566By the end of 1990 Tim Berners-Lee had the first web server and browser running at CERN — the entire World Wide Web, at that moment, fit on a single desk.
Q0567On 30 April 1993 CERN placed the Web's software in the public domain, free for anyone to use — a decision that let the web explode into the shared space it is today.
Q0569Marie Curie won Nobel Prizes in two sciences — Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911) — the first person ever to do so, and still one of very few.
Q0570The Wright Flyer's first flight in 1903 lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet (37 m) — shorter than the wingspan of a modern airliner, yet it opened the whole age of flight.
Q0574During the First World War Marie Curie built mobile X-ray units, driving them to the front herself so surgeons could find bullets and shrapnel — her science put directly to saving lives.
Q0605The Library of Congress notes about 180 Gutenberg Bibles were printed around 1455 — a small run by modern standards, yet each copy helped begin the print age.
Q0606Of roughly 180 Gutenberg Bibles, most were printed on paper and a few dozen on more luxurious vellum — even at the dawn of printing, there were premium editions.
Q0615The Gutenberg Bible shows early printing was not cheap mass production: some copies were finished by hand with painted initials, blending new machinery with old craft.
Q0616Bach's music is often described as the summit of the Baroque — its intricate counterpoint and balance so complete that later composers studied it as a model of the craft.
Q0618Found in 1799 and held in the British Museum, the Rosetta Stone repeats one decree of 196 BC in three scripts. The readable Greek text let Jean-François Champollion decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1822.
Q0619The decree honours the young pharaoh Ptolemy V. Its three parallel scripts — hieroglyphic, Demotic and Greek — turned the Rosetta Stone into the key that unlocked ancient Egyptian writing in 1822.
Q0620National Geographic notes the Great Pyramid is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world still standing — the sole survivor of a legendary list.
Q0621National Geographic notes the Great Pyramid was the tallest human-made structure on Earth for nearly 4,000 years — a record no building broke until the modern age.