“In 1961, the name of Marshall McLuhan was unknown to everyone but his English students at the University of Toronto — and a coterie of academic admirers who followed his abstruse articles in small-circulation quarterlies. But then came two remarkable books — The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) and Understanding Media (1964) — and the graying professor from Canada’s western hinterlands soon found himself characterized by the San Francisco Chronicle as ‘the hottest academic property around.’”

Listen to BBC audio interviews with ACTORS, ARCHITECTS, BROADCASTERS, CARTOONISTS, COMPOSERS, DANCERS, FILMMAKERS, MUSICIANS, PAINTERS, PHILOSOPHERS, PHOTOGRAPHERS, PLAYWRIGHTS, POETS, POLITICAL ACTIVISTS, RELIGIOUS THINKERS, SCIENTISTS, SCULPTORS, SPORTS FIGURES and WRITERS.

“The largest guide to posthumous biography sites on the Web. All listings in Individual Lives link to biographies of people who have died. Lives does not include biographies of people who are still living.”

“Simply the best overview of the long now I am aware of. Displays with utmost intelligence 50 centuries of civilization, as revealed in the complex rise and fall of ancient powers. Because it is not as linear as the famous Histomap, it is not as handy for quickly locating a fact in time, but its extra dimensions make this diagram the one I keep returning to to grok the past 5,000 years.”

“Animated Atlas portrays history by animating maps. A ten minute movie is featured, which is an interactive, geographic history of the United States.”

“How Al Qaeda’s global network slowly came into focus for U.S. intelligence (1993-2001). Click on a box at the top of map to reveal what U.S. intelligence knew at a particular point in time. Then, roll over individual events and names for details.”

“Paper of Record is an historical archive of full-page newspaper images that you can search for unique coverage of past events. The archive is created from newspaper collections on microfilm, preserving the original format of the paper, but saving you hours, even days, of research time. Now, you don’t have to scroll manually through reel after reel of film to unfold history, page by page.”

“What could be the oldest lifelike drawings of human faces have been uncovered in a cave in southern France. The images were first recognised over 50 years ago, but were then lost after doubts were cast on their authenticity.”

“It’s been another wild and wacky year for this wonderful beast we call the web. Here is Shift’s summation of how Web 2001 — aka After The Gold Rush — has gone down so far.”

“Many of us have photographs that are undated but … we have shown that it is often possible to establish the date by carefully comparing with other pictures of known date… We thought it might be interesting to show in detail how a photograph can be dated with a considerable degree of precision.”

“On Oct. 17, seven accomplished designers were presented with the Chrysler Design Awards, prestigious annual prizes for innovation and achievement in various disciplines of design. That afternoon, the editors and reporters of House & Home invited them to sit and to discuss their responses to Sept. 11 and to the situations of the last six weeks. Can — and should — design play an important part? And how?” (Chrysler Design Awards)

“So many poignant words have been written, so many tears shed in the past week. I can’t get my head around it all. I read that each of the floors of the WTC was nearly an acre in size… At this stage it sounds like the number of dead will likely be around 6,000. That just sounds too big to be right. I wondered what that many people would look like in a group photo, probably something like the start of a huge marathon run. So to satisfy my need to grasp this, I found an image of a group of 20 people — then multiplied it up to create a group of six thousand. This is what six thousand people looks like. As I was making the image, I kept thinking, ‘this must be wrong, it looks like too many,’ but it isn’t wrong.”

“In many cases, more effective than just words and photos, infographics can quickly help us grasp information and timelines in a visual and easy-to-follow manner. This log is dedicated to presenting those graphics created to explain the terrorist acts against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.”

Newspaper front pages from around the world show how print journalism reported the terrorist attacks on America.

Interactive Flash graphic describing the terrorist acts of 11 Sep 2001. Also, why the buildings fell: Reconstrucción de la caída de las torres. (In Spanish.)