Blog Topic: On this day

It’s snowing today in New York City and crowds are lining up to skate at the legendary ice rink at Rockefeller Center, with its sparkling light displays and famous holiday tree. If I visit this year, it’ll be as a spectator only, since I’ve never ice skated in my life. Sad, I know, but I […]

Daylight Saving Time ended last night, which gives you an extra hour today to enjoy our slideshow of beautiful clocks and watches.

On this day in 1917, the exotic dancer known as Mata Hari was sentenced to death in France for spying for Germany during World War I. Born in the Netherlands, Gertruida Margueretha Zelle moved to Paris in 1903 and began performing as a dancer under the name Mata Hari. She claimed to be a princess […]

On this day in 1799, during Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt, a French soldier discovered a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the Egyptian town of Rosetta (el-Rashid). The stone contained fragments of passages written in ancient Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Egyptian demotic. The section in Greek revealed that the three scripts shared the same […]

May is National Bike Month! Did you know that there are more than a billion bicycles worldwide? Perhaps more surprisingly, the basic configuration of a bicycle hasn’t changed much from the chain-driven model developed around 1885. The first pedal-propelled bicycle was reputedly invented by Kirkpatrick MacMillan in Scotland in 1839. While not everyone agrees on his breakthrough, […]

Since 1955, Tax Day has typically fallen on April 15 for those living in the United States. You might derive some comfort from knowing that your feelings today were not unknown in the 16th century, as evidenced in these three Netherlandish paintings of tax collectors by Marinus van Reymerswaele from the Art, Archaeology and Architecture […]

It’s time to spring forward this weekend! Daylight Saving Time starts at 2AM Sunday morning, don’t forget to set your clock ahead one hour before you go to bed tonight. We made this slide show of beautiful clocks and watches to help you remember.

Happy 141st birthday to the Metropolitan Museum of Art! The Museum opened its doors to the public on February 20, 1872 (some 30 blocks below its current location). Today the Met is the largest art museum in the United States, boasting more than two million works in its permanent collection. ARTstor is proud to collaborate […]

Happy Lunar New Year! The Chinese Year of the Snake begins February 10, 2013 and lasts through January 30, 2014. The traditional Chinese calendar is based on a combination of lunar and solar movements; the year begins with the night of the first new moon of the lunar New Year and ends on the 15th day. […]

On November 15, 1867, the stock ticker was introduced in New York City. Inventor Edward Calahan rebuilt a telegraph machine to print stock information, revolutionizing the speed at which transaction prices and volume information were transmitted. Before that, quotes from the New York Stock Exchange were typically relayed to main telegraph offices, transcribed, and then […]