The final six days of links to explore from Oxfords’ Festive Countdown Calendar 2024!
NASA: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Funded by NASA, managed by CalTech, the JPL pioneered robotic space exploration. The website features podcasts, images, videos and audio. You can read about the latest news and active space missions.
Oxford offers a related flexible online course: Exploring the Universe.
Women in History: English Heritage
Only one section of an enormous collection of English Heritage materials and opportunities for on-site visits. The Women in History page features: Experiments in Gender, Weeding Women, Groundbreaking Female Archeologists, Women in Garden Design, Women in the Arts.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art:
a New York-based art museum with a huge online collection of works of art, publication and the Met 360 Project (6 virtual tours of art and architecture).
Connect artworks by finding common links in this new game by The Met — Art Links — no art history degree required.
Sparks: Try the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art to gain perspective – then dive in. then explore the Open Access section.
On Dec 3, 1989, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George Bush signed an agreement to end the Cold War (at the Malta Summit).
On Dec 9, 1989, people stood at the Brandenberg Gate watching the West German leader as he walked through the Gate to greet his East German counterpart.
You can explore this part of history through the Google Arts & Culture stories, exhibitions, virtual tours and images.
Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Animals of Deep
An interesting 30 year partnership between the Monterey Bay Aquarium and MBA Research Institute (a private non-profit oceanographic research center that receives sustained support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
Spark: check out the photo wall on the main page ‘Animals of the Deep’
Researchers at University of Cape Town, working with partners like UNESCO, create 3D digital records of more than 250 important cultural structures, rock art sites and statues at some 65 heritage sites in 18 countries – across Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Examples to explore: Gondar, Ethiopia – the walled Fasil Ghebbi fortress; Petra “the Rose City”, capital of the Nabatean Kingdom in Jordan’s desert; Timbuktu, an ancient city in Mali; Old Bagan, ancient city in Mandalay Region of Myanmar….
Despite being a calender of links shared for an intended audience that presumably is present and future students of Oxford University, I found a number of intriguing links to things I had never heard of or of things that related to other eclectic curiosities of mine. Hopefully you will take time to browse the Festive Countdown Calendar on your own or review my segmented exploration!