Franz Liszt’s 1851 étude “La Campanella” is one of the most technically demanding pieces ever written for piano.

In bar 102, below, the left hand has to jump 35 half-steps, nearly three octaves, in the space of a sixteenth note.

That’s about 46 centimeters.

Multidisciplinary artist Helga Stentzel cleverly hangs laundry items on clotheslines to make abstract animal shapes. You can find more of her household surrealism on Instagram. (via colossal)

Tags: art · Helga Stentzel

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Over the past three days, the streets of Toulouse, France, hosted an urban opera titled The Guardian of the Temple—The Gates of Darkness, in which three massive robotic puppets of mythological creatures—Lilith the scorpion woman, Asterion the Minotaur, and Ariane the spider—performed in several locations around the city. The show, put on by the French street-theater company La Machine, was directed by François Delarozière.

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One hundred thirty-one years ago, Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, which recorded more than 25 million admissions from May 1 through October 31, 1893. The overall theme was to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus landing in the New World. Architect Daniel Burnham and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted worked together with many others to reshape a swampy park along Lake Michigan into a 686-acre Venetian-inspired fairground. More than 65,000 exhibits from 46 nations were displayed in more than 200 structures built for the fair. Visitors were introduced to many new (and relatively new) concepts, inventions, and products, from Cracker Jacks and Juicy Fruit gum to large-scale electric lighting and the Ferris wheel.

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