Video: https://youtu.be/HHWOGGTtEP8
I’m alive! Day 18 of VEDIM, I was sick yesterday hence no video. I didn’t feel like doing anything for that day, so I’m doing it today. Kind of two days in one. Yesterday was technically a free day, so I could do whatever I wanted. But I had decided to use that day to recognize that May is National Photo Month. This month was formally recognized by Congress in 1987. The American Photography Association is one of the organizations who has continued to observe this since then. But other than that, there’s not much information about it. It’s really more of a photography thing, not official except by Congress’ recognition.
So instead, I will give you a little bit of history about: the first photograph, or more specifically, earliest known surviving photograph, that was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around 1826, 1827. The photo was of the upstairs window view from his house in the area of Burgundy, France. I will link that site, I’m not going to give you all the information about it. The site has some information about who he is, how the first photo was created, what the story is behind that picture, and so on. I learned about this while I was majoring in Photography. I had to take a class that was called “History & Aesthetics of Photography.” That was a really interesting class, but…the teacher was a little boring. The class itself was fascinating, a lot of history about photography, how it took off, all of that.
Another thing that happened yesterday was the 115th anniversary of the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism. It’s a machine that was from the time of the Greeks. The mechanism is an analogue computer, which is an equivalent to our computers back then. This mechanism was used to predict where the stars would be in the sky, eclipses, calendar dates, plus the four-year cycle of athletic games (similar to the Olympics, but not the actual Olympics). I think it’s really fascinating that a machine was discovered 115 years ago, but we didn’t really figure out what the purpose of it was or even realize what it was until pretty recently. There’s a lot more information about the mechanism here.
Moving onto today, the 18th. It’s International Museum Day. This is celebrated annually on May 18th, and is coordinated by the International Council of Museums. Creative name! It focuses on a different theme every year. This day was started in 1977, and International Museum Day has been gaining more attention ever since. In 2009, International Museum Day had 20,000 museums hosting events in more than 90 countries. In 2010, 98 countries participated, and 100 in 2011. 30,000 in 129 countries in 2012. In 2011, the official International Museum Day poster was translated into 37 languages. Since 2012, the number has increased to 38. That’s a lot of languages, countries, and museums! That’s pretty cool. I think museums are fantastic places, any kind of museum is fantastic, because they’re places of learning. Plus, depending on where, you can get in for free or pay not that much for the experience you get. I think they’re just great. 
I really want to go to a museum that will be opening this June in Iceland. It’s all about volcanoes, lava, earthquakes and all of that stuff. I really want to go there! Conde Nast Traveler has an article about it here. I want to go! The theme for International Museum Day 2017 is: Museums and contested history: saying the unspeakable in museums. This theme focuses on the role of museums that, by working to benefit society, become hubs for promoting peaceful relationships between people. It also highlights how the acceptance of a contested history is the first step in envisioning a shared future under the banner of reconciliation. Wiki here. Plenty of links today.
Just so you know, all of my past videos have blog posts now, including for this month (with exceptions of course). I will have a post/video tomorrow, but I wanted to tell you this ahead of time. Tomorrow is National Bike to Work Day. So if you can bike to work, and you have a bike or have access to a bike, do that! I will try to post something tomorrow related to biking. I’m hoping tomorrow will be kind of nice weather so I can at least go out and bike around a little bit. We’ll see. Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow.