In 1962, three men escaped from Alcatraz.

They left lifelike dummy heads in their cells, and the guards didn’t notice until morning.

The official story? They drowned.
But a 2013 letter suggests otherwise…🧵 Alcatraz operated as a maximum-security prison in the San Francisco Bay from 1934 to 1963.

Surrounded by freezing, shark-infested waters and heavily guarded, it was considered escape-proof.

But on June 11, 1962, three inmates defied the odds and vanished into history...

The art of David Ambarzumjan - a thread🧵

1. "Recover" 2. "Breathe"

Thread of historical photos you've (probably) never seen before 🧵

1. A Protestant husband and his Catholic wife were not allowed to be buried together. These are their headstones, reaching across the two cemeteries in 1888. 2. Jenny Joseph posing for Columbia Pictures Logo, 1992

John Atkinson Grimshaw is one of the greatest painters you’ve (probably) never heard of...

A thread on the master of nocturnal scenes 🧵

1. A Moonlit Lane, 1874 2. Reflections on the Thames, 1880

Imagine building something so epic it’s still famous thousands of years later.

Ancient civilizations pulled this off countless times...

A thread on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World 🧵 1. The Colossus of Rhodes, Greece

Standing 108 feet tall, this bronze statue of the sun god Helios was erected in 292–280 BC to celebrate the island’s victory.

It stood at the entrance of the harbor in Rhodes and was one of the tallest statues of the ancient world.

The piercing gaze of ancient Greek sculptures

A thread 🧵 1. Antikythera Ephebe, 340–330 BC

Greek sculptors often used alabaster and glass paste for the eyes, with copper strips shaping the lashes and brows.

It's astonishing how lifelike they seem — as if those ancient eyes are still watching us after two thousand years...

Canada doesn't look real – a thread 🧵

1. Mount Robson, king of the Canadian Rockies 2. Driving in Canada

Thread on Vincent van Gogh's blues 🧵 "Colour expresses something in itself. One can’t do without it; one must make use of it. What looks beautiful, really beautiful – is also right."

Vincent to his brother Theo, 28 October 1885

Beautiful aesthetics from the Pope's funeral 🧵

1. Today's Requiem Mass 2. The statue of St. Peter holding the keys of Heaven

Thread of historical photos you've (probably) never seen before 🧵

1. A wheat field in Manhattan, 1982 2. Oppenheimer and Einstein, 1947

This photo by A. Eisenstaedt shows Robert Oppenheimer in conversation with Albert Einstein, immortalizing the meeting of two of the most influential figures in 20th-century physics.

The colorization gives the moment an almost tangible feel.

Thread on the beauty of Milan, Italy 🧵

1. Milan Cathedral. People indicate scale. The construction of this architectural marvel began in 1386 and wasn't fully completed until 1965.

It is the largest church in the Italian Republic— St. Peter's Basilica is in the Vatican, a separate sovereign state—and the third largest in the world.

Earth Day thread: the beauty of our planet 🧵

1. Meteor over Mount Fuji by H. Manabe 2. Most people only ever see a small arc of a rainbow.

However, under the right conditions and from the vantage point of a helicopter, it's possible to see its full shape.

In those rare moments, the rainbow reveals itself as a perfect circle.

Thread of surreal underwater sculptures 🧵

1. Christ of the Abyss, Florida 2. Ocean Atlas

Standing 18 feet tall and weighing 60 tonnes, this piece by Jason deCaires Taylor is the world's largest underwater sculpture.

Located off New Providence's western shores in Nassau, it portrays a Bahamian girl carrying the ocean's weight, evoking the Atlas myth.

Spring is here - an art thread🧵

1. Primavera by Sandro Botticelli (1470-80s) 2. Springtime by Pierre Auguste Cot (1873)

This piece depicts a young couple locked in an embrace on a swing amid a forest or garden.

The two seems lost in each other, described by an art expert as "drunken with first love".

Historical figures when they were young 🧵

1. Five-year-old Albert Einstein, 1884 2. A 19-year-old Teddy Roosevelt, 1877

The future president is pictured here as a Harvard freshman, dressed in his rowing gear.

In college, he was an avid wrestler and boxer — hobbies he carried into his presidency, often sparring with younger White House security staff.

The genius of Leonardo Da Vinci, born 573 years ago on April 15, 1452 - a thread 🧵

1. This is his map of Imola, with a modern Google Earth image of the city shown below. 2. Château de La Rochefoucauld's staircase

This remarkable spiral staircase was built in 1520 by Anne de La Rochefoucauld.

Its design was based on Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings, which were gifted to her by the King of France.

This thread will put a smile on your face 🧵

1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar alongside his longtime coach John Wooden (1969) and 38 years later. 2. This uncle tries to keep his nephew with Down syndrome from getting too close to the royal guard, and then...

Beautiful things from the past 🧵

1. A 16th century ring that unfolds into an astronomical sphere 2. The bookwheel

A magnificent 300-year-old library tool that enabled a researcher to have seven books open at once.

Comedian Mark Normand called it "the original version of having too many tabs open."

The art of making stone look translucent 🧵

1. The Veiled Christ by Giuseppe Sanmartino 2. The Veiled Virgin

This Carrara marble bust, depicting a veiled Virgin Mary, was carved in Rome by Italian sculptor Giovanni Strazza in the early 1850s.

The veil gives the illusion of being translucent, yet it is carved entirely from marble.

Famous artists and their palettes – a thread🧵

1. Claude Monet 2. Van Gogh defined a painter as "someone who knows how to find the greys of nature on the palette."

Once a year, a full heart appears in this tomb.

A breathtaking mausoleum born from a sculptor’s deep sorrow for his late wife 🧵 This is the final resting place of Léonce Evrard and his wife (1850-1916) at the Cimetière de Laeken in Brussels.

During the summer solstice, and a few days before and after June 21, sunlight streams through the roof, casting a heart-shaped pattern inside the burial chapel.