And the Internet keeps growing

Thank you Google. Google has just announced it will disclose the entire Life Magazine photo archive (10 million pictures) in the coming months. This collection dates all the way back to the 1750's. The picture above is just an example as shown on the Google-blog.

...'Alfred Eisenstaedt snapped this in 1963, at the climax of Guignol's "Saint George and the Dragon" in the Tuileries Garden in Paris. Just as the dragon is slain, some children cry out in a combination of horror and delight, while others are taken aback in shock. Every child is consumed with emotion, masterfully captured by Eisenstaedt's camera'...

I've been browsing around myself. The picture to the left was made in 1862 in Antietam, US. It shows Maj. Allan Pinkerton, US Pres. Abraham Lincoln & Gen. John A. McClernand, in front of a pitched tent on the battlefield while the Civil War is taking place..

Just go to Google images and type something like this: 1860s US Civil War source:life

Lucky for us information addicts, there's more; Inspired by ancient Alexandria's attempt to collect the world's knowledge, the EU launched its Europeana digital library, an online digest of Europe's cultural heritage, last Thursday.

'The prototype launched Thursday contains around two million digital items, all of them already in the public domain. By 2010, the date when Europeana is due to be fully operational, the aim is to have 10 million works available, an impressive number yet a mere drop in the ocean compared to the 2.5 billion books in Europe's more common libraries. The process of digitalisation is a massive undertaking [Jarno says: Duuuh]' - check out the article here.

HaHaHa update: 'The Europeana site is temporarily not accessible due to overwhelming interest after its launch (10 million hits per hour). We are doing our utmost to reopen Europeana in a more robust version as soon as possible. We will be back by mid-December' >> typical... :)