Handel's 1741 'Messiah' saved him from financial ruin

How ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’ became a beloved, haunting Advent hymn

The text of the hymn is rooted in the ancient O Antiphons. The melancholic melody was traced to an anonymous 15th-century author. The hymn stands as one of the few standard Christmas carols actually intended to be sung during the season of Advent. Listen to the song’s history here.

Many iconic Christmas songs were written by Jewish composers

Jewish songwriters shaped the sound of Christmas, composing hits like “Let it Snow” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Irving Berlin, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, wrote “White Christmas, which remains the bestselling single in music history.

Dickens performed 'A Christmas Carol' over 100 times

The writer began performing readings of his works in 1853 and chose 'A Christmas Carol' for the inaugural event. In the 16 years that followed, he performed it over 100 times, using different voices for his characters and consistently revising the text for the stage.

'Jesus Christ Superstar' was an album before it was a musical

Written in the late '60s by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, who were hot on the heels of the successful "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," "Jesus Christ Superstar" was first recorded as an album in the style of other popular rock operas of the time, like The Who's "Tommy."

The 'Book of Judith' is a noncanonical Hanukkah story of deliverance

Though the text was not considered a core part of the Hebrew Bible, the medieval Jewish tradition placed her tale within that of the broader Hanukkah story, integrating it into the story of the Maccabees. Scholars view her more as a legendary, inspirational figure.

Peter Brueghel's 'Hunters in the Snow' depicts winter beauty and hardship

The Dutch painter and printmaker is known for centering ordinary subjects at a time when protestant iconoclasts protested religious images and reduced the Church's role as an arts patron. The famous painting is often viewed as a cozy winter scene, but reveals the difficulties of harsh winters during the Little Ice Age in Europe.

On Christmas Eve in 1978, a San Francisco museum lost possession of a Rembrandt

Thieves stole four paintings on the night before Christmas, including Rembrandt's "Portrait of a Rabbi," which was worth around $1M at the time. The museum was under construction at the time, and police speculated that the robbers got in through the roof by way of the scaffolding. Over two decades later, three of the pieces were returned.

‘The Nutcracker’ was a flop when it premiered

Although it's now a holiday classic, Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Nutcracker" flopped when it debuted in 1892. It wasn’t until it was reimagined in 1954 as a Christmas season spectacular, aimed at families, that it became a hit.

Mozart defined the Classical period with realism and social commentary

Dive into the Classical period, a time that emphasized a less extravagant approach to music and focused on societal issues. Defined by Mozart’s influence, find specifics about his career and why he’s remembered for his compositions and the wit and emotional depth of operas like "The Magic Flute."

Christmas was briefly banned in 17th-century England

In the 1640s, Puritans outlawed Christmas, deeming it wasteful and unbiblical. For nearly two decades, celebrations were suppressed and violators fined, though many ignored the ban. The law was repealed in 1660.

The Faustian Bargain is a classic trope about cutting a deal with the devil

Goethe's "Faust," Broadway's "Damn Yankees," and the American folktale about Robert Johnson all embrace the familiar details of the Faustian Bargain, in which a young, eager striver is offered their wildest dreams in exchange for the rights to their soul.

'Show Boat' redefined the American musical

The 1927 musical—penned by Oscar Hammerstein II, who would go on to create, with Richard Rodgers, other titanic shows like "Oklahoma!" and "Carousel"—used its songs to advance the plot and build character rather than simply entertain.

One critic argues opera needs a new business plan

Christos Makridis, a labor economist at Arizona State University, argues that the public has an appetite for the art form, but that the industry's business model is dated, relying too heavily on philanthropy and aging season ticket holders rather than embracing innovation.

The first surviving opera tells the story of Orpheus and Euridice

Jacopo Peri's “Euridice,” premiered in 1600, is the oldest surviving opera. The story is based on the Greek mythology tale about a musician named Orpheus who attempts to save his wife from the underworld by pleasing the god Hades with his musical talents.

Rockwell's 'Saying Grace' sold for $46M in 2013

The 1951 painting is classic Rockwell: an image designed for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post featuring a humble American family engaging in a traditional value. To date, it's the highest-grossing work in Rockwell's catalog. Its buyer? "Star Wars" director George Lucas.

The season celebrates Jesus' birth and anticipates the Second Coming of Christ

The Christian Bible’s New Testament features four gospels, or lives of Jesus, each of which describes the birth of Jesus in different ways (or does not mention it). Historians, both secular and religious, have sought to contextualize the biblical accounts with empirical evidence.

Despite his sometimes caustic satire, Dickens was ultimately an optimist

Michael Slater, a professor of Victorian literature at Birkbeck College, notes that Dickens' anger at Parliament and social injustice never got in the way of his optimism. "There is a constant allegiance to the lives of ordinary people and their pleasures," he said in a 2001 interview with "In Our Time."

Augusta Savage's masterpiece was destroyed after a limited exhibition

"Life Every Voice and Sing," sometimes called "The Harp," debuted at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Based on the James Weldon Johnson poem (and eventual unofficial Black national anthem) of the same name, the massive, 16-foot-tall sculpture depicted a kneeling Black man holding a bar of music in front of 12 chorus singers. After the fair ended in 1940, Savage was unable to pay to preserve it, so it was destroyed.

Days after her release from prison, Billie Holiday sold out Carnegie Hall

The jazz icon was released early from federal prison on good behavior. Following her arrest, she was effectively prohibited from performing in New York's nightclubs, but she realized she could still perform, so long as it was in a venue that hadn't been deemed a "cabaret." The solution? The famous Carnegie Hall. The show sold out within a week, and the venue became a regular stop for Holiday, who performed there 22 times.

Beethoven's correspondence in 1801 documented his tinnitus suffering

Ludwig van Beethoven's hearing loss is one of the best-known cases of this condition among historical artists. He also suffered from tinnitus and wrote in 1801, "My ears are buzzing and ringing perpetually, day and night. I can with truth say that my life is very wretched…"

Mathematical breakthroughs influenced Shakespeare’s stories

New ideas in math were transforming Europe at the time Shakespeare penned his plays, including newly popular conceptions of zero via philosophers Descartes and Leibniz.

Exploring Oskar Schlemmer's 'Triadic Ballet,' a Bauhaus-inspired performance piece

The "symphonic dance of threeness" brought together Bauhaus' varied artistic interests and offered a fable in which collectivism wins. This history and timeline of the work details its origins as well as its near-destruction at the hands of the Nazis, who considered it profane.

Blake's 'illuminated manuscripts' blended poetry and painting

Blake's poetry was often accompanied by the author's complementary illustrations. They’re masterful works of art, pieces that were unlike anything else in Blake’s time—or in ours. Thankfully, The William Blake Archive has scanned all of the original manuscripts, allowing you to see the majestic books in their entirety.

'Getz/Gilberto' is considered bossa nova's peak

The 1964 album, featuring the American saxophonist Stan Getz and the Brazilian guitarist João Gilberto, along with accompaniment from Antônio Carlos Jobim, was a massive hit and won the Grammy for album of the year in 1965. In time, it'd become one of the bestselling jazz albums of all time.

A letter about a hurricane helped launch Hamilton's life in America

After a hurricane severely damaged the Caribbean island of St. Croix, Alexander Hamilton wrote a vivid letter that was later published and impressed local business leaders, who took up a collection to send the teenager to North America for schooling.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.

Hookworm infection, though risky, may help fight certain autoimmune conditions by tamping down the immune system's inflammatory response.