Project Gutenberg

@gutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg, founded in 1971, is the oldest producer and distributor of free ebooks.

For more information, visit our website at:
https://www.gutenberg.org/

@gutenberg.org Oct 12, 2026, 8:28 AM

NASA Just Made Nearly 1 TB of Artemis II Data Available to the Public

The data drop includes photographs, audio, video, and astronauts’ notes that will be used to study the moon and prepare for future human missions.

by Jorge Garay

www.wired.com/story/nasa-j...

#astronomy

Potential moon impacts annotated by astronauts on the Artemis II mission.Courtesy of NASA

@gutenberg.org Oct 12, 2026, 8:19 AM

Learning to Love Letterlocking

Behind-the-scenes conservation work in the lab is peaceful, but hosting manuscript workshops for campus staff and students was a fun way to connect and share expertise.

by Henry Hebert

blogs.library.duke.edu/preservation...

#letterlocking #historical_manuscripts

@gutenberg.org Oct 11, 2026, 2:35 PM

The legend is so strong': The truth about Nicolas Flamel and the philosophers' stone

By Sophie Hardach

www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

Books about Flamel at PG:
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subje...

#books #literature #alchemy

First-edition cover of the book of the hieroglyphic figures, not published until 1612.

Title page of a 1612 Paris alchemical work: “Trois Traitez de la Philosophie Naturelle non encore imprimez,” containing Artephius’s “Secret Livre,” Nicolas Flamel’s hieroglyphic figures, and Synesius’s book, translated by P. Arnauld. Printed by la veuve Guillemot and Thiboust.

@gutenberg.org Oct 11, 2026, 12:34 PM

Mary Chesnut Was the South’s Civil War Diarist

www.thecollector.com/mary-chesnut...

"A Diary from Dixie" at PG:

www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60908

#USHistory #history

Mary Boykin Chesnut (left) and her husband James Chesnut Jr. (right) taken somewhere between 1840 and 1850.

Her dark hair is parted in the middle and pulled back. She wears an off-the-shoulder, vertically striped gown with a pleated bodice. A large, light shawl with fringe is draped over her right arm. She holds a folded document in her lap.

He sits a bit higher beside her. His short dark hair is parted to the side. He wears a dark frock coat and matching vest over a white collared shirt, with a wide, dark cravat tied in a bow. He holds a dark top hat upside down against his leg with his left hand.

@gutenberg.org Oct 11, 2026, 9:38 AM

Literary giants Joseph Conrad and John Galsworthy owed their friendship to Port Adelaide

By Daniel Keane

www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10...

Books by Conrad & Galsworthy at PG:
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/autho...
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/autho...

#books #literature

@gutenberg.org Oct 10, 2026, 2:48 PM

The Surprising Origin Story of Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’

If it weren't for a 14th-century poem, we would never have had one of the world's most iconic sculptures.

news.artnet.com/art-world/ar...

Books about Rodin at PG:
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subje...

#books #art #history

AUGUSTE RODIN.

Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek.

DER DENKER.

A muscular nude male figure sits hunched on a rock, chin resting on his hand, elbow on his knee, in deep contemplation. The sculpture stands on a round pedestal against a dark background.

@asls.org.uk Oct 10, 2026, 1:41 PMReposted by @gutenberg.org

I picked up a nodular mass of blue limestone, and laid it open by a stroke of the hammer. Wonderful to relate, it contained inside a beautifully finished piece of sculpture…

—Hugh Miller, THE OLD RED SANDSTONE (1841)
available as a free ebook on @gutenberg.org
#C19
gutenberg.org/ebooks/63923

In the course of the first day's employment, I picked up a nodular mass of blue limestone, and laid it open by a stroke of the hammer. Wonderful to relate, it contained inside a beautifully finished piece of sculpture—one of the volutes apparently of an Ionic capital; and not the far-famed walnut of the fairy tale, had I broken the shell and found the little dog lying within, could have surprised me more. Was there another such curiosity in the whole world? I broke open a few other nodules of similar appearance,—for they lay pretty thickly on the shore,—and found that there might. In one of these there were what seemed to be the scales of fishes, and the impressions of a few minute bivalves, prettily striated; in the centre of another there was actually a piece of decayed wood. Of all Nature's riddles these seemed to me to be at once the most interesting, and the most difficult to expound. I treasured them carefully up, and was told by one of the workmen to whom I showed them, that there was a part of the shore about two miles farther to the west, where curiously shaped stones, somewhat like the heads of boarding-pikes, were occasionally picked up; and that in his father's days the country people called them thunderbolts, and deemed them of sovereign efficacy in curing bewitched cattle. Our employer, on quitting the quarry for the building on which we were to be engaged, gave all the workmen a half-holiday. I employed it in visiting the place where the thunderbolts had fallen so thickly, and found it a richer scene of wonder than I could have fancied in even my dreams.

@asls.org.uk Oct 10, 2026, 1:41 PMReposted by @gutenberg.org

…the tar which used to boil in it to the heat, like resin in a fagot of moss-fir, was as strange a mixture as ever yet bubbled in witches’ caldron—blood of pterodactyle & grease of ichthyosaur…

—Hugh Miller, MY SCHOOLS & SCHOOLMASTERS (1854) – also on @gutenberg.org
#C19
gutenberg.org/ebooks/30737

Immediately beyond the granitic gneiss of the hill there is a subaqueous deposit of the Lias formation, never yet explored by geologist, because never yet laid bare by the ebb; though every heavier storm from the sea tells of its existence, by tossing ashore fragments of its dark bituminous shale. I soon ascertained that the shale is so largely charged with inflammable matter as to burn with a strong flame, as if steeped in tar or oil, and that I could repeat with it the common experiment of producing gas by means of a tobacco-pipe luted with clay. And, having read in Shakspere of a fuel termed "sea-coal," and unaware at the time that the poet merely meant coal brought to London by sea, I inferred that the inflammable shale cast up from the depths of the Firth by the waves could not be other than the veritable "sea-coal" which figured in the reminiscences of Dame Quickly; and so, assisted by Finlay, who shared in the interest which I felt in the substance, as at once classical and an original discovery, I used to collect it in large quantities and convert it into smoky and troubled fires, that ever filled our cavern with a horrible stench, and scented all the shore. Though unaware of the fact at the time, it owed its inflammability, not to vegetable, but to animal substance; the tar which used to boil in it to the heat, like resin in a fagot of moss-fir, was as strange a mixture as ever yet bubbled in witches' caldron—blood of pterodactyle and grease of ichthyosaur—eye of belemnite and hood of nautilus; and we learned to delight in its very smell, all oppressive as that was, as something wild, strange, and inexplicable. Once or twice I seemed on the eve of a discovery: in splitting the masses, I occasionally saw what appeared to be fragments of shells embedded in its substance; and at least once I laid open a mysterious-looking scroll or volute, existing on the dark surface as a cream-coloured film; but though these organisms raised a temporary wonder …

@gutenberg.org Oct 10, 2026, 1:41 PM

The Dramatic History Of San Francisco’s Cliff House, The Beloved Estate That Survived The 1906 Earthquake And A Sailboat Full Of Dynamite

allthatsinteresting.com/cliff-house-...

#architecture

This vintage postcard shows the second San Francisco Cliff House, built by Adolph Sutro. The building features white siding, rows of windows, and steep reddish-brown Victorian spires and gables. It sits on a rocky cliff edge. In front, people dressed in late 19th- or early 20th-century clothing walk along the wet Pacific shoreline while waves reach the beach

@gutenberg.org Oct 10, 2026, 9:45 AM

Anne Carson and the Beauty of the Unsaid

By Spencer Klavan

www.thefp.com/p/anne-carso...

Books in Nobel Prizes in Literature at PG:
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/books...

#books #literature

Anne Carson.

Nobel Prize Foundation.

Minimalist ink-and-gold illustration of Anne Carson with straight, dark shoulder-length hair and large rectangular glasses, gazing at the viewer. Bold black brushstrokes outline the hair and collar, while metallic gold shades her face, ear, lips, and eyes.

@archive.org Oct 9, 2026, 5:04 PMReposted by @gutenberg.org

📚 See incorrect book information online?

You can help fix it. ✏️

Open Library is a collaborative catalog. Volunteers can improve records, add information, correct metadata, and create records for unrepresented books.

Help make the catalog better.
openlibrary.org

@amlibraryassoc.bsky.social Oct 9, 2026, 8:46 PMReposted by @gutenberg.org

ALA stands with library workers, readers, and communities working to keep books available. Our work helps ensure everyone can seek information and make their own reading choices. Your gift makes that work possible.

Helps us protect the freedom to read at ala.org/protect.

#BannedBooksWeek