The Danse Macabre, also called the Dance of Death in English, is an artistic genre of allegory on the universality of death: no matter one's station or status in life: eventually, death will take all of us. 

Typically, death is personified in paintings as skeleton moving around representatives from all social layers: kings and emperors, nobles and clergymen, and laborers and peasants. The concept has its roots in the Late Middle Ages, as murals painted on cemetery walls. The first known example was painted on the south wall of the cemetery of the Holy Innocents in Paris in 1424-25. Although the mural was destroyed in 1669 because of a road widening, the individual scenes are largely known from the cycle La Danse macabre, published in 1485 by the Parisian printer Guyot Marchant, to which accompanying dialogue verses were added.

In 1440, a fresco was painted on the inside of the cemetery wall of the Dominican cemetery in Basel, Switzerland. Today, only a beautiful watercolor copy by Johann Rudolf Feyerabend exists, the mural was destroyed in the first decade of the 19th century. Other murals were painted in Lübeck, Talinn (Estonia) and in several places in Istria around the same period.

Another famous example originating in Basel are the woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), which he drew in 1526. The first edition, containing 41 woodcuts, was published in France in 1538. By 1562, there were eleven editions and estimates are that up to a hundred unauthorized copies and imitations were printed throughout the 16th century. Holbein's series shows the figure of "Death" in many disguises.

​Even though the concept isn’t as widespread on cemeteries as it used to be, the ‘dance of the death’ concept remains to inspire artist of several disciplines. French composer Camille Saint-Saëns wrote his ‘Danse macabre’ in 1874. In my opinion, it is a masterpiece in telling the story of death: the violin screeching gives one goosebumps, the xylophone remembers one of rattling bones. If you’ve ever been to Dutch amusement park Efteling, you might know the show shown in the haunted castle. It shows a graveyard, and upon the clock striking twelve, Saint-Saëns piece starts playing and skeletons and ghosts rise from their graves. It is, indeed, quite a macabre attraction for a park originally intended for children. 

This isn’t the only representation of the Danse Macabre to a young audience, though. Also Walt Disney picked up the theme: In the 1929 animated short ‘The Skeleton Dance’, four human skeletons dance and make music around a spooky graveyard based on Edvard Grieg’s ‘March of the Trolls’. Only Denmark shortly banned the film for being ‘too macabre’ in 1931. Animator of the film, Ub Iwerks, used the theme a couple of years later in his technicolored ‘Skeleton Frolic (1937), in which a skeleton band making funny music in an eerie graveyard, surrounded by wicked owls and terrifying black cats.

And even today, I know quite lot of songs addressing the ‘Danse Macabre’ or ‘Dance of the Death’, mostly from the metal genre. It is a theme that will probably always fascinate and frighten people – because, indeed, death might be the one thing that unites all. 

The history of tabletop or board games dates back into antiquity. Board games have been played, travelled and evolved in most cultures and societies throughout history: Senet was a board game played in Ancient Egypt from around 3,500 BC, Backgammon was popular in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago, as was the Royal Game of Ur. Chess is believed to originate in India in the Gupta Empire (c. 280–550 AD), the several Mesoamerican cultures played a strategy and luck game known as Patolli from 200 BC on.

The oldest records of board gaming in Europe date back to Homer's Iliad (written in the 8th century BC), but Norse cultures and ancient Ireland mention games as well.

In her book ‘The Games We Played’, Margaret Hofer, associate curator of decorative arts at the New-York-Historical-Society, described the period of the 1880s–1920s as ‘The Golden Age’ of board gaming in America. Mass production of games made them cheaper and more easily available, and the industry boosted. Pioneering mass publishers were the Milton Bradley Company (est. 1860) and the Parker Brothers (founded in 1883, they published immensely popular games like Monopoly (1935), Cluedo (1949) and Risk (1959)).

In the early 20th century, board game design began to emphasize amusement over education, which made simpler race games such as Ludo (originally called Mensch, ärgere dich nicht, 1914 in German) grow increasingly popular, as did word/letter games like Anagrams (MB, 1920s) and Scrabble (1938).

On February 2, 1848, the American-Mexican War ended with the signing of a treaty that left California in the hands of the United States. Eight days before, carpenter James Marshall had found flakes of gold in the American River in the Sierra Nevada mountains while building a sawmill of John A. Sutter, who owned a ranch in Sacramento Valley. To test if it was gold, Marshall tried to break the nugget between two rocks - only to find out that it could change shape, but not broken. He was sure that what he had discovered, was gold.

Marshall and Sutter tried to keep the discovery for themselves, but Mid-March, a San Francisco newspaper published an article reporting that gold had been found at Sutter's Mill. Within two weeks, the paper's staff had left to go to Sutter's creek. They were soon followed by about 75% of the male San Francisco population, who turned their backs on their fields and labors in the expectancy of making quick fortune with finding gold. By August, some 4,000 miners had reached the area.

The news soon spread worldwide, and by 1849, 80,000 men from the Americas, Britain, Australia, Europe and China arrived in California by ship or by the Californian trail. The would-be gold-miners migrating were called "forty-niners". The California population rose to over 200,000 in less than three years. Few women accompanied their husbands in the early years, and they took on the responsibility of running farms and businesses.

The Romantic period was a mainly European artistic and literary movement that celebrated its peak between 1790 and 1860. The movement can be seen as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightment. Whereas the main point of Enlightment was a rationalistic world view, the main idea of Romantisicism is the complete opposite. Romanticists do not trust in the human ratio as a mighty power above all things, but see themselves subordinated to nature. Romanticists perceive a irrational, mysterious and incomprehensive side of reality. Humans, they believe, do rather follow their emotions instead of reason alone, and thus tend to live by their desires rather than their rational thoughts. Typical romantic book characters, like Byrons Manfred or Goethes Werther, lose themselve in their emotions completely - sense cannot keep their feet on the ground. 

For a romanticist, two opposite concepts were in constant incongruity with another: analogy and irony. With analogy a mythical way of thinking is depicted: the conviction that all is connected to everything: words and objects, heaven and earth, people and nature. On the other side, irony is the awareness of our own mortality and of the fact that all things come to an end. The analogy therefore can never be infinite. A romantic author is aware of this incongruity and suffers, in addition, from the feeling that he does not fit into the world. He seeks for a way out in poetry, but there finds that words are not enough to describe his feelings. And again, he must admit that he cannot form the world, but that he is a slave of nature's laws. 

In short, Romanticism is thus characterized by strong feelings, melancholy and a strong connection to nature. Many of the literary works written during the romantic era contain (page)long descriptions of landscapes and gardens. The often sad, melancholic emotions of the hero or heroine are being emphasized (1). 

The Route 66 is one of the original highways in the United States of America. It was established in 1626 and started in Chicago, Illinois, heading west through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona before ending in Santa Monica, California. The route spreads over 3,940 kilometers, crossing a great variety of landscapes.

The Route 66 was the major road for migrants from Oklahoma who travelled west after a period of heavy dust storms in the 1930s, that had caused severe drought and damaged the agriculture in the U.S. Many farmers, but also other workers, that suffered from the change in ecology had been told that there was still work enough in California and travelled there with good hopes. However, due to the economic crisis now known as the Great Depression, the situation in California was not much better than in the country the migrants had left behind. This migration is beautifully described in John Steinbecks novel "The Grapes of Wrath". The only ones that enjoyed the migration movement were the communities based along the Route 66. Restaurants, car workshops, gas stations and grocery stores thankfully profited from the many travellers that passed them.

It were those people who fought for the preservation of the Highway when its use declined because of the establishment of interstates in the 1950s and 1960s. Eventually, in the late 1980s, associations were founded and Missouri declared the highway to be a State Historic Route in 1990. In 2008, the route was added to the World Monuments Watch to preserve the existing gas stations, motels, cafes etc. alongside the route. Today, the Route 66 has grown to be a popular cult route for motor riders.

The story of the Route 66 served as a topic in John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and in the Disney Pixar movie Cars (2006).

1. The French & Indian War (1754–1763), the North American part of the worldwide Seven Years War, made Great Britain the dominant power in eastern North America, but also left the country with high debts. Hence, the British government passed several acts on the colonies imposing taxes on, among other things, tea and paper. Also, the Quartering act compelled Colonists to provide British soldiers with any needed housing or food.

2. These acts led to resistance among the Colonists and the building of an opposition against the British suppressors. Acts were disobeyed and the import of British goods were boycotted. In the line of the European Enlightenment movement, rebels plead for democracy, liberalism and a republic instead of being part of the British monarchy.