Way back in the 20th century (remember the 20th century?), in the early days of Magellan's Log, long before a misbehaving American government forced us into a lot of satire and political commentary, we did art (remember art?).

One of our early popular features consisted of 10 panoramic photographs appropriated from the Library of Congress's massive collection, which you can visit here. We did the feature, watched as readers reacted with pleasure, and then pretty much forgot about it under the press of recent depressing world events.

Then:

A couple of weeks ago, on a Sunday, the Magellan's Log daily readership statistics spiked, bigtime. The increase continued for several days, and gradually tapered off. Hmmm, we thought. Which led us to a closer examination of the statistics.

Which led to the odd discovery that the spike appeared to be solely due to thousands of people suddenly looking at just ONE of those old panoramic photos that we had posted way back in 1999.

Further investigation revealed that the photo in question, which you can see here, was of the campus of Nanking University in China in 1920.

Pleased that our audience was developing in China, we thought nothing further about the matter and went back to our present business of skewering arrogant politicians and worrying about whither America.

A few days passed and we got an email from Mr. Leng Tian, a graduate student in architecture at... Nanjing (formerly: Nanking) University:

I was very excited to find the old panoramic photo of Nanking University on your website. I am a graduate student of Architecture, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.

For about two years I have spent a lot of time and strength to research the old campus of Nanjing University (which was called Nanking University before 1949). The old buildings in the main campus are still beautiful and elegant. I collected some old photos of the old campus (most of them was taken in 20s-30s, 20th century). For some historical reasons, we lack the archives of the old campus. So this panoramic photo of Nanking University in Magellan's Log helped me a lot. We can clearly distinguish the chapel, the North Administration Building, and East Science Building, and the dormitories in this panoramic photo. And we can clearly confirm that all the buildings were constructed before 1920.

After I saw this panoramic photo on your website, I went back to the main campus, at the same location, and took a panoramic photo. Although the trees are different, the old buildings are still kept well. The new photo is attached to this letter to express my thanks.

And our thanks to Mr. Leng. So we've added a page to the panoramic feature, with the old Nanking photo and Mr. Leng's new Nanjing picture. You'll find both here >>. A big file (181k), so give it time to load.

How many voices of humor and hope
do you encounter on the Internet?

We need your support.
Thank you.

Back to Panoramic Photo Contents Page

Back to Magellan's Log 4

Magellan's Log front page

Send this page to a friend.

We love to get mail from our readers.
Tell us what you think: