Why do People Spit on The Heart of Midlothian?
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 31, 2019
Spitting on the streets is not quite gentlemanly behavior, but on the Royal Mile in Edinburg, it is almost a ritual. The object of contemp...
Showing posts from 2019
The Christmas Lights Powered by an Electric Eel
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 31, 2019
Visitors to the Tennessee Aquarium in downtown Chattanooga, the United States, are treated to a shocking Christmas attraction this December....
The Ruins of Washburn A Mill, Minneapolis
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 30, 2019
The tasteful ruins on the banks of the Mississippi River from which rises the Minneapolis’ Mill City Museum serves as a reminder to the site...
Child Birth by Centrifugal Force
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 28, 2019
In 1965, George and Charlotte Blonsky, a childless New York couple were granted patent for a peculiarly weird invention—an ”Apparatus for F...
Corona Spy Satellite: The Humble Beginning of Satellite Espionage
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 27, 2019
There is not a square-inch of earth that has not been photographed and mapped by satellites today. These spying eyes, flying hundreds of mil...
Creepy Victorian Christmas Cards
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 24, 2019
Victorian Christmas cards were a mixed bag of iconography, ranging from religious to everyday things. But one theme common in these season...
The Australian Floating Hotel That Ended Up in North Korea
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 24, 2019
For little more than a year in the late 1980s, a seven-story five-star hotel floated over John Brewer Reef, about 70 km off the coast of Tow...
The Termite Mounds of Okavango Delta
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 23, 2019
The Okavango Delta is a place like nowhere else on earth. It’s a vast swampy inland delta where a river disappears instead of emptying into ...
Sargasso Sea And Sargassum
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 23, 2019
The Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic Ocean, near the Caribbean, is unlike any other sea in this planet. The boundaries of the sea are defi...
Villa Girasole: The House That Rotates
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 21, 2019
In the hills of northern Italy near Verona stands an L-shaped house called Villa Girasole, which means “sunflower” in Italian. And just li...
Britain’s Hundred Million Pound Banknotes
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 20, 2019
Scottish banknotes are weird. Although they are used all over Scotland and the rest of the UK, they are not legal tender, which means a shop...
Australia’s Rock And Ocean Pools
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 20, 2019
A defining feature of the Australian coastline, particularly in New South Wales, are the rock pools—outdoor swimming pools carved out of the...
Seljavallalaug: Iceland’s Hidden Swimming Pool
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 19, 2019
Tucked in a narrow valley in South Iceland, a short hike away from the Ring Road that encircles the country, is an outdoor swimming—arguably...
Fata Morgana Mirage
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 19, 2019
The atmosphere plays unusual tricks with light in the polar regions, especially at sea, creating strange shapes like a looming island, a flo...
Döllersheim: The Village That Hitler Destroyed to Crush a Rumor
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 18, 2019
About one hundred km northwest of Vienna, in northern Austria, lies a small village called Döllersheim. Eighty years ago, this tiny Austrian...
The White Cliffs of Iturup Island
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 18, 2019
Stretching from Hokkaido, Japan to Kamchatka, Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the north Pacific Ocean, are a string of volcanic i...
China’s Trackless Trains
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 18, 2019
After two years of testing, a new futuristic train that runs on virtual tracks was launched for the first time in Yibin, in the province of ...
The Moon Villages of South Korea
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 17, 2019
After the Korean War ended in 1953, many war refugees and other impoverished people moved to the rapidly developing urban centers and began ...
The Elephant Bird
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 17, 2019
Not too long ago, a gigantic, flightless bird roamed the island of Madagascar. It stood nearly 10 feet tall and weighed 700 kg. For centur...
Haystacks of Rishikesh
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 12, 2019
Haystacks are often constructed around a central pole, or a tree. Bales of hay are loosely arranged around the central structure to prevent ...
The Hellfire Club And Caves
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 12, 2019
Throughout history men have formed clandestine clubs where rich young aristocrats met and indulged in drunken orgies, gambling and carousing...
Machine de Marly
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 11, 2019
Water features form an impressive part of the gardens in the Palace of Versailles in Paris. There are fountains, cascading waterfalls, calm ...
The Unbelievably Delicate Marble Sculptures at Cappella Sansevero
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 9, 2019
In the late 16th century, the Duke of Torremaggiore, Giovan Francesco di Sangro, after a miraculous recovery from a serious illness, erected...
Khuk Khi Kai, The Chicken Poop Prison
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 7, 2019
Chicken poop has a strong and suffocating smell of ammonia that’s hard to stand for more than a few minutes. The odor causes a variety of ad...
Medieval Book Curses
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 6, 2019
In the days before the printing press, book-making was a very laborious process. Each and every book had to made by hand, starting with the ...
Inuit Snow Goggles
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 5, 2019
This man, wearing a pair of strange goggles is not trying to make a fashion statement. He is just getting ready for a trek across the froze...
Abandoned Cars in Hawaii
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 5, 2019
In Hawaii, it is easier to dump your old car by the side of the road than have it legally disposed—an attitude that’s causing big headaches ...
The Mosaics of Villa Romana del Casale
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 4, 2019
Many Roman villas, private residences, as well as public buildings, were lavishly decorated with mosaic floors. Mosaics served as a symbol o...
The Pigeon Breeders of Cairo
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 3, 2019
Perched on rooftops across Cairo, like water tanks on elevated platforms, are rickety wooden cages where Cairenes keep their pigeons. Pigeo...
Vladimir Lukyanov’s Water Computer
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 2, 2019
Early computers were mechanical machines built using gears and levers. These parts or components could be moved with precision and were conn...
Repurposing Old Industrial Sites As Public Parks
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 27, 2019
The public park Landschaftspark in Duisburg-Meiderich, Germany. Image credit: mini_malist/Flickr Landschaftspark, or “landscape park”, of ...
Bomb Crater Garden
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 25, 2019
On September 20, 1940, just over a year after Hitler’s army invaded Poland triggering a six-year war, a German airplane dropped a bomb over...
Out of Place Ski Jumps
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 25, 2019
Competitive skiing as a sport developed in Norway in the later part of the 19th century. Sondre Norheim, who is recognized as the “Father of...
Star Jelly: The Mysterious Phenomenon That Inspired ‘The Blob’
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 22, 2019
For hundreds of years, people have reported blobs of strange gelatinous substances on the ground that they presumed had fallen from the skie...
Hameau de la Reine: Marie Antoinette’s Pretend Village
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 21, 2019
Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France, is often portrayed as a frivolous, selfish, and immoral woman whose decadent lifestyle emptied t...
Rod Stewart’s Model Railway
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 20, 2019
For the past 26 years British rock star Rod Stewart has been secretly building a massive model railway in the attic of his Los Angles home....
Richard Trevithick And The Steam Circus
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 20, 2019
Twenty five years before Robert Stephenson decisively proved the superiority of steam locomotives over horse drawn carriages during the Rain...
The Zeppelin Spy Basket
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 19, 2019
One of the most perilous positions in the crew of a German Zeppelin during the First World War was that of the aerial lookout, whose job was...
Caligula’s Pleasure Ships of Lake Nemi
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 18, 2019
Two thousand years ago, the debauched Roman emperor Caligula ordered the construction of two large floating pleasure barges on the relativel...
Cinder Lake Crater Field: The Simulated Moon NASA Created to Train Astronauts
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 15, 2019
Two Apollo 15 crew members, riding a Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) simulator, participate in geology training at the Cinder Lake crater field ...
The Rainhill Trials
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 13, 2019
Nearly two centuries ago, a small hamlet lying between Liverpool and Manchester became host to one of the strangest competitions ever held. ...
Communal Coffins And Burial Clubs
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 12, 2019
The St John and All Saints Church in the town of Easingwold, in North Yorkshire, England, dates to the 13th century, or perhaps even earlier...
The Last Victim of Smallpox
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 12, 2019
In the summer of 1978, the World Health Organization stood on the brink of a remarkable achievement—smallpox, the disease that terrorized pe...
Kongo Gumi: The 1,400-Year-Old Company
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 9, 2019
Less than two months ago, the renowned British travel agency Thomas Cook laid off more than 21,000 employees the world over and liquidated i...
The Historic Hanford Reactor That Made Plutonium For The Nagasaki Bomb
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 7, 2019
Sitting squarely in the middle of the now decommissioned Hanford Site, a nuclear production complex on the Columbia River near Richland, Was...
The Century Old ‘Dream Mine’ That’s Yet to Produce Gold
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 6, 2019
On the foothills of Wasatch Mountains, east of Salem, in the US state of Utah, is a mine waiting for a miracle. The mine was first excavate...
Bridges With Buildings—Part 2
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 5, 2019
During the Middle Ages, it was common to have buildings built on top of bridges. These spaces were rented out to shopkeepers and merchants, ...
The Legend of The Lost Cement Mine
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 5, 2019
Gold mining in California. Lithograph by Currier & Ives, 1871. Image courtesy: Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com Hundreds of million...
Why Mediaeval Europeans Slept Inside Boxes
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 1, 2019
For much of human history, privacy during bedtime was an alien concept. Many poor families lived in small houses, where there was only one o...
The Berlin Candy Bomber
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 31, 2019
Following the end of World War 2, Germany was broken up and divided among the Allies as one divides war booty. The western half was occupie...
That Time When Britain Had Its Own Rocket
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 30, 2019
For a country as technological advanced as Great Britain, it sounds almost implausible when you say that the British do not have a space pr...
