Chinese Medicine Dolls
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 10, 2019
For hundreds of years until the early 20th century, getting medical help for a Chinese woman was tricky. In those times the Chinese placed e...
Showing posts with the label Curious Objects
Shadwell Forgeries: How Two Illiterates Fooled Victorian Archeologists
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 5, 2019
During the middle of the 19th century, London’s antiquarian market was flooded by the sudden arrival of a large number of supposedly mediaev...
The Ancient Chinese Earthquake Detector That’s Puzzling Modern Researchers
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 6, 2019
In the year 132 CE, a brilliant Chinese astronomer, mathematician and engineer named Zhang Heng presented to the Han court an impressive inv...
How Mediaeval Husbands Chastised Wives Who Talked Too Much
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 17, 2019
By putting a muzzle on them, of course. Known as Scold's bridle, these devices of torture and public humiliation were used mostly in En...
Tempest Prognosticator: Predicting Storms With Leeches
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 30, 2019
Some animals have the instinctive ability to predict changes in the weather. Frogs croak when a storm is approaching, birds return to their ...
The Triumphal Arch of Emperor Maximilian I
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 27, 2019
Like many rulers, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I had a fascination for large monuments, but instead of actually building them he roman...
The Shoe Fitting Machines That Blasted You With Radiation
Kaushik Patowary
May 24, 2019
Finding the right fit for your shoes is not that difficult. All you need to do is take a short walk through the store in the new pair. Squee...
Soviet Televisions
Kaushik Patowary
May 20, 2019
This is the KVN-49, a black-and-white television set produced in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, and the first set to be mass-produced in th...
The World’s Oldest Printed Book
Kaushik Patowary
May 17, 2019
The Diamond Sutra is an ancient Buddhist sermon that generation of Buddhists have memorized and chanted since at least the fifth century. T...
The Hand of Glory
Kaushik Patowary
May 4, 2019
At the Whitby Museum in North Yorkshire is a strange artifact—a dismembered hand, dried and shriveled. It once belonged to a man who was han...
Earthquake Rose
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 7, 2019
On February 28, 2001, an earthquake of magnitude 6.8 rocked the US state of Washington cracking sidewalks, toppling buildings, and causing s...
Bone Records: Soviet-Era Bootlegged Music on X-Rays
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 28, 2019
During the Cold War, Soviet Russia was a very restrictive place. The media was heavily censored, foreign radio and television station waves...
What a 7-Year-Old Russian Boy Doodled in The 13th Century
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 22, 2019
Fifty years ago, a trove of manuscripts written on birch bark was discovered in the Russian city of Novgorod, situated some 200 kilometers...
Cemetery Guns And Coffin Torpedoes
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 16, 2019
This unusual-looking gun, now exhibited at the Museum of Mourning Art in Arlington Cemetery, once kept body snatchers away from cemetery gr...
Shin's Tricycle
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 13, 2019
Behind a glass case at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is a battered and rusted tricycle. The seat is missing, and so are the pedals an...
Edwin Smith Papyrus: The 3,600-Year-Old Textbook of Surgery
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 11, 2019
In 1862, an American Egyptologist named Edwin Smith bought an ancient scroll of papyrus from an Egyptian dealer. Smith didn’t know how to re...
Bookwheel, The 16th Century Forerunner to The eBook Reader
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 30, 2019
For many of us, the ebook reader was the next best thing to happen since Gutenberg’s printing press. The printing press made books widely av...
Congreve Rolling Ball Clock
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 9, 2019
In the early 19th century, an Englishman named Sir William Congreve invented an unusual clock that kept time using balls rolling down an inc...
Meat-Shaped Stone And Jadeite Cabbage
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 2, 2019
This mouth-watering chunk of stewed pork belly with a gratuitous layer of fat and glistening sheen is actually a piece of rock—jasper to be ...
John Lethbridge’s Diving Machine
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 12, 2018
This strange apparatus hanging at the Cité de la Mer museum in Cherbourg, France, looks like some kind of a medieval torture device, but is...
