The Clink: England’s Oldest Prison
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 22, 2022
The oldest prison in England and the country’s most notorious was owned not by the reigning monarch but the Bishop of Winchester. Now why wo...
Showing posts with the label England
Thomas Harriot: The Scientific Genius Who Eschewed Fame
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 21, 2022
Four hundred years ago, on July 2 1621, a remarkable Englishman named Thomas Harriot died in London. He left behind some 8,000 pages of scie...
Ashford v Thornton: The Last Challenge to Trial by Battle
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 18, 2022
Many personal disputes in the past have been settled by one-to-one combat. When a crime was committed, or a complainant accused a person of ...
The Donkey Wheel of Carisbrooke Castle
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 16, 2022
After King Charles I of England surrendered to Scottish forces following his defeat in the English Civil War (1642–1651), he was captured an...
Weighing The Mayor of High Wycombe
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 4, 2022
Every year at the Annual Meeting of the Charter Trustees of the town of High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire, England, a new mayor is elected. T...
Operation Epsilon: When Allied Forces Locked Ten German Scientists Together in a House
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 1, 2022
Near the end of World War 2, the Allied forces arrested ten German scientists who were thought to have worked on Nazi Germany's nuclear ...
Frantisek Kotzwara: Death by Erotic Asphyxiation
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 22, 2022
Frantisek Kotzwara was an accomplished Czech composer and a talented performer of the violin, double bass, piano, cello, flute and other str...
Ellen Sadler: The Sleeping Girl of Turville
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 12, 2022
The small village of Turville in Buckinghamshire, about 7 miles north of Henley-on-Thames and 35 miles west of London, is a favorite destina...
William Huskisson, Railway's First Victim
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 7, 2022
William Huskisson was a British statesman, financier, and Member of Parliament. A leading advocate of free trade, Huskisson had been a highl...
The London Beer Flood of 1814
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 23, 2021
At the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, in the London Borough of Camden, where now stands the Dominion Theatre, there stood...
Bring Home The Bacon at The Dunmow Flitch Trials
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 20, 2021
Married couples who can prove their undying love for each other can take home half a pig in a tradition that dates back to at least the 12th...
Woodmere Avenue: Britain’s Infamous Width Restriction Keeps Wrecking Cars
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 15, 2021
A clearance of seven feet should be wide enough for most vehicles to pass through, but apparently, not for some. As these videos reveal, man...
King Henry VIII’s Horned Helmet
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 9, 2021
The Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds hold in their possession a peculiar helmet, believed to have belonged to the infamous English King Henry...
Toddler’s Truce: Why The British Could Not Watch TV at 6PM
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 30, 2021
At 6 PM every day the television would go blank. The next one hour would be frantic. Parents would scoop their kids off the living room couc...
Why Matchmaking Was a Dangerous Profession in The 19th Century
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 2, 2021
Before the invention of matches, making fire was a tedious business, so people often shared fires from already existing flames. Whenever a n...
One-Armed Versus One-Legged Cricket
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 27, 2021
In 1861, Charles Dickens reported, in his magazine All the Year Round , a rather eccentric cricket match being played at Peckham Rye in the ...
Post Mortem Photography
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 8, 2021
In the olden days before photography, people used to hire painters to create portraits of those who had recently died as a way to keep the...
Horatio Phillips’s Extreme Multiplanes
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 30, 2021
British engineer and aviator Sir George Cayley suggested, as early as 1843, that an airplane with multiple wings will generate more uplift a...
Hackney Borough Disinfection Station
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 28, 2021
When you came down with an infectious disease in the early 1900s in London, not only were you whisked away in a horse-drawn cart to the hosp...
The Great Meteor of 1783
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 8, 2021
On the night of 18 August 1783, four gentlemen and their two lady companions were on the terrace of the Windsor Castle, enjoying the warm su...
