Showing posts with the label Featured

Charvolant: The Kite-Drawn Carriages

Jan 18, 2019

On 8 January 1822, an extraordinary journey was made from Bristol to Marlborough. An English schoolteacher named George Pocock took his wif...

Grammichele: The Hexagonal Town

Jan 18, 2019

Located in the province of Catania, in the Italian island of Sicily, is the town of Grammichele. It is one of the few towns in the world to...

The Gable Stones of Amsterdam

Jan 16, 2019

Before Amsterdam had house numbering, they had a curious way of identifying addresses. Each house and building in the city used to have a st...

Congreve Rolling Ball Clock

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...

China’s Misguided War Against Sparrows

Jan 8, 2019

These panel of images from the late 1950s China, depicting young boys hunting sparrows for sport, were taken from a poster aimed at school ...

Cascata delle Marmore: A Man-Made Waterfalls Created by Ancient Romans

Jan 7, 2019

About 8 kilometers east from the city of Terni, in the Umbria region of Italy, is a beautiful three-tiered waterfalls called Cascata delle M...

Forma Urbis: Rome’s Giant Marble Map

Jan 7, 2019

A modern illustration of the Temple of Peace with Forma Urbis, the giant map of Rome, on the wall. At the Roman Forum in the center of Rom...

SS Warrimoo: The Ship That Missed New Year’s Eve But Gained Two Centuries

Jan 4, 2019

The story that follows supposedly happened more than a hundred years ago on the eve of New Year. It spanned two centuries, yet was over in a...

The Photographers Who Braved Mount St. Helens

Jan 3, 2019

When Mount St. Helens erupted in the morning of May 18, 1980, a freelance photographer named Robert Landsberg was within four miles of the s...

Meat-Shaped Stone And Jadeite Cabbage

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 ...

Kola Superdeep Borehole

Dec 24, 2018

It’s hard to imagine that under this small metal cap lies the world’s deepest borehole. Now surrounded by ruins, the Kola Superdeep Borehol...

Atmospheric Railways: The 19th Century Trains That Ran On Air

Dec 22, 2018

The 19th century ushered in a new form of transport—railways. Journeys that previously took weeks were now completed in days. Distances that...

The Sydney Hospital Built By Rum

Dec 17, 2018

Two hundred years ago, Sydney was little more than a convict camp in desperate need of infrastructure, supplies and a hospital. The long jou...

William Clark’s Expensive Folly

Dec 14, 2018

In late 19th century New York, on an avenue dubbed the “Millionaire’s Colony”, there stood an insanely ornate house belonging to the wealthy...

Demon Core: How The Third Nuclear Bomb Destined For Japan Killed a Bunch of American Scientists

Dec 14, 2018

President Harry S. Truman knew that one bomb would not be enough to force Japan to surrender, so he ordered two. What many don’t know is tha...

John Lethbridge’s Diving Machine

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...

The Tale of The Exploding Whale

Dec 11, 2018

Beached whales sometimes spontaneously explode due to build up of gases, mostly methane, as the carcass decomposes. Occasionally, whale carc...

The True Story Behind ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’

Dec 11, 2018

The story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin is well known. This dark European folktale with unsettling themes of ingratitude and terrible vengean...

James Nasmyth’s Fake Lunar Photographs From 1874

Dec 8, 2018

In 1874, an astronomer and an inventor together published one of the most influential books of the time on lunar geology, titled The Moon: C...

The World’s Largest Vacuum Chamber

Dec 6, 2018

At the 6,400-acre Plum Brook Field Station complex near Sandusky, Ohio, stands five large test facilities operated by NASA to test various a...