Etienne Bottineau And The Lost Art of Nauscopie
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 16, 2020
Etienne Bottineau was a sailor and an employee of the French East India Company who possessed a remarkable skill. Bottineau could detect shi...
Showing posts with the label Featured
The Audacity of Peter Tordenskjold: The Naval Captain Who Asked His Enemy For Ammo in The Middle of a Battle
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 12, 2020
On November 12, 1720 Peter Tordenskjold died in a sword duel. It will not sound familiar to most people, but he was one of the great nationa...
Chinese Magic Mirrors
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 11, 2020
For over a thousand years, a rare type of Chinese artifact has been baffling researchers. It’s a polished bronze mirror with a pattern cast ...
The Post Offices of Love and Romance
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 9, 2020
The town of Bridal Veil, located in Multnomah County, Oregon, the United States, a little distance from the Bridal Veil waterfalls, remains ...
Anthropology Days: The Racist Olympic Event of 1904
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 8, 2020
Starting from the late 19th century through the early 20th, human exhibitions were a routine part of circuses, traveling shows, and major ex...
Vinkensport: Belgium’s Competitive Bird Calling
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 4, 2020
In the Flanders region of Belgium, a favorite pastime among the old Dutch-speaking folks is raising and training the common chaffinch ( Frin...
Gallaudet Eleven: The Deaf ‘Astronauts’
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 3, 2020
In the late 1950s, when NASA was still a young organization, one of the biggest challenges for them was to determine whether human spaceflig...
Turlough: Ireland’s Disappearing Lakes
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 2, 2020
Many lakes whose existence depends wholly on rainwater runoffs are seasonal. The phenomenon is not particularly mysterious—the lake forms wh...
The Uranium Cubes From a Nazi Nuclear Reactor
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 31, 2020
In the summer of 2013, Physicist Timothy Koeth of University of Maryland received an unexpected gift from one of his friends. It was a small...
Bull Running in Britain
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 28, 2020
Bull running as a sport is mostly associated with the city of Pamplona, in northern Spain. But until the 19th century, Britain had a similar...
The Very First Image on The Internet
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 27, 2020
Back in the early nineties, when the World Wide Web was still young, a group of geeky girls hailing from the European Organization for Nucle...
The B-17 That Flew With Its Tail Sliced Off
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 26, 2020
This famous photograph of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, with its tail section severed but still flying was taken during Word War 2, towar...
Sway Tower, The 14-Story Folly And The World Tallest Unreinforced Concrete Structure
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 25, 2020
On the outskirts of Sway, a village near Lymington, on Britain’s south coast, stands a peculiar Victorian tower. Visible for miles around, t...
Arrhichion, The Olympic Champion Who Won After His Death
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 25, 2020
Pankration was a violet sport. Practiced in ancient Greece, this brutal combination of boxing and wrestling had virtually no rules. The obje...
Slip Coach: Trains That Split
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 24, 2020
In the middle of the 19th century, British railway engineers realized that journey times could be appreciably shortened if trains didn’t hav...
Michael Malloy: The Man Who Wouldn’t Die
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 21, 2020
Killing someone takes a lot of wickedness backed by an equal amount of temerity, none of which was lacking in Tony Marino, Joseph "Red...
Of Mice, Men And Moon: A Short History of Animals in Space
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 18, 2020
More animals have flown to space than human beings. In the early years of space flight, all kinds of living beings from rodents to apes were...
London Bridge’s Nonsuch House
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 17, 2020
The Old London Bridge that stood for 600 years over Thames was the river’s key crossing point, as well as the city’s prime real estate area....
A Racing Horse Named Potoooooooo
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 15, 2020
There was once a great racehorse in 18th-century Britain named Potoooooooo, who was famed for his endurance and speed. He won over 30 races ...
Thames Tunnel: The World’s First Tunnel Under a River
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 13, 2020
At the beginning of the 19th century, London was one of the busiest river ports in the world, and the 600-year old stone bridge over Thames ...
