Witch Windows of Vermont
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 19, 2019
Photo credit: Larry Lamsa/Flickr An architectural oddity found only in the US state of Vermont is the so-called “witch window”. These are ...
Showing posts with the label Featured
Water Powered Funiculars
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 19, 2019
Funiculars are an odd mode of transport, but at the same time, they are one of the most energy-efficient one. The system consist of two coun...
The Bolivian Clock That Runs Backwards
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 18, 2019
The building that houses Bolivia’s legislative assembly in Plaza Murillo, in central La Paz, features a clock above the entrance that looks ...
European Trees With The Most Interesting Stories
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 18, 2019
The Environmental Partnership Association (EPA) is seeking votes from the public to help them select the winner of the European Tree of the...
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...
Yasukuni Shrine, Where War Criminals Are Revered
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 15, 2019
The Imperial Shrine of Yasukuni, in Chiyoda, Tokyo, is a beautiful spiritual place for remembering those who died in service for Japan. As m...
When Little Boys Wore Dresses
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 12, 2019
Until about a century ago, in the western world, you couldn’t tell whether a young child was a girl or a boy from the way he or she dressed....
How Australia Remembers The World’s Biggest Gold Nugget
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 8, 2019
On February 1869, two British prospectors, John Deason and Richard Oates, were digging for gold in central Victoria, Australia, when their p...
Music in The Clouds
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 7, 2019
In June 1867, James Glaisher, an English astronomer and meteorologists, and an avid balloonist, was floating over Paris in a balloon when h...
Globsters: When Sea Monsters Wash Ashore
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 7, 2019
On November 30, 1896, two young boys, Herbert Coles and Dunham Coretter, were bicycling along Anastasia Island, near St. Augustine on the At...
Gyrobus: The Flywheel-Powered Public Transportation
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 5, 2019
Back in the 1940s, Swiss engineers developed a new kind of zero-emission electric bus that used a large spinning flywheel to store energy ra...
The Tomb That Inspired Britain's Iconic Telephone Box
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 1, 2019
The United Kingdom Post Office introduced the first public telephone kiosk, designated K1, in 1921. These were constructed out of pre-cast c...
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...
Henry Cotton: The Psychiatrist Who Tried to ‘Cure’ His Patients by Removing Their Teeth
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 29, 2019
This illustration of a mutilated mouth is not the result of a road accident, but that of a doctor’s obsession with an utterly bizarre theor...
The Ancient Portraits of Fayuum Mummies
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 22, 2019
These haunting portraits of long-dead men, women and children come from a vast region known as the Fayuum Basin, located immediately to the ...
Charvolant: The Kite-Drawn Carriages
Kaushik Patowary
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
Kaushik Patowary
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
Kaushik Patowary
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
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...
China’s Misguided War Against Sparrows
Kaushik Patowary
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 ...
