Lunatic Express: The Railway That Gave Birth to Kenya
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 5, 2019
More than a hundred years ago, before Europeans had set foot on what is now Kenya, a tribal prophet named Kimnyole spoke of a vicious “iron...
Showing posts with the label Featured
How The Soviet Helped Vulcan, An American Town, Get a Bridge
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 2, 2019
In south West Virginia, near the border with Kentucky, the United States, is a small unincorporated community named Vulcan. Vulcan was onc...
The Last Gas Streetlights
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 1, 2019
For much of human history, people have lived in the dark. The sun shines for only half the day, or less—lesser still during winter. So ever...
Sergei Krikalev: The Man Who Went Up a Soviet And Came Down a Russian
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 25, 2019
Late in the spring of 1991, Soviet cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Anatoli Artsebarski, along with Britain's first astronaut, Helen Shar...
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...
Mauritania’s Iron Ore Train
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 21, 2019
At one million square kilometers, Mauritania is not a small country, but a very small percentage of it is habitable. The rest is covered by...
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 ...
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...
