Showing posts with the label Featured

Nazi Amphitheaters

Apr 28, 2021

Near the summit of a large wooded hill overlooking the town of Heidelberg in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, stands an open-air theater called a...

The World’s Loudest Plane Was So Loud It Caused Seizures

Apr 27, 2021

The aviation industry’s transition from propellers to jet engines saw the emergence of a new kind of engine called the turboprop. A turbopro...

Istanbul’s Cast Iron Church

Apr 23, 2021

Although it looks like stone, the Bulgarian St. Stephen Church with its richly ornamented façade on the shores of the Golden Horn in Istanbu...

Sarah Jacob: The Girl Who Starved to Death to Prove Herself

Apr 21, 2021

There have been quite a few cases where people claimed to have survived without food. These people call themselves “breatharians” for they p...

Russia’s Hand-Tossed Satellites

Apr 19, 2021

On November 3, 1997, cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and Anatoly Solovyov were spacewalking outside the Mir space station to remove an old solar ...

Anatomical Theaters

Apr 16, 2021

Since ancient times, the primary way to teach and learn anatomy have been to dissect human cadavers. Generations of surgeons have learned an...

Elephant of The Bastille

Apr 14, 2021

Between 1814 and 1846, there stood a colossal plaster elephant in the heart of Paris, at the site of the former Bastille prison. For much of...

Why The Soviet Union Lied About Yuri Gagarin's Historic Space Flight

Apr 12, 2021

Exactly sixty years ago, on April 12, 1961, Vostok 1 took off from Baikonur Cosmodrome taking along cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on the first ever...

The Chapati Movement of 1857

Apr 8, 2021

The year was 1857. A storm was brewing in British-occupied India. There was growing resentment among the Indians against the rule of the Eas...

Zwentendorf, The Nuclear Power Plant That Was Never Turned On

Apr 6, 2021

The Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant, located on the bank of the Danube River, about 20 miles northwest of Vienna, is Austria’s only nuclear ...

How Rubber Ducks Are Helping Scientists Chart The Oceans

Apr 2, 2021

In early January 1992, the container ship Evergreen Ever Laurel departed Hong Kong for Washington. Among the millions of things that Ever L...

Hunley: The Submarine That Wouldn’t Stay Afloat

Mar 30, 2021

On 17 February 1864, the Confederate submarine CSS Hunley attacked and sank a 1,240-ton United States Navy ship, the USS Housatonic , and e...

Copenhagen’s Potato Row

Mar 26, 2021

In the heart of Copenhagen, not far from the harbor, are a series of closely laid streets with houses smashed together like rows of potato p...

The Mercy Dogs of World War 1

Mar 26, 2021

Dogs have accompanied men to war since ancient times, as scouts, sentries, trackers and messengers. But the most unique role they ever playe...

DC-X: The Rocket That Beat SpaceX by 20 Years

Mar 23, 2021

Twenty years before modern spaceflight companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin began designing rockets that launch and land vertically, the DC...

Maliwawa Figures: A Rock Art Style Like No Other

Mar 19, 2021

Western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, has a remarkable range and number of rock art sites, rivalling that of Europe, southern Africa and ...

The Disease That Turns Muscles Into Bones

Mar 18, 2021

Behind a glass enclosure at the Mutter Museum of The College of Physicians in Philadelphia is a terrifying exhibit—two human skeletons. Thei...

Guarapari’s Radioactive Beaches

Mar 17, 2021

About 50 km south of Vitória, the state capital of Espírito Santo, in southeastern Brazil, lies the coastal town of Guarapari, a popular tou...

Heroic War Pigeons

Mar 16, 2021

World War One, and to some extent, the Second World War, was a strange blend of archaic and modern technology. The First World War, in parti...

When California Was Thought To Be An Island

Mar 15, 2021

If California were a country its economy would be the fifth largest in the world. Yet the tech boom is not the starkest way California has e...