Turning Night Into Day: Nuclear Explosions in Space
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 23, 2020
On August 1, 1958, a few minutes before midnight, an intense flash of white light tore across the night sky illuminating everything it touch...
Showing posts with the label Featured
Liverpool’s Secret Tunnels Built By An Eccentric “Philanthropist”
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 19, 2020
Williamson Tunnels under Edge Hill, in Liverpool. Photo: Friend of Williamson’s Tunnels Joseph Williamson was a wealthy businessman, but...
That Time When The US Almost Blew Up North Carolina
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 18, 2020
During the 1950s and 60s, the United States suffered a string of mishaps with nuclear weapons. From lost nukes to accidentally dropping bomb...
Bōsai Musen: Japan’s 5 PM Chime
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 16, 2020
The loudspeaker of Japan’s national disaster warning system in Owkudani Hakone, Japan. Photo: WAN CHEUK NANG/Shutterstock.com For those ...
Dürer's Rhinoceros: A 16th-Century Viral Fake
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 16, 2020
Five hundred years ago, Europe saw its first rhinoceros in more than a thousand years. The animal was fairly common during Roman times see...
Monte Stella: Milan’s Rubble Mountain
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 12, 2020
The city of Milan is as flat as a pancake, save for a little bump in the northwest called Monte Stella. In the vast expanse of Po valley, ...
The Healing Soil of Boho
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 11, 2020
In the Boho highlands of West Fermanagh Scarplands in Northern Ireland, there is a longstanding belief that the soil from the local churchya...
Alexis St. Martin: The Man With A Hole In His Stomach
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 8, 2020
By the early 19th century, physicians had a clear understanding of the human anatomy (from dissecting cadavers) but knowledge about the role...
Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov’s Two-Headed Dog
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 5, 2020
In 1955, at a meeting of the Moscow Surgical Society, a sensational exhibit was presented to the assembled guests. On the platform close t...
Clever Hans: The Horse Who Could Do Math
Kaushik Patowary
May 29, 2020
In a paved courtyard surrounded by high apartment houses in the northern part of Berlin, a small crowd had gathered to watch an old high s...
Stanley Kubrick’s Rejected Monolith
Kaushik Patowary
May 27, 2020
The iconic Monolith from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was originally not a mysterious black slab. The director wanted it t...
Waterloopbos: Where Dutch Engineers Learned to Play With The Sea
Kaushik Patowary
May 27, 2020
A quarter of Netherlands lie below the sea level. Most of these low-lying areas are land reclaimed from the sea. The region was originally o...
Pervitin: The Wonder Drug That Fueled Nazi Germany
Kaushik Patowary
May 25, 2020
When Heinrich Böll, the German writer and Nobel laureate, was a young man in his twenties, like many able-bodied youths of his time, he jo...
Draining of Fucine Lake
Kaushik Patowary
May 21, 2020
In western Abruzzo, in central Italy, about 80 kilometers east of Rome, lies one of Italy's most fertile plains. The vegetables that a...
Tsar Tank
Kaushik Patowary
May 20, 2020
Before World War I, military tanks were a mere concept. Leonardo da Vinci made sketches of a human-powered armored vehicle, with canons all ...
Aerotrain: The High-Speed Train That Almost Revolutionized Transport
Kaushik Patowary
May 19, 2020
Some of the fastest trains in service today have a top speed in excess of 200 miles per hour. With the exception of Shanghai maglev, all o...
Vennbahn: The Railway That Created a Peculiar Border Problem
Kaushik Patowary
May 14, 2020
Germany and Belgium’s border problem. Photo: gunnsteinlye/Flickr Along the German-Belgian border runs an old disused railway track, the ...
Turnspit Dogs
Kaushik Patowary
May 12, 2020
Observe the scene above depicting the inside of an inn at Newcastle, Wales, in the late 19th century. Men and women are sitting around the...
The Pearl Rush of Caddo Lake
Kaushik Patowary
May 11, 2020
Caddo Lake. Photo: Maciej Kraus/Flickr Natural pearls are a rarity today, but a hundred years ago, before British biologist William Savi...
The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary
Kaushik Patowary
May 6, 2020
When cotton first came to Europe from Central Asia during the Middle ages, people were fascinated by the fluffy, fibrous balls that resemb...
