The Balloon Satellites of Project Echo
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 11, 2020
The world’s first communication satellite was remarkably unsophisticated—a big silvery plastic balloon coated with aluminum, soaring roughly...
Showing posts with the label Featured
The Soviet Bomber That Was Reverse Engineered From Stolen American B-29s
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 9, 2020
Ask anyone, what won the war against Japan during the Second World War, and the answer would invariably be the ‘atomic bomb’, but truth be...
The Masked Women of Iran
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 4, 2020
Head covering, veils and burqas are common sight among many Muslim communities around the world. There are a lot of different styles and ea...
The Windmills of Paris
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 3, 2020
Windmills of Montmartre, Maurice Utrillo. Paris is not exactly hilly, but there are a couple of high points in the city where one can ea...
Büsingen am Hochrhein: The Town Torn Between Two Countries
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 2, 2020
Büsingen am Hochrhein is a German town with a lot of Swiss character. That’s because this small town on the Rhine is entirely surrounded by ...
The Jailhouse That Got Accidentally Sold
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 30, 2020
It takes quite a stretch of imagination to call Harvard a city. With an area just over half a square mile and population of about one thousa...
The Polar Bear Jail of Churchill
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 29, 2020
Living in Churchill in northern Manitoba, Canada, has its perils. Situated on the banks of Hudson Bay, approximately 1,000 km north of the p...
The Lost Patents
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 25, 2020
The United States Patent and Trademark Office was established in 1790, and since then the federal office has issued over 10 million patents ...
The Meridian That Stood Up To Greenwich
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 24, 2020
Railways, in the late 19th century, ushered in a revolution in transport, but with that arose one unexpected problem. Back then, there was...
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...
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...
