The US Navy's Failed Formosa Expedition
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 5, 2026
Nearly a century before the Vietnam War, the United States undertook one of its first military interventions in East Asia. It was not a full...
Showing posts with the label History
Kubizuka: The Tomb of Decapitated Heads
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 3, 2026
During the medieval period and early modern Japan, decapitation was a common method of execution for criminals and defeated enemy warriors. ...
Buchette del vino: The Wine Windows of Florence
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 29, 2026
Scattered across Florence, in the narrow streets, is a curious architectural feature that many visitors walk past without noticing. Set into...
The Ancient Salt Wells of Zigong
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 27, 2026
Long before the first commercial oil wells appeared in North America, Chinese engineers had already mastered the art of drilling deep into t...
Aboriginal Message Sticks
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 23, 2026
Not all forms of communication are based on speech or writing. Just as the Inca encoded information in strings and knots known as quipus , a...
The Legend of a Lost Roman Legion in China
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 21, 2026
A remote village in north-western China, on the edge of the Gobi desert, is said to have been founded by Roman soldiers. According to this c...
The Beale Ciphers
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 15, 2026
Somewhere in the hills of Virginia, the United States, according to an enduring legend, there remains buried a vast fortune in gold, silver,...
The Euphrates Tunnel: History's First Underwater Tunnel or Ancient Legend?
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 13, 2026
More than two thousand years before modern engineers bored tunnels beneath rivers and seas, ancient writers told of an astonishing passage h...
Lampo: The Dog Who Rode The Rails
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 2, 2026
In the summer of 1953, a stray dog stepped off a freight train at the railway station of Campiglia Marittima, a small town in Tuscany, Italy...
Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont: The Forgotten Genius of Spain’s Golden Age
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 1, 2026
Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont was a Spanish polymath who was far ahead of his time. Centuries before the Industrial Revolution, this Spanish ...
Edgar Wallace's Marketing Folly
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 23, 2026
In 1905, a little-known journalist named Edgar Wallace was determined to make his first novel impossible to ignore. The book was The Four Ju...
The Lost Battalion of Celtic Wood
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 17, 2026
On 9 October 1917, during the Third Battle of Ypres, a battalion of Australian soldiers entered a place known as Celtic Wood, near Passchend...
Mynydd Epynt: A Welsh Village That Was Sacrificed for The War Effort
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 15, 2026
The windswept plateau in central Wales, near the village of Sennybridge in Powys, was once home to a thriving Welsh-speaking farming society...
Éolienne Bollée: An Unusual Windmill
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 10, 2026
The design and working principle of a windmill or a wind powered machine haven’t changed much since they first appeared in Persia some 1,20...
The Double Life of William Brodie
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 8, 2026
In the late 18th century, no man in Edinburgh seemed more respectable than William Brodie. By day, he was a successful cabinetmaker, a membe...
Gjøa: The Little Ship That Conquered the Arctic
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 1, 2026
On October 19, 1906, a modest 70-foot sailing vessel slipped into San Francisco Bay. Compared with the large steamships and ocean-going vess...
Breadalbane: The Shipwreck at The Top of The World
Kaushik Patowary
May 27, 2026
In the frigid waters of the Canadian Arctic, nearly 100 meters beneath the surface, lies a ship seemingly untouched by time. Despite the pas...
Christopher Hutton's Clever Inventions That Helped Allied PoW Escape
Kaushik Patowary
May 25, 2026
When Britain entered the Second World War in September 1939, military planners understood that thousands of Allied servicemen would inevitab...
The Impeccable Counterfeits of Ceslaw Bojarski
Kaushik Patowary
May 19, 2026
On November 9, 1963, two investigators from France’s Central Office for Counterfeit Currency Control (OCRFM) arrived at the post office on R...
Edinburgh Seven And The Surgeons' Hall Riot
Kaushik Patowary
May 14, 2026
On 18 November 1870, a crowd gathered outside the Surgeons’ Hall in Edinburgh. Inside, seven young women sat for an anatomy examination alon...
