The Ansel Bourne Identity
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 27, 2026
In January 1887, a mild-mannered itinerant preacher named Ansel Bourne left his home in Greene, Rhode Island, to travel to nearby Providence...
Showing posts with the label History
Caroline Hampton's Rubber Gloves
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 22, 2026
In the late nineteenth century, modern surgery was still emerging from an era in which hygiene was, by today’s standards, startlingly poor. ...
The Disappearance of The Waratah
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 20, 2026
On the evening of 26 July 1909, the SS Waratah sailed from Durban, South Africa, bound for Cape Town. A luxury passenger liner, she was coa...
Rupes Nigra: The Fabled Magnetic Mountain at The North Pole
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 17, 2026
In 1577, the Flemish cartographer Gerhard Mercator wrote a letter to his friend, the English scientist, occultist and royal advisor John Dee...
Barbara Thompson: Prisoner of the Aboriginal
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 15, 2026
When Captain Joseph Frazer rescued Narcisse Pelletier from Aboriginal people in 1875, it was not the first time a white captive had been re...
Edmond Locard And The First Forensic Laboratory
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 8, 2026
In 1910, the Lyon police offered criminologist Edmond Locard the opportunity to form the first police laboratory. He was given two assistant...
The Antarctic Snow Cruiser
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 5, 2026
Somewhere on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, buried beneath hundreds of feet of snow (or perhaps at the bottom of the ocean), lies an enor...
The Bombay Docks Explosion of 1944
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 25, 2025
On the afternoon of 14 April 1944, the city of Bombay, then the jewel of British India’s western coast, was shaken by a catastrophe so viole...
England's Coffeehouses and the Birth of Public Debate
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 22, 2025
When coffee first arrived in England in the mid-17th century, it brought with it far more than a new beverage. It introduced a radically new...
Charles-Henri Sanson: The Prolific French Executioner
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 17, 2025
In the violent upheaval of the French Revolution, few figures stood closer to death than Charles-Henri Sanson. Kings, queens, nobles, priest...
