Showing posts with the label History

The Braamfontein Explosion

Jan 25, 2024

The city of Johannesburg in South Africa was founded on gold after the precious metal was discovered on the Witwatersrand by Jan Gerrit Bant...

Ernest Bazin: The Ship That Rolled on Wheels

Jan 23, 2024

Between 1892 and 1893, French inventor Ernest Bazin filed patent for an unusual ship design. Instead of gliding through water, which had hit...

Eulogy of The Dog: The Story of ‘Old Drum’

Jan 19, 2024

George Graham Vest spent twenty-four years in the United States Senate, serving from 1879 to 1903. However, his most notable legacy stems fr...

The L'Aigle Meteorite Shower And The Birth of Meteoritics

Jan 17, 2024

Prior to the 1800s, scientists were skeptical about the existence of meteorites. Despite historical reports of meteorite sightings dating ba...

The Ill-fated Jeannette Expedition to The Arctic

Jan 13, 2024

In the mid-19th century, explorers and geographers were seized by an idea that was first floated in the 16th century by the English cartogra...

Pratt And Smith: The Last Men To Be Executed For Sodomy in England

Jan 8, 2024

On the morning of November 27, 1835, two men—James Pratt and John Smith—were publicly hanged in front of Newgate Prison in London. Just thre...

Paul-Félix Armand-Delille: Europe’s Rabbit Killer

Jan 3, 2024

In the 1950s, Australian sheep and cattle farmers decided to tackle the country’s rabbit problem by unleashing a biological weapon—the myxom...

Mobro 4000: The Infamous Garbage Barge

Dec 22, 2023

Americans generate an enormous amount of trash. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency EPA, the average U.S. residen...

Bottle Kicking in Hallaton

Dec 18, 2023

In the village of Hallaton in Leicestershire, England, a unique tradition unfolds every Easter Monday. The residents of Hallaton and the nea...

Bloody Island: Missouri’s Infamous Dueling Ground

Dec 14, 2023

In the late 1790s, a large sandy island emerged in the middle of the Mississippi River, across from St. Louis, Missouri, as a result of the ...