Henry Gunther: The Last Soldier To Be Killed During World War 1
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 15, 2025
Just after 5 o’clock on the morning of 11 November 1918, British, French, and German officials gathered in a railway carriage in the Compièg...
Showing posts with the label History
Ictíneo II: The World’s First Powered Submarine That Ran On Chemicals
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 9, 2025
Before the age of steam, all early submarines relied on human muscle for propulsion. The first functional submarine, built by Dutch inventor...
Pecunia Non Olet: The Urine Tax of Ancient Rome
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 7, 2025
A Roman-era latrine in Timgad in Algeria . Credit: Wikimedia Commons Throughout history, governments have found creative ways to raise...
Abraham Crijnssen: The Ship That Disguised Itself As An Island
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 3, 2025
Camouflage is a vital strategy in warfare—whether on land, at sea, or in the air. During the First and Second World Wars, many Allied ships—...
Robert Coates: The Greatest Bad Actor
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 30, 2025
In the glittering world of 19th-century theatre, where talent was prized and ridicule could end a career, one man defied convention and beca...
The Iron Hand of Götz von Berlichingen
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 25, 2025
Gottfried "Götz" von Berlichingen was no ordinary knight. A formidable figure in 16th-century Germany, he earned both fame and in...
The Jumping Frenchmen of Maine
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 16, 2025
In the late 19th century, a rare and highly unusual neuropsychiatric condition was observed among a group of French-Canadian lumberjacks li...
Salomon Andrée's Ill-Fated Arctic Balloon Expedition
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 9, 2025
By the late 19th century, the North Pole remained one of the last great geographic mysteries. The quest to reach the inhospitable and danger...
Timothy Dexter’s Curious Business Ventures
Kaushik Patowary
May 30, 2025
Timothy Dexter was businessman, but he had few business sense. He attempted to sell coal to Newcastle and bed warmers to the tropics. Yet, d...
Johann Bessler’s Mysterious Rotating Wheel
Kaushik Patowary
May 26, 2025
For centuries, inventors have sought to create machines that could run forever without any external source of energy. These so-called “perpe...
Paige Compositor: The Invention That Bankrupted Mark Twain
Kaushik Patowary
May 19, 2025
Movabale letter types in a type case. This centuries-old method of type setting, although largely displaced by newer technologies, is s...
James Lind And The First Clinical Trial
Kaushik Patowary
May 12, 2025
In the mid-18th century, the British Royal Navy was the most powerful maritime force in the world, but its dominance came at a high cost. Am...
The Poyais Scam: A Nation That Never Was
Kaushik Patowary
May 7, 2025
A panoramic view of Black River in the fictional territory of Poyais. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons In the early 19th century, a Sc...
The Kauri Gum Diggers of New Zealand
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 30, 2025
Two Māori gum-diggers pose with a substantial pile of kauri gum, representing a week’s labour. Photo credit: Museum at Te Ahu In the m...
The 1916 Jersey Shore Shark Attacks
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 22, 2025
Crowds throng the beach at Atlantic City, New Jersey. circa 1908. Photo credit: Detroit Publishing Company The town of Beach Haven, o...
Harold Gillies: The Father of Plastic Surgery
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 9, 2025
This is Walter Yeo, an English sailor who was injured while manning the guns aboard the battleship HMS Warspite during the Battle of Jutla...
Valencia’s Water Tribunal is The World’s Oldest Court
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 3, 2025
It’s Thursday, and a sizeable crowd has gathered at the corner of Plaza de la Virgen in Valencia, Spain, near the Apostles Gate of the city’...
Aqua Tofana: The 17th Century Husband Killer
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 1, 2025
Sometime in the summer of 1791, or perhaps even earlier, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart fell ill. His biographer, Franz Niemetschek, described him ...
Hating Henry Symeonis: An Oxford University Tradition
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 21, 2025
The University of Oxford—one of the oldest continuously operating universities in the world—has a wealth of traditions, which is unsurprisin...
Danish Protest Pig
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 12, 2025
This pig with a reddish-brown coat and a prominent white stripe might not look very remarkable, but during the late 19th century, it becam...
