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...
Showing posts with the label History
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...
Smile of Silla: The Ancient Artifact That Inspired LG’s Logo
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 5, 2025
Like all business and corporations, LG—the South Korean multinational conglomerate, best known for their electronic products and household a...
Étienne Léopold Trouvelot: Ecological Villain And Astronomy Artist
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 1, 2025
Étienne Léopold Trouvelot left behind two legacies. One deserves admiration and respect, while the other earns him contempt and criticism. ...
James Tilly Matthews And The Air Loom
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 21, 2025
James Tilly Matthews was delusional. He believed that secret gangs of people were operating across London, using a bizarre machine called th...
Richard of Pudlicott’s Audacious Heist of The King’s Treasury
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 14, 2025
In April 1303, one of the most daring burglaries in English history took place within the walls of Westminster Abbey. Thieves broke into the...
Bachem Ba 349 Natter: Germany’s Strangest Aircraft From World War 2
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 7, 2025
World War II led to the creation of some truly bizarre and unconventional aircraft as nations scrambled to gain a technological edge. Among ...
Australian Iron Man: Ned Kelly’s Final Standoff
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 31, 2025
Throughout history, many outlaws have gained fame for their exploits, often becoming romanticized figures in folklore, literature, and film ...
The Raising of Mary Rose
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 27, 2025
The Mary Rose was a large warship in the Tudor Navy of King Henry VIII. She was the second most powerful ship in King Henry VIII’s fleet an...
