Showing posts with the label Russia

How The Soviets Put Out Oil Well Fires by Using Nuclear Bombs

Sep 14, 2018

In the early 1960s, the two nuclear superpowers of the world—the United States of America and the Soviet Union—began looking for ways to uti...

The Scientists Who Starved to Death Surrounded By Food

Aug 15, 2018

The 900-day Siege of Leningrad during the Second World War was perhaps one of the most gruesome sieges in modern history. Hitler’s diabolic ...

What Mathematics Has to Do With The Seven Bridges of Königsberg

Aug 7, 2018

Wedged between Poland and Lithuania, along the Baltic Coast, is a piece of Russia located 200 miles away from the Russian border. The Kalini...

Siberia’s Cold Storage Ice Tunnels

Jul 31, 2018

The Yamal Peninsula in northwest Siberia stays covered in permafrost all throughout the year, and while the winters are chilly, summers are ...

Yakutsk: The Coldest City in the World

May 19, 2018

Photo credit: Slava Stepanov There are plenty of regions in Russia that can claim to be very remote and very cold, but none as extreme as...

World War II’s Other Iconic Photo: Raising A Flag Over The Reichstag

May 8, 2018

When photographer Joe Rosenthal snapped the picture of five US marines and a Navy sailor raising the American flag over the battle-scarred J...

Akademgorodok: Siberia’s Silicon Valley

Jan 3, 2018

Tucked away in a remote forest of birch and pine in the heart of Siberia, 3,000 km away from Moscow, at a place where winters are six months...

Derbent: Russia’s Oldest City

Dec 1, 2017

Located on a narrow strip of land between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains in the far western end of Eurasia, is the city of Derbe...

Modern Potemkin Villages

Nov 27, 2017

In 1787, Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia, was scheduled for a grand tour of the newly acquired lands of Crimea and New Russia—now...

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin’s Color Photographs of Pre-Revolution Russia

Nov 25, 2017

Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky was a Russian chemist and photographer, best known for his pioneering work in color photography during t...