Crocker Land: An Expedition To a Non-Existent Island
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 1, 2023
In 1906, Robert Peary had just returned from an unsuccessful trip to the Arctic. The veteran explorer had hoped to reach the North Pole, but...
Showing posts with the label USA
Philip Ashton: The Castaway
Kaushik Patowary
May 22, 2023
Just three years after the publication of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe , a youngster from Massachusetts suffered a fate similar to the pro...
Jimmy Doolittle And The First Blind Flight
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 27, 2023
People assume that its easier to fly an airplane during the day because we can look out of the window and see where we are going, the same w...
The Oldest Functioning Satellite
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 10, 2023
The Lincoln Calibration Sphere 1, or LCS-1, is a large, hollow, aluminum sphere with a precisely defined cross-section that has been on Eart...
The Telescope That Got Shot
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 4, 2023
In the early 1960s, as NASA geared up towards space exploration, engineers and astronomers at the federal organization felt the need for a l...
The 1967 Experiment That Proved Anyone Can Design a Nuclear Weapon
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 17, 2023
On 16 October 1964, China detonated a 22-kiloton nuclear weapon device at the Lop Nur test site, becoming the fifth nuclear power state in t...
George Spencer Millet: Death by Kisses
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 15, 2023
George Spencer Millet must be rolling in his grave for his family chose to include this nugget of information in his gravestone: “Lost life ...
Operation Sandblast: The First Submarine Circumnavigation
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 14, 2023
In the early 16th century, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan embarked on a historic expedition to the East Indies across the Pacific, ...
Douglas Crofut: Suicide by Radiation
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 6, 2023
On January 22, 1981, a 38-year-old industrial radiographer named Douglas Crofut was admitted to a hospital in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, the United...
St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line: The World’s First Airline
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 27, 2023
Barely a decade after the pioneering flight of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, the world’s first scheduled passenger airline service bega...
Daniel Sickles's Leg
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 22, 2023
One of the most visited exhibits at Washington's National Museum of Health and Medicine is the shattered leg bones of an American Civil ...
The Case of The Exploding Teeth
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 21, 2023
In the January 1861 issue of The Dental Cosmos , the first major journal of American dentistry, a Pennsylvania dentist named WH Atkinson doc...
Clarence Madison Dally: The First Victim of Radiation
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 14, 2023
In December 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen submitted to Würzburg's Physical-Medical Society journal a preliminary report where ...
The 1957 Plymouth Belvedere That Was Buried For 50 Years
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 10, 2023
The opening of a time capsule is supposed to be an exciting and nostalgic event that gives future generations a chance to peek into the past...
The Get Out And Push Railroad
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 8, 2023
For a very short five years, Wilmington, Los Angeles, was connected to the Willmore area of Long Beach by a street railway, initially pulled...
James Rumsey’s Steamboat
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 30, 2023
In 1787, American engineer James Rumsey demonstrated before a crowd of local notables a peculiar boat on the Potomac River at Shepherdstown ...
James Bartley: The Sailor Who Got Swallowed by a Whale And Survived
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 13, 2023
In 1891, a sensational story appeared in the St. Louis Globe Democrat of Saint Louis, Missouri. According to the news report, a young sail...
How Kate Shelley Saved a Train
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 9, 2023
In 1901, the Chicago & North Western Railway erected a new bridge over Des Moines River in Boone, Iowa, the United States. The bridge wa...
Project HARP: The Space Cannon
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 16, 2022
When Jules Verne sent three men to the moon in his 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon , he did so in a projectile fired from a massive gu...
Khian Sea: The Wandering Garbage Barge
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 6, 2022
Every year, millions of tons of garbage are shipped out by wealthy countries to poorer countries in Africa, Asia and South America to be rec...
