Creepy Victorian Christmas Cards
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 24, 2019
Victorian Christmas cards were a mixed bag of iconography, ranging from religious to everyday things. But one theme common in these season...
The Australian Floating Hotel That Ended Up in North Korea
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 24, 2019
For little more than a year in the late 1980s, a seven-story five-star hotel floated over John Brewer Reef, about 70 km off the coast of Tow...
The Termite Mounds of Okavango Delta
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 23, 2019
The Okavango Delta is a place like nowhere else on earth. It’s a vast swampy inland delta where a river disappears instead of emptying into ...
Sargasso Sea And Sargassum
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 23, 2019
The Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic Ocean, near the Caribbean, is unlike any other sea in this planet. The boundaries of the sea are defi...
Villa Girasole: The House That Rotates
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 21, 2019
In the hills of northern Italy near Verona stands an L-shaped house called Villa Girasole, which means “sunflower” in Italian. And just li...
Britain’s Hundred Million Pound Banknotes
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 20, 2019
Scottish banknotes are weird. Although they are used all over Scotland and the rest of the UK, they are not legal tender, which means a shop...
Australia’s Rock And Ocean Pools
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 20, 2019
A defining feature of the Australian coastline, particularly in New South Wales, are the rock pools—outdoor swimming pools carved out of the...
Seljavallalaug: Iceland’s Hidden Swimming Pool
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 19, 2019
Tucked in a narrow valley in South Iceland, a short hike away from the Ring Road that encircles the country, is an outdoor swimming—arguably...
Fata Morgana Mirage
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 19, 2019
The atmosphere plays unusual tricks with light in the polar regions, especially at sea, creating strange shapes like a looming island, a flo...
Döllersheim: The Village That Hitler Destroyed to Crush a Rumor
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 18, 2019
About one hundred km northwest of Vienna, in northern Austria, lies a small village called Döllersheim. Eighty years ago, this tiny Austrian...
