The New England Vampire Panic
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 10, 2022
In the 19th century, a mysterious illness struck rural New England. Those affected had hacking coughs, a wasting fever and weight loss. The ...
The Windham Frog Fight of 1754
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 6, 2022
Drive through the small town of Windham in Eastern Connecticut, United States, and you’ll wonder why the people here have a strange obsessio...
Shizo Kanakuri: The Man Who Took 54 Years To Finish a Marathon
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 5, 2022
Shizo Kanakuri was not a slow runner. In fact, he reportedly set the world record by completing a 40-km marathon run in 2 hours, 32 minutes,...
Pierre Picaud: The Real Count of Monte Cristo
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 30, 2022
Alexandre Dumas’s literary classic The Count of Monte Cristo is one of Dumas’s most famous and beloved novels, but this satisfying tale of ...
Chung Ling Soo: The Magician Who Led a Double Life And Got Shot on Stage
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 29, 2022
One of the most dangerous and daring illusions that a magician can attempt is the famed bullet catch trick. There are several variation to t...
Why Two Prestigious American Universities Fight Over a Cannon
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 27, 2022
Most college rivalries revolve around academics or sports, but the rivalry between Princeton and Rutgers Universities is as much about sport...
Insectothopter: CIA’s Dragonfly-Shaped Bug
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 23, 2022
Is that buzz above your head an insect, or is it a miniature flying machine? With current technology and progress in mechanical miniaturiz...
Cross Writing: A Peculiar Way to Save Paper And Postage
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 22, 2022
Back in the 1800s, when both paper and postage were expensive (the cost of posting a letter depended on how many sheets of paper you used), ...
The Family That Sold Time
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 22, 2022
Mechanical clocks of the 19th century and earlier were not very accurate timekeepers and tended to drift over the course of a single day. Af...
The 1904 Olympic Marathon Was The Worst Race Ever
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 20, 2022
On a hot August afternoon in 1904, with temperatures hovering above the nineties (32 degree centigrade), thirty-two men dressed largely in w...
