The Mega Hotels of Mecca
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 30, 2017
A mammoth new hotel is rising in Saudi Arabia’s holy city Mecca. When completed it will have 10,000 rooms spanning more than 1.4 million squ...
The Rise of Vertical Cemeteries
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 29, 2017
According to the Population Reference Bureau , there are approximately 101 billion dead people on earth with 7 billion more to join them wit...
Copenhagen’s Urban Birdhouses
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 28, 2017
Thomas Dambo—you may remember him from a couple of months ago, where he constructed giant troll-like wooden sculptures and hid them around ...
Modern Potemkin Villages
Kaushik Patowary
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
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 25, 2017
Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky was a Russian chemist and photographer, best known for his pioneering work in color photography during t...
The Coffin Ships of The Great Irish Famine
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 25, 2017
During the Great Famine of Ireland in the mid-19th century, tens of thousands of starving Irish families fled the country and emigrated to C...
Victorian Era Murder Figurines
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 22, 2017
During the late 18th century, the potteries in the Staffordshire region of England began churning out detailed ceramic figures commemoratin...
The Hairy Secret Behind Indian Temples
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 21, 2017
Where do hairs for fashion wigs and hair extensions come from? The answer is: everywhere, but the majority of them come from China and India...
Lebanon’s Thinnest Building Was Built Out of Spite
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 18, 2017
Locals call the building “the Grudge” and rightly so. This extremely narrow building standing on a mere 120-square-meter piece of land in Be...
The International Church of Cannabis
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 18, 2017
The psychedelic interior of this 113-year-old converted Lutheran church in Denver’s Washington Park neighborhood is appropriate, for it’s th...
The Potteries of Staffordshire
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 16, 2017
The art of pottery making has been known since ancient times. However, the first true porcelain was made in China only during the Han Dynast...
The Forgotten Communist-Era Monuments of Bulgaria
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 15, 2017
From the end of the Second World War until the fall of communism in 1990, Bulgaria was a communist state ruled by the Bulgarian Communist Pa...
The Diving Horses of Atlantic City
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 13, 2017
For nearly half a century, Atlantic City, in New Jersey, United States, was home to an attraction almost too fantastical to believe—an appar...
The Double-Barreled Cannon of Athens
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 11, 2017
In front of the City Hall of Athens, in Georgia, United States, stands an unusual cannon from the American Civil War. It’s a double-barreled...
The Art of Mediaeval Book Repairing
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 10, 2017
In the early Middle Ages, books were made from animal hides known as parchment, rather than from paper. Preparing the parchment was a delica...
Michelangelo’s Hidden Drawings at Medici Chapels
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 10, 2017
In a concealed room beneath the New Sacristy of the San Lorenzo Basilica in Florence, Italy, the great Italian sculptor and architect Michel...
Lyon, The City of Murals
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 8, 2017
For the last four decades a group of muralists in the French city of Lyon has been transforming the city into a massive outdoor art gallery....
The Abandoned Canfranc Railway Station
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 7, 2017
Sitting at the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains on the Spanish side of the French-Spanish border is an immense railway station. Built wit...
Puzzlewood: Tolkien's Inspiration For Middle Earth
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 6, 2017
The “The Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic novel of the same name were shot almost entirely in New Zealand,...
Newton's Apple Tree in Lincolnshire
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 6, 2017
The story of Sir Isaac Newton and the falling apple is one of the most famous anecdotes in science. The young Isaac Newton was sitting under...
