The Blood Stained Ceilings of Kyoto’s Temples
Kaushik Patowary
May 17, 2018
The Fushimi Castle in Kyoto was one of the last places of action during the “age of warring states”—a period in Japanese history, stretching...
Canaries As Poisonous Gas Detectors
Kaushik Patowary
May 16, 2018
This peculiar device, in the collection of the Science Museum in South Kensington, London, looks like a tiny gas chamber a movie villain w...
Makhunik: The Village of Dwarves
Kaushik Patowary
May 15, 2018
In a remote corner in Iran’s South Khorasan Province, near its border with Afghanistan, is a village that, until about a century ago, was in...
Saint Catherine's Monastery And The World’s Oldest Library
Kaushik Patowary
May 12, 2018
Deep in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, in a region of wilderness made up of granite rock and rugged mountains, lies the town of Saint Catheri...
The Forgotten Islands of The Wadden Sea
Kaushik Patowary
May 11, 2018
Just off the northwest coast of Germany, in the North Frisian Wadden Sea, are a series of ten extremely low-lying islets known as Halligen o...
Exercise Tiger: The Disastrous D-Day Rehearsal That Cost 800 Lives
Kaushik Patowary
May 10, 2018
In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, thousands of Allied soldiers stormed into the beaches of northern France in what became the larg...
World War II’s Other Iconic Photo: Raising A Flag Over The Reichstag
Kaushik Patowary
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...
Richardson Olmsted Complex: A Historic Insane Asylum Turned Hotel
Kaushik Patowary
May 7, 2018
The Richardson Olmsted Complex in Buffalo, the United States, is a modern name for the Buffalo State Hospital, which itself was originally c...
The Longest Straight Line Land And Sea Route
Kaushik Patowary
May 7, 2018
The red line on this world map looks all curvy, but in reality is a perfectly straight line. Remember, the earth is spherical, so any strai...
The Lost City of Cahokia
Kaushik Patowary
May 5, 2018
A thousand years before Columbus's men would land on the shores of America, a new city was sprouting on the floodplains of modern-day St...
China’s Bicycle Graveyards
Kaushik Patowary
May 4, 2018
Over the last few years, the bicycle-sharing phenomenon has taken the world by storm, especially in China, where—according to one report —th...
Pop Culture Dystopia
Kaushik Patowary
May 4, 2018
Dystopian future is a favorite trope among movie directors, writers and artists alike. Decaying landscape, overgrown bushes, and crumbling r...
Toxic Art: The Almaden Mercury Fountain
Kaushik Patowary
May 3, 2018
At the Joan Miró Foundation, a contemporary museum on Montjuïc hill in Barcelona, is a fascinatingly deadly piece of art—a fountain of mercu...
Strings And Knots: Inca’s Cryptic Writing System
Kaushik Patowary
May 2, 2018
While Geoffrey Chaucer was writing The Canterbury Tales in late 14th century, the Inca scholars high up in the Andes were struggling to put...
The Soccer Stadium Lying On Two Hemispheres
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 30, 2018
This Friday, two local Brazilian football clubs—Santos FC and Macapá—will face each other at the Estádio Milton Corrêa, a multi-purpose sta...
River of Blood: The Memorial to a Civil War Battle That Never Took Place
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 30, 2018
In the greens overlooking the Potomac river, between the 14th hole and the 15th tee at the Trump National Golf Club in Lowes Island, Norther...
Nightingale Floor: An Ancient Japanese Intruder Detection System
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 27, 2018
Squeaky floors are annoying, which is why when you search for “squeaky floors” in Google, you get hundreds of articles offering you tips and...
The Ice Caves That Never Melt, Even In Summer
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 26, 2018
In the mountains of the Shanxi province in China, is the country’s biggest ice cave—an 85-meter deep bowling pin shaped subterranean structu...
The Pigeons Who Took Photos
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 25, 2018
At the turn of the last century, when aviation was still in its infancy, a German named Julius Neubronner submitted a patent for a new inven...
Shanghaiing: How Trickery And Deception Turned Thousands of Unwilling Men Into Sailors
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 23, 2018
Underneath Portland’s Old Town is a network of tunnel passages connecting the basements of many downtown bars and hotels to the Willamette R...
