Soviet Televisions

May 20, 2019

This is the KVN-49, a black-and-white television set produced in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, and the first set to be mass-produced in th...

How Japanese Bamboo Helped Edison Make The Light Bulb

May 17, 2019

Thomas Alva Edison's invention, or shall we say “perfection”, of the light bulb helped brighten up homes of people all across the world,...

The World’s Oldest Printed Book

May 17, 2019

The Diamond Sutra is an ancient Buddhist sermon that generation of Buddhists have memorized and chanted since at least the fifth century. T...

The Talking Statues of Rome

May 15, 2019

For the past five hundred years, the people of Rome have voiced their resentment against the authorities through a unique medium—short compo...

The Goliath Transmitter

May 14, 2019

Communication with submarines is difficult because radio waves do not easily travel through salt water. The obvious solution is to surface ...

The Ice Block Expedition of 1959

May 13, 2019

In the autumn of 1959, a 3-ton block of ice made an 8,500 kilometer journey on the back of a pickup truck from the edge of the Arctic Circl...

Gustave Doré’s Victorian London

May 10, 2019

Our visual image of Victorian London is largely fixated on its sordidness—cramped streets, dark alleys, desolate slums, overcrowding, and i...

The Cranes of River Clyde

May 10, 2019

A giant cantilever crane looms over a car park adjacent to the Hilton Garden Inn at Glasgow City. During its heydays, this crane used to lo...

Operation Sailor Hat

May 9, 2019

On the coast of Kahoʻolawe, the smallest of the eight main volcanic islands of Hawaiian, is a large crater left behind by a violent test con...

Cycling Through Water

May 8, 2019

Through a large pond in the De Wijers nature reserve in Limburg, Belgium, runs a cycling lane that goes right through the waters instead of ...

The Lost Tomb of Genghis Khan

May 7, 2019

The death of Genghis Khan is shrouded in secrecy. The Great Khan died in the summer of 1227, during a campaign against the Tanguts, along t...

Trümmerfrauen: The Women Who Helped Rebuild Germany After World War 2

May 6, 2019

After the end of World War 2, one of the main tasks was to clear the urban areas of ruin and start rebuilding Europe—Germany in particular, ...

The Hand of Glory

May 4, 2019

At the Whitby Museum in North Yorkshire is a strange artifact—a dismembered hand, dried and shriveled. It once belonged to a man who was han...

Berezniki: The Russian City Swallowed By Sinkholes

May 3, 2019

The city of Berezniki, in Russia’s Ural mountains, is slowly sinking into the earth. The city of more than 150,000 individuals was built dir...

The Rockets of Mysore

May 3, 2019

Rockets were originally invented not to send things into space, but to shoot enemies with. Their effectiveness in warfare was demonstrated ...

Alexander Mitchell: The Blind Engineer Who Gave Sight to Seafarers

May 1, 2019

Sandbanks are a hazard to marine traffic . Often found near coastlines, near the mouth of a river and around ports, these shallow, submerged...

Human Decomposition in Japanese Artwork

Apr 29, 2019

In traditional Buddhist teachings, contemplating about death is an integral part of meditation. Buddha himself said that death is “the gre...

Why Victorian People Loved Posing Next to Aspidistra Plants

Apr 26, 2019

Potted plants have been a part of households for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all kept houseplants in thei...

The Crooked Trees of Hafford

Apr 25, 2019

Approximately twenty kilometers northwest of the town of Hafford, in Saskatchewan, Canada, and just over five kilometers south-west of Altic...

Las Médulas: The Largest Roman Gold Mine

Apr 25, 2019

This incredible serrated landscape of red mountains and green chestnut trees is the result of two centuries of destructive mining carried o...