The Cottbus MiG-21 Crash of 1975
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 18, 2020
On Schmellwitzer Street in Cottbus, in northeast Germany, stands an old five-story apartment building. High up on the face of the building...
The Sad Tale of The Dionne Quintuplets
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 16, 2020
Nobody could have known, not even Elzire Dionne, that she was going to give birth to quintuplets. Already a mother of five, the shock of giv...
Autumn Harvest Drying in Huangling
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 15, 2020
Huangling in Wuyuan County, in east China's Jiangxi Province, is a small picturesque village built on the hillside, surrounded by specta...
The Shipwreck That Gave Birth to South Africa
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 15, 2020
On 16 January 1647, a fleet of three Dutch ships—the Nieuwe Haerlem, the Olifant and the Schiedam—left Batavia, which is now Jakarta, for th...
Mödlareuth: The German Village Divided by The Cold War
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 13, 2020
The village of Mödlareuth in south Germany, straddles the border between the two federal states of Bavaria and Thuringia. For more than 14...
Bremer Loch: The Hole of Bremen
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 13, 2020
Image credit: dcabrerizo/Flickr There is an unusual donation box installed beneath the streets in front of the State Parliament building...
Slovak Radio Building: The Inverted Pyramid
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 11, 2020
Some call it ugly. Others defend it for its architectural features. Whichever faction you side with, you can’t deny that it is an exceptiona...
The Radiological Incident in Lia, Georgia
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 10, 2020
On a cold December day in 2001, three men took their truck and drove 50 kilometers east from their village Lia in order to collect firewood....
Attabad Lake: The Lake Created By a Disaster
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 9, 2020
The stunning blue colors of this beautiful lake, nestled among the peaks of the Karakoram mountain range in northern Pakistan, belies its vi...
Karl Patterson Schmidt: The Herpetologist Who Documented His Own Death For Science
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 9, 2020
Karl Patterson Schmidt was an eminent American herpetologist—one who studies amphibians and reptiles. He worked for the American Museum of N...
HMS Zubian: The Conjoined Ship
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 8, 2020
It is not unusual for navies to cannibalize ships decommissioned or rendered unserviceable by accidents for parts, but rarely an entire new ...
HMS Porcupine: The Warship That Became Two
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 8, 2020
In 1939, the British Royal Navy ordered Vickers-Armstrongs on the River Tyne to build a new P-class destroyer named HMS Porcupine . The ship...
Glass Flowers And Sea Creatures: Leopold And Rudolf Blaschka’s Ultra Realistic Glass Models
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 7, 2020
A glass flower at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. It is nearly impossible to preserve a dead specimen in a pristine manner. Larg...
Theremin: The Musical Instrument That You Can Play Without Touching
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 6, 2020
The theremin is probably the world's strangest and spookiest musical instrument ever made. It has no keys, no strings, just two metal ro...
The Abandoned Cryolite Mining Town of Ivittuut
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 4, 2020
Near the southern tip of Greenland, lies the old mining town of Ivittuut, now a collection of ramshackle houses and sheds and scattered piec...
Tron: Scotland’s Public Weighing Scales
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 3, 2020
The tron at Stenton, East Lothian, Scotland. Image credit: Studio Karel/Shutterstock.com This is the village of Stenton, in East Lothian...
The Mathematical Bridge of Cambridge
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 3, 2020
The Mathematical Bridge is a wooden footbridge across the River Cam, connecting the old and new parts of Queens' College in Cambridge. T...
The Meteorite That Changed The Course of Christianity
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 2, 2020
For more than two centuries, Christianity suffered under the Roman Empire. Christians were arrested, tortured, mutilated, burned, and starve...
Why do People Spit on The Heart of Midlothian?
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 31, 2019
Spitting on the streets is not quite gentlemanly behavior, but on the Royal Mile in Edinburg, it is almost a ritual. The object of contemp...
The Christmas Lights Powered by an Electric Eel
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 31, 2019
Visitors to the Tennessee Aquarium in downtown Chattanooga, the United States, are treated to a shocking Christmas attraction this December....
