The Quarantine Quarters of Dubrovnik
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 26, 2020
Social distancing and quarantine are not new concepts. During the Middle Ages, when Europe and Asia were devastated by deadly outbreaks of p...
Run Out of Toilet Paper? Use a Stick
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 25, 2020
Hoarding toilet paper. Photo: DigitalMammoth/Shutterstock.com Chances are, you’ve run out of toilet paper, unless you are the type who b...
Fatal Familial Insomnia: The Disease That Kills by Sleep Deprivation
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 25, 2020
Everybody suffers from a little insomnia once in a while, but what if you were unable to sleep for months? Early studies conducted on do...
How Coronavirus Emptied The World’s Streets
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 22, 2020
As millions of people around the world lock themselves indoors in order to prevent transmission of the dreaded coronavirus, the world outsid...
The Mulberry Harbours of Normandy
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 22, 2020
When the sea goes out in Arromanches-les-Bains, a small village on the coast of Normandy in northwestern France, the large concrete pontoons...
Barnacle Goose: The Bird That Was Believed to Grow on Trees
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 18, 2020
In the days before it was realized that birds migrate, ancient scholars struggled to explain why some species of birds appeared and disapp...
The Kettle War
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 17, 2020
Photo: B toy Anucha/Shutterstock.com The Kettle War of 1784 was a quintessential David versus Goliath story. A formidable naval fleet of...
The Earliest Depiction of Jesus Was a Mocking Tribute to Christianity
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 13, 2020
In the Palatine museum in Rome there is a collection of ancient graffiti etched on slabs of marble and limestone that once defaced the wal...
The Hanging Cages of St. Lambert's Church in Münster
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 12, 2020
If you crane your neck and look up while standing in front of St Lambert's Church in Münster, Germany, you can make out three iron cages...
Cold War Era Bunkers Under Corsham
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 11, 2020
The fear of nuclear apocalypse immediately after the end of the Second World War, caused many westerns countries to invest heavily on underg...
Sweating Sickness: The Forgotten Epidemic
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 10, 2020
The Sleeping Beauty, by John Collier During medieval times, diseases were a constant threat to people’s health, brought about by lack of...
Celles, The Village That Didn’t Drown
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 9, 2020
In the late 1950s, residents of Celles, a small village in the Salagou valley in southern France, received notices for evacuation. Their nei...
Terrible National Park Reviews Illustrated
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 9, 2020
The wonderful thing about online reviews is that you will find both five-star and one-star reviews for the exact same product, and this incl...
Bathysphere: The World’s First Deep-Sea Exploration Vessel
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 7, 2020
On the afternoon of September 22, 1932, listeners across America and the UK tuned their radio sets to an extraordinary live broadcast that w...
Scalae Gemoniae: The Stairs of Death
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 5, 2020
Not too far from Tarpeian Rock , a cliff on Capitoline Hill in the center of Rome, where convicted criminals were once flung to their deaths...
The Indian Perfume That Smells Like Rain
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 3, 2020
Rainwater flows down a roof. Photo: Anna Nikonorova/Shutterstock.com Love that musky, fresh smell of earth that permeates the air when t...
The Newspaper That is Published Only on 29th February
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 2, 2020
The French newspaper, La Bougie du Sapeur, has been publishing for the last 40 years. Yet, there has been only eleven issues so far. Why? ...
Cornfield Bomber: The Fighter Plane That Landed Without Its Pilot
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 2, 2020
One of the strangest aviation mishaps that ended happily happened on February 2, 1970. That morning, three F-106 Delta Darts took off from t...
Wiebbe Hayes Stone Fort
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 27, 2020
The Wallabi Group of islands in the Abrolhos archipelago, off the west coast of Australia, contains two distinct sets of islands. The easter...
The Soviet Census Debacle of 1937
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 26, 2020
In 1937, the Soviet Union conducted its first population census in eleven years. Soviet leaders, especially Stalin, had great expectations...
