The Helfaut-Wizernes Dome
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 22, 2021
In the Pas-de-Calais department of northern France, close to the commune of Helfaut and Wizernes, lies a large Nazi bunker built during the ...
Why The Soviet Union Exchanged Warships For Pepsi
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 20, 2021
The American soft drink giant Pepsi has a long presence in Russia dating back to the early 1970s when Russia was still a part of the Soviet ...
San Francisco’s Hidden Cisterns
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 18, 2021
Scattered around San Francisco are a total of 177 large cisterns buried beneath the streets. Their presence is visible at many intersections...
The Cave of Swimmers
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 14, 2021
Thousands of years ago, the Sahara was surprisingly green with rich vegetation, trees and lakes that covered almost all of what is now sandy...
The Victorian Mail Order Business
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 12, 2021
In the beginning of the 19th century, a large Welsh town called Newtown on the River Severn became the center of the woolen industry. Like o...
Hells Bells
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 11, 2021
Deep down El Zapote cenote, a 50-meter-deep water-filled sinkhole in Quintana Roo, Mexico, on the Yucatan Peninsula, stalactites take a diff...
Talakadu: The Temple City Devoured by Sand
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 8, 2021
The ancient city of Talakadu situated on the banks of the Kaveri river, about 45 km east of Mysore, was once the capital of the Western Gang...
Anderson Shelters: The Backyard Bunkers That Saved Britons From Luftwaffe Bombings
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 7, 2021
In 1938, before the Second World War had even begun, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain placed Sir John Anderson in charge of air ra...
The Granaries of Acorn Woodpecker
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 5, 2021
Woodpeckers are fascinating creatures. They hammer their bills into wood with force so ferocious that it would lead to concussion in any ani...
The Night The Moon Exploded
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 5, 2021
In the early evening of 18 June 1178, five monks from Canterbury in southern England, reported having witnessed an unusual phenomenon in the...
Why Julius Caesar Built a Bridge Over The Rhine And Destroyed it 18 Days Later
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 4, 2021
In the early summer of 55 BC Julius Caesar had already begun his conquest of Gaul three years earlier. At that time the eastern border of th...
Balmis Expedition: How Orphans Took The Smallpox Vaccine Around The World
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 29, 2020
The biggest hurdle to mass vaccination in the 19th century was keeping the virus alive out of the human body as the precious pus was being t...
The Barbegal Mills: The Largest Concentration of Mechanical Energy in Antiquity
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 21, 2020
About 12 kilometers north of the city of Arles, in the Provence region of southern France, is the small town of Fontvieille. It is a commune...
Medieval Russians Built Churches in One Day to Ward Off Epidemics
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 18, 2020
In the middle ages, many Russian communities, especially in the Novgorod and Pskov regions, believed in building churches as response to cal...
Pitch Drop Experiment: The World’s Longest Running Lab Experiment
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 17, 2020
The pitch drop experiment began in 1927 when Professor Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, set out to dem...
SS Baychimo: The Unsinkable Ghost Ship
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 16, 2020
Ships aren’t meant to sink, but sometimes you have to wonder what miraculous forces kept a vessel afloat. The SS Baychimo was such a ship. ...
Franz Reichelt’s Fatal Jump
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 15, 2020
The British Pathé film archive has a chilling video of a man jumping to his death from the Eiffel Tower. The man in the short video is shown...
The Fighter Plane That Shot Itself Down
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 14, 2020
Fighter aviation has come a long way from the crude old days when pilots shot down their own planes as often as the enemy’s. In those early ...
The Buried Village of Te Wairoa
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 10, 2020
Until the late 19th century, the shores of Rotomahana, in northern New Zealand, were adorned by one of the most spectacular travertine terra...
The Fake Dome of The Church of St. Ignatius
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 10, 2020
One of Rome’s lesser-known attractions, the Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola ( Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio di Loyola in Italian), lies just ...
