Boot Scrapers
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 1, 2021
In the days before automobiles, when streets were meant for horses and their carts mostly, walking through mud and excrement was an unavoida...
Hitler’s Monster Railway
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 27, 2021
Hitler’s megalomaniac plans for Germany included a monumental new railway. This railway was supposed to connect the most important cities i...
The Great Smog of 1952
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 24, 2021
Londoners are no stranger to the cold, but on the morning of December 5, 1952, the sting of winter was felt worse than ever. The cold had th...
Johann Josef Loschmidt And Avogadro’s Number
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 22, 2021
Johann Josef Loschmidt is a name that might not ring many bells, yet everyone who took chemistry in junior college had surely come across Lo...
The Mad World of Hat Making
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 19, 2021
Hat-making in the 18th and 19th centuries was a hazardous business, because it involved the use of many chemicals, one of which was the toxi...
The Ingenuity of The ‘Ha-Ha’
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 17, 2021
What’s in a wall but a simple structure to keep intruders out, you might say. But a surprising amount of thought goes behind the constructio...
Flettner Rotor: Sailing Ships Without Sails
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 16, 2021
In 1926, a 2,000-ton steel-hulled schooner named Buckau made an extraordinary crossing across the Atlantic. Although the Buckau was techni...
Citizens! During Shelling This Side of The Street is The Most Dangerous
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 15, 2021
The city of Saint Petersburg is one of the most beautiful cities in Russia and in eastern Europe, with a great ensemble of historic building...
The Curious Tale of The Laocoön And His Sons’ Missing Arm
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 12, 2021
The story of Laocoön, the Trojan priest who was attacked and killed along with his two sons by giant serpents for attempting to expose the r...
The Largest War Memorial in The World is a 243 Kilometer Highway
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 11, 2021
When the First World War ended, the soldiers who had participated in it and were lucky enough to survive, returned to their homes. As in all...
When Israel Erased Color From Television Broadcasts
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 10, 2021
The first television broadcast in Israel was black and white, but unlike most nations, it wasn’t due to the lack of technology to broadcast ...
London’s Protected Views
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 8, 2021
Many prominent landmarks in London, such as St Paul's Cathedral, the Monument to the Great Fire of London , the Tower of London, The Pal...
Giuseppe Ferlini: The Pyramid Destroyer
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 5, 2021
If there is something that characterizes archeology, it is the care, the almost exquisite touch that is given to the sites and that makes a ...
William Walker: The Man Who Saved Winchester Cathedral
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 4, 2021
More than a century ago, Winchester Cathedral, which is one of the largest cathedrals in Europe and the longest of all Gothic cathedrals, wa...
How Astronomer Percival Lowell Mistook His Own Eye For Spokes on Venus
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 2, 2021
Percival Lowell, the American astronomer whose name bears an observatory in Arizona, made several very significant observations of the plane...
The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 1, 2021
The 1950s were exciting times. There was much enthusiasm and optimism around the use of atomic energy, which was seen as the solution to all...
Shoeburyness Boom: A Cold War Era Defense Across The Thames
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 28, 2021
At first glance, the concrete piles lying off the coast of southeast Essex, near the town of Shoeburyness, looks like the exposed columns of...
The Silver Tree of Karakorum
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 27, 2021
Of all the things described in William of Rubruck's account of his travels through 13th-century Asia, perhaps none is so striking as the...
Mäusebunker: Berlin’s Mouse Bunker
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 26, 2021
Sitting squarely in the middle of Berlin is a monstrous-looking building with façade of solid grey concrete, punctured by long ventilation t...
Spindletop: The Gusher That Launched The Oil Industry
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 25, 2021
Although the modern oil industry is said to have begun with the drilling of the first oil well by Edwin Drake in Pennsylvania, it was the di...
