Why Apollo Astronauts Lobbed Grenades on The Moon
Kaushik Patowary
May 24, 2021
The Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s provided scientists with an exciting playground upon which to conduct experiments never performed i...
Canal of the Pharaohs: The Forerunner to The Suez Canal
Kaushik Patowary
May 21, 2021
The Suez Canal may be a marvel of modern engineering, but there is nothing modern about digging canals. Navigable waterways have been dug si...
Goodyear’s Illuminated Tires
Kaushik Patowary
May 20, 2021
In the late 1930s, a German chemist named Otto Bayer synthesized a new organic polymer called polyurethane. Over the decades polyurethane fo...
Brennan’s Gyro Monorail
Kaushik Patowary
May 19, 2021
In the early 20th century, at least two different engineers working independently in different parts of the world, put forward a unique conc...
What Happened to Napoleon’s Penis?
Kaushik Patowary
May 18, 2021
The diminutive French military leader Napoléon Bonaparte lies buried in a crypt under the dome at Les Invalides, in Paris, sans many vital b...
The Underwater Mine of Silver Islet
Kaushik Patowary
May 17, 2021
The small rocky reef at the tip of the Sibley Peninsula in northwestern Ontario, Canada, is rich in silver, but mining this precious metal i...
Anschlussdenkmal: The Forbidden Nazi Memorial
Kaushik Patowary
May 14, 2021
The Anschlussdenkmal, or Anschluss Monument, in the Austrian town of Oberschützen, is a Nazi monument erected to commemorate the bloodless c...
Pilâtre de Rozier And The World’s First Aviation Accident
Kaushik Patowary
May 13, 2021
In 1783, French professor Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier created history by becoming the first man to fly in a balloon untethered. Two year...
How Ancient Romans Kept Time
Kaushik Patowary
May 12, 2021
That days have 24 hours is a long-established convention, which is also related to the rotational motion of the Earth. Pliny the Elder expre...
Gnomonic Blocks, or Multi-faceted Sundials
Kaushik Patowary
May 11, 2021
In the park of the Abbey of Epau, in Yvré-l'Evêque in France, you can admire a curious monument in the shape of an obelisk. Built by the...
The Great Seal Bug: How The Soviets Spied The US For 7 Years Via a Children’s Gift
Kaushik Patowary
May 10, 2021
In 1946, a group of Soviet school children from the Young Pioneer organization presented to the American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Wil...
Fonthill Abbey And Its Eccentric Creators
Kaushik Patowary
May 7, 2021
At Fonthill Gifford in Wiltshire, England, where now stands a small four-story tower with an attached two-story wing, there once stood one o...
Le Jamais Contente: The First Car To Go 100kmph
Kaushik Patowary
May 5, 2021
Imagine a metal cylinder less than 4 meters long, on four wheels, with the driver mounted on top like one rides a horse. No seat belts, no r...
The Duck-less Statue of Sir Nigel Gresley
Kaushik Patowary
May 4, 2021
There is a bronze statue of British railway engineer Sir Nigel Gresley towering over passengers as they pass through London King's Cross...
Women And Children Last: The Infamous Sinking of La Bourgogne
Kaushik Patowary
May 3, 2021
The sinking of the French ocean liner SS La Bourgogne on the morning of 4 July 1898 was one of the most disgraceful of disasters in mariti...
High Arctic Relocation: When The Canadian Govt Forcibly Relocated Inuit to Claim Sovereignty in The High Arctic
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 30, 2021
In the summer of 1953, the Canadian government uprooted seven Inuit families from their homes in Northern Quebec, and dropped them high in t...
Nazi Amphitheaters
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 28, 2021
Near the summit of a large wooded hill overlooking the town of Heidelberg in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, stands an open-air theater called a...
The World’s Loudest Plane Was So Loud It Caused Seizures
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 27, 2021
The aviation industry’s transition from propellers to jet engines saw the emergence of a new kind of engine called the turboprop. A turbopro...
Istanbul’s Cast Iron Church
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 23, 2021
Although it looks like stone, the Bulgarian St. Stephen Church with its richly ornamented façade on the shores of the Golden Horn in Istanbu...
Sarah Jacob: The Girl Who Starved to Death to Prove Herself
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 21, 2021
There have been quite a few cases where people claimed to have survived without food. These people call themselves “breatharians” for they p...
