The Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 14, 2021
Not everybody gets modern art. From Andy Warhol’s Soup Cans to a banana stuck to the wall , there are plenty of examples from the perplexin...
HMS Diamond Rock: The Stone Frigate
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 11, 2021
South of Martinique, an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, lies a small basalt island called Diamond Rock. With an imposing peak of 175 me...
The Citadel of Bam: The World’s Largest Mud Building
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 10, 2021
Sometime between 579 and 323 BC during the Achaemenid Persian period, the Citadel of Bam (in Persian Arg-é Bam) was built in southeastern pr...
The Maharaja’s Well
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 9, 2021
We think that charity always flows from the richer nations to the poorer ones, but sometimes it also flows the other way. When Ireland was s...
Sears Mail-Order Homes
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 8, 2021
What’s the heaviest thing you can buy from Amazon? The internet says it’s a 1,500-pound, 6-feet tall gun safe , but back when Sears was the ...
The Exiled Bell of Uglich
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 7, 2021
When Ivan the Terrible died in 1584, he left behind two sons, neither of whom was suitable to carry forward their father’s heirloom. One was...
Dulmial: The Village of World War Heroes
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 3, 2021
A small Pakistani village located about 150 kilometers south of Islamabad is home to a proud monument—a 19th century cannon gifted by the Br...
The Great Sheep Panic of 1888
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 2, 2021
Sheep are notoriously timid and nervous animal, and can get startled easily. But what mysterious provocation could have caused thousands of ...
Britain’s Secret Fuel Pipelines
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 2, 2021
How do airline companies procure fuel for their fleet? In the UK at least, the fuel comes through pipelines delivered directly at the airpor...
Clarence E. Willard: The Man of Could Grow at Will
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 1, 2021
In 1913, while in England, Clarence E. Willard had to renew his passport in order to travel, and most importantly, in order for him to retur...
Propeller Driven Railways
Kaushik Patowary
May 31, 2021
A locomotive can derive power from many different sources. The earliest locomotives were driven by steam. Then came electric trains powered ...
The Ni'ihau Incident
Kaushik Patowary
May 28, 2021
Ni'ihau is the smallest of the inhabited islands in the Hawaiian archipelago, privately owned since the 19th century and which would hav...
The Richest Ancient Shipwreck
Kaushik Patowary
May 26, 2021
In 1975, a fishing boat working in the southwestern sea of Korean peninsula, near the Shinan Islands, caught six pieces of Chinese ceramic w...
The Air Conditioned Village
Kaushik Patowary
May 26, 2021
Air conditioning is ubiquitous these days, but not too long ago cool air was considered a luxury available only in commercial businesses. Th...
Mr. Bean’s Failed Assassination Attempt of The Queen
Kaushik Patowary
May 25, 2021
The closest Mr. Bean came to killing the Queen was when he headbutted the head of the British Royal family. The Queen was hurt but survived...
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...
