Henry Howard Holmes’s Murder Castle
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 13, 2021
At the corner of South Lowe Avenue and West 63rd Street in Englewood, Chicago, where now stands a drab, two story building of the United Sta...
John Brinkley: The Doctor Who Transplanted Goat Testicles Into Humans
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 11, 2021
The morning of September 15, 1930, was undeniably warm in Kansas. That summer had been the hottest ever recorded in the state. The heat had ...
Vladimir Komarov: The Cosmonaut Who Fell From Space
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 9, 2021
The year 1967 held special significance for Soviet Union—it was the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, as well as the 10th annivers...
Leonardo da Vinci’s Ostrich Egg Globe
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 8, 2021
If the first map to represent the American continent is that of Juan de la Cosa, made in the year 1500, and the first in which the name Amer...
How Air Raids in Britain Led to Shortage of Sausages in Germany
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 4, 2021
“It is far better to face the bullets than to be killed at home by a bomb,” proclaimed a British Army recruitment poster publicized during W...
Why Matchmaking Was a Dangerous Profession in The 19th Century
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 2, 2021
Before the invention of matches, making fire was a tedious business, so people often shared fires from already existing flames. Whenever a n...
Why Japan Made Human Sacrifices Before Building Bridges
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 1, 2021
Until the 16th century in Japan, major constructions like castles and bridges began with human sacrifices, with victims buried alive within ...
Arkadiko Bridge: The World’s Oldest Bridge
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 28, 2021
One of the oldest arch bridges still in use is the Arkadiko Bridge or Kazarma Bridge, located near the modern road from Tiryns to Epidauros ...
The 100 Ton TNT Test
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 28, 2021
By the spring of 1945, the United States had completed building the world’s first nuclear device, nicknamed The Gadget . It was an implosion...
One-Armed Versus One-Legged Cricket
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 27, 2021
In 1861, Charles Dickens reported, in his magazine All the Year Round , a rather eccentric cricket match being played at Peckham Rye in the ...
The Woman Who Was Hit by a Meteorite
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 26, 2021
At the Alabama Museum of Natural History located in the University of Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa, there is a small chunk of black space ro...
How Two Families Escaped East Germany in a Homemade Hot Air Balloon
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 22, 2021
At 2:40 a.m. on the morning of 15 September 1979, constables Walter Hamann and Rudolf Golkel of the Bavarian State Police were patrolling ...
The First Photograph in History
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 20, 2021
It doesn’t look like much, but this is the world’s first photograph, or rather, the oldest surviving photograph, or both. It was taken by ...
Agent 355: The Mysterious Female Spy of The American Revolution
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 18, 2021
Agent 355 sounds like a comic book character or the protagonist of a television series, but in reality it is the nickname of a real figure: ...
Post Mortem Photography
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 8, 2021
In the olden days before photography, people used to hire painters to create portraits of those who had recently died as a way to keep the...
Itacolumite: The Flexible Rock
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 6, 2021
Ever seen a piece of rock bend? Itacolumite is unique kind of sandstone that does when cut into thin strips. If a foot-long piece, a few cen...
Tripitaka Koreana
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 6, 2021
The Tripiṭaka Koreana is the oldest surviving version of the Buddhist canon and the most complete collection of Buddhist texts, laws and tre...
The Chain Boats of Europe
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 4, 2021
In his travelogue, A Tramp Abroad , Mark Twain describes an encounter with a curious boat on the River Neckar in Germany. We ra...
Otto von Guericke's Magdeburg Hemisphere Experiment
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 2, 2021
The Magdeburg Hemispheres is a classic physics experiment that demonstrates the incredible pressure the atmosphere around us exerts on our b...
Horatio Phillips’s Extreme Multiplanes
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 30, 2021
British engineer and aviator Sir George Cayley suggested, as early as 1843, that an airplane with multiple wings will generate more uplift a...
