The London Beer Flood of 1814
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 23, 2021
At the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, in the London Borough of Camden, where now stands the Dominion Theatre, there stood...
Belyana: Russia’s Giant Wooden Boats
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 22, 2021
The Belyana were some of the largest wooden ships ever built. Yet, they were only meant for a single journey. They were built to transport...
Wellington’s Private Cable Cars
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 21, 2021
The iconic Wellington Cable Car between Lambton Quay and Kelburn is one of Wellington’s most beloved landmarks, but it is not the only funic...
Bring Home The Bacon at The Dunmow Flitch Trials
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 20, 2021
Married couples who can prove their undying love for each other can take home half a pig in a tradition that dates back to at least the 12th...
Belka and Strelka: Soviet Space Dogs
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 17, 2021
In August 1960, two dogs named Belka and Strelka completed went to space aboard a Soviet spacecraft, stayed for a full day orbiting, and ret...
The Bronze Horseman And The Thunder Stone
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 16, 2021
At the Senate Square in Saint Petersburg, Russia, stands a magnificent equestrian statue of the founder of St Petersburg, Peter the Great. K...
Woodmere Avenue: Britain’s Infamous Width Restriction Keeps Wrecking Cars
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 15, 2021
A clearance of seven feet should be wide enough for most vehicles to pass through, but apparently, not for some. As these videos reveal, man...
The Burning of Tuileries Palace
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 15, 2021
Directly in front of the Louvre, between the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile in Paris, where there is n...
Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot And The World’s First Automobile
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 14, 2021
The world’s first self-propelled mechanical vehicle, in other words, the world’s first automobile, was built by the largely unknown French i...
The Florescence of Lignum Nephriticum
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 13, 2021
The Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III once received a gift from Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit scholar, sometime in the middle of the 17...
The Straw Hat Riot of 1922
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 10, 2021
What’s the worst that could happen from wrong fashion choices? A little bit of teasing and ridicule from your friends, sure. But rarely will...
King Henry VIII’s Horned Helmet
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 9, 2021
The Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds hold in their possession a peculiar helmet, believed to have belonged to the infamous English King Henry...
Venera 7, The First Craft to Make Controlled Landing on Another Planet And Send Data From its Surface
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 9, 2021
By 1961 the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union had been going on for six years. The Soviets had the upper hand, havin...
The Last Public Execution by Guillotine
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 1, 2021
On the morning of 17 June 1939, a crowd gathered outside the doors of the Saint-Pierre prison, in the center of Versailles. They had come to...
Toddler’s Truce: Why The British Could Not Watch TV at 6PM
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 30, 2021
At 6 PM every day the television would go blank. The next one hour would be frantic. Parents would scoop their kids off the living room couc...
Ciampate del Diavolo: 350,000 Years Old Fossilized Hominid Footprints
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 29, 2021
Near the Italian town of Foresta in the province of Caserta, and very close to the extinct volcano Roccamonfina, there is an area called Cia...
Bob Semple’s Tank: New Zealand’s Homegrown Tractor-Tanks
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 26, 2021
In 1941, war hysteria gripped New Zealand and its neighboring country of Australia. The Japanese army was advancing rapidly across South Eas...
The Hayirsizada Dog Massacre
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 24, 2021
Istanbul has many fascinating sights, from grand mosques to bustling bazaars, but one thing that has most consistently captured the imaginat...
The Case of The Missing Sri Lankan Handball Team
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 23, 2021
The Sri Lankan sports authority has a problem. Their athletes keep disappearing. They go to foreign countries to take part in sporting event...
Johannes Hevelius’s Moon Atlas
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 22, 2021
German astronomer Johannes Hevelius is often regarded as one of the last great astronomers to carry out major observational work without a t...
