Vesna Vulovic’s 33,000 Feet Fall
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 15, 2022
On January 26, 1972, the JAT Yugoslav Airlines Flight 367 flying from Stockholm to Belgrade became the target of a terrorist attack. A suitc...
Amphitheater of Capua: The First Roman Amphitheater
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 13, 2022
Of all the amphitheaters built by the Romans, the Colosseum or Flavian Amphitheater in Rome is the largest of all in dimensions, followed by...
The Slaves of Tromelin Island
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 12, 2022
On the night of July 31, 1761, a frigate of the French East India Company named Utile , captained by Jean de La Fargue, and carrying a contr...
Félicette: The Cat Who Went to Space
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 8, 2022
During the early years of space flight, animals were frequently flown into space and their bodies examined to investigate the various physio...
The Bradford Sweets Poisoning of 1858
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 7, 2022
William Hardaker ran a sweet shop in Green Market in Bradford, England. His most popular confectionary was the humbug, a hard boiled sweet m...
The Texas Horned Lizard That Was Entombed for 31 Years
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 6, 2022
The Texas horned lizard is a hardy creature, but its hardiness might have been overestimated. The Native American legend holds that the rugg...
Frog Battery
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 1, 2022
The term ‘battery’ was first used by Benjamin Franklin in 1749 to describe an apparatus he had designed to produce electricity. Franklin lin...
London to Calcutta by Bus
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 30, 2022
For fifteen years from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, it was possible to hop on to a bus in London and travel all the way to Calcutta, I...
Hannah Beswick: The Manchester Mummy
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 26, 2022
Hannah Beswick had a morbid fear of being buried alive, and this dread was not entirely irrational. Her young brother John almost had his co...
The Dublin Whiskey Fire of 1875
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 23, 2022
On June 18, 1875, a fire broke out on Chamber Street in the Liberties neighborhood of Dublin, Ireland. The exact cause of the fire remains u...
Wilhelm Gustloff: The Deadliest Ship Disaster You Never Heard Of
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 22, 2022
The sinking of the British ocean liner Titanic in 1912, with over 1,500 fatalities, is probably the most famous shipwreck of all time, but n...
The Calutron Girls Who Helped Built The Atomic Bomb
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 17, 2022
The Manhattan project that developed and built the world’s first atomic weapon employed some 130,000 people, of which only a small number of...
How Australia Fought The Prickly Pear Infestation
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 16, 2022
Prickly pear is a common name that refers to a number of large cactus species of the Cactaceae family that is endemic to the Americas. The s...
Albino Redwood
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 11, 2022
Albinism is rare in humans and animals, and it is rarer still in plants, where it manifests as the complete lack of chlorophyll. Because thi...
Drowning in Sewage: The Sinking of Princess Alice
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 10, 2022
The sinking of SS Princes Alice , a British paddle steamer, on the River Thames on 3 September 1878, that resulted in the loss of more than ...
Spot The Woman
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 9, 2022
For much of history, women have been forced to occupy a position one notch lower than that of men. This is very apparent when you look at ol...
The Thousand-Year Rose of Hildesheim Cathedral
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 9, 2022
Climbing the outer wall of Hildesheim Cathedral’s apse is a rose bush, said to be one thousand years old. According to legend, as long as it...
Clark Stanley: The First Snake Oil Salesman
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 9, 2022
The term “snake oil” is frequently used to describe any substance that has no real value but sold as a remedy for a particular set of proble...
Murtoa Stick Shed
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 5, 2022
In the town of Murtoa, in the Wimmera region of Victoria, Australia, there is a large grain storage facility that looks rather like an enorm...
Franja Partisan Hospital
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 4, 2022
During World War 2, when Slovenia was under Nazi occupation, the country’s resistance movement built a large number of hospitals hidden in t...
