The Wicked Bible
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 12, 2022
A scandalous printing mistake in a 17th century King James Bible caused it’s printers to lose their license, and a vast majority of the bibl...
Shipton's Arch: The Tallest Natural Arch in The World
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 11, 2022
The tallest natural arch in the world is located in China’s western Xinjiang region, and is called Shipton’s Arch, after the name of the Eng...
How an Ancient Piece of Earth Rock Ended Up on The Moon
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 11, 2022
The six Apollo missions that landed on the moon from 1969 to 1972 brought back several hundred kilograms of rocks from the lunar surface. Sc...
The New England Vampire Panic
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 10, 2022
In the 19th century, a mysterious illness struck rural New England. Those affected had hacking coughs, a wasting fever and weight loss. The ...
The Windham Frog Fight of 1754
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 6, 2022
Drive through the small town of Windham in Eastern Connecticut, United States, and you’ll wonder why the people here have a strange obsessio...
Shizo Kanakuri: The Man Who Took 54 Years To Finish a Marathon
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 5, 2022
Shizo Kanakuri was not a slow runner. In fact, he reportedly set the world record by completing a 40-km marathon run in 2 hours, 32 minutes,...
Pierre Picaud: The Real Count of Monte Cristo
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 30, 2022
Alexandre Dumas’s literary classic The Count of Monte Cristo is one of Dumas’s most famous and beloved novels, but this satisfying tale of ...
Chung Ling Soo: The Magician Who Led a Double Life And Got Shot on Stage
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 29, 2022
One of the most dangerous and daring illusions that a magician can attempt is the famed bullet catch trick. There are several variation to t...
Why Two Prestigious American Universities Fight Over a Cannon
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 27, 2022
Most college rivalries revolve around academics or sports, but the rivalry between Princeton and Rutgers Universities is as much about sport...
Insectothopter: CIA’s Dragonfly-Shaped Bug
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 23, 2022
Is that buzz above your head an insect, or is it a miniature flying machine? With current technology and progress in mechanical miniaturiz...
Cross Writing: A Peculiar Way to Save Paper And Postage
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 22, 2022
Back in the 1800s, when both paper and postage were expensive (the cost of posting a letter depended on how many sheets of paper you used), ...
The Family That Sold Time
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 22, 2022
Mechanical clocks of the 19th century and earlier were not very accurate timekeepers and tended to drift over the course of a single day. Af...
The 1904 Olympic Marathon Was The Worst Race Ever
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 20, 2022
On a hot August afternoon in 1904, with temperatures hovering above the nineties (32 degree centigrade), thirty-two men dressed largely in w...
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...
