The First Aircraft Accident Investigation
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 15, 2022
On 13 May 1912, a two-seater aircraft piloted by Edward Victor Beauchamp Fisher crashed at Brooklands, in England, killing both the pilot an...
Mokomokai: Tattooed Maori Heads And The Musket Wars
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 11, 2022
In the early 19th century, a deplorable trade developed in New Zealand between the indigenous Maori people and the European merchants. The w...
The Bottle Conjuror Hoax
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 9, 2022
In January 1749, an advertisement appeared on London papers for a new magical performance at the New Theater in Haymarket. An anonymous perf...
Cotswold Olimpick Games
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 8, 2022
The town of Chipping Campden, in the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England, has been holding their own “Olympic” games since the 17t...
Ryōunkaku: Japan’s First Skyscraper
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 4, 2022
For more than thirty years, the Ryōunkaku—Japan's first Western-style skyscraper—was a popular sight in the urban landscape of modern To...
Albrecht Berblinger: The Flying Tailor of Ulm
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 3, 2022
Albrecht Berblinger was an early aviation pioneer who is best known for designing a hang glider, nearly four decades before British inventor...
Bummer And Lazarus: San Francisco’s Beloved Dogs
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 1, 2022
The California Gold Rush brought not only people to the gold fields but dogs as well. These canines served foremost as companions to miners,...
Francis Greenway: The Only Forger to Be Featured on a Banknote
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 29, 2022
Australia owes many of its former convicts, who, through their ability and determination, made substantial contributions to the development ...
Why Soviet Cosmonauts Carried a Gun to Space
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 27, 2022
For decades, the standard survival kit carried by Russian cosmonauts aboard the Soyuz spacecraft included a specially built gun and a few do...
Tomb of Eve, Jeddah
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 24, 2022
Did you know that Eve, that same Biblical Eve whom God supposedly created out of Adam’s rib, remains buried in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia? Some ...
Claude Ambroise Seurat: The Living Skeleton
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 20, 2022
Freak shows were a very popular medium of entertainment in Europe and the United States of America for the major part of the 19th century. T...
The Knox Mine Disaster
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 19, 2022
On January 22, 1959, miners at the River Slope Mine of the Knox Coal Company in Jenkins Township, Pennsylvania, were digging under the Susqu...
Ann Moore: The Fasting Woman of Tutbury
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 18, 2022
Ann Moore was in her late 40s when she became famous as the ‘fasting woman’ of Tutbury. She claimed that she had not eaten any solid food fo...
Nimrud Lens: A 2,700-Year-Old Magnifying Glass
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 14, 2022
During excavations of the ancient Assyrian capital of Kalkhu (better known as Nimrud, in Iraq) in 1850, archaeologist Austen Henry Layard fo...
The Strange Tale of Lord Uxbridge's Leg
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 13, 2022
At the Battle of Waterloo, on 18 June 1815, Henry Paget, 2nd Earl of Uxbridge, and later the 1st Marquess of Anglesey—a veteran of many mili...
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...
