Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov’s Two-Headed Dog

Jun 5, 2020

In 1955, at a meeting of the Moscow Surgical Society, a sensational exhibit was presented to the assembled guests. On the platform close t...

Llívia: A Curious Spanish Enclave in France

Jun 3, 2020

A welcome sign on the road to Llívia, a landlock state of Spain inside France. Photo: LMspencer/Shutterstock.com Deep in the Pyrenees, s...

The War Rubble of Crosby Beach

Jun 2, 2020

Photo: pshab/Flickr Just beyond the coastguard station at the end of the promenade at Crosby Beach, in Liverpool, is a flat stretch of s...

The Unknown Martyrs Who Became Catacomb Saints

Jun 1, 2020

Relics of saint and holy people have always been an integral part of Christianity. There was a time when bones, skins, fingernails, severe...

Clever Hans: The Horse Who Could Do Math

May 29, 2020

In a paved courtyard surrounded by high apartment houses in the northern part of Berlin, a small crowd had gathered to watch an old high s...

Stanley Kubrick’s Rejected Monolith

May 27, 2020

The iconic Monolith from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was originally not a mysterious black slab. The director wanted it t...

Waterloopbos: Where Dutch Engineers Learned to Play With The Sea

May 27, 2020

A quarter of Netherlands lie below the sea level. Most of these low-lying areas are land reclaimed from the sea. The region was originally o...

Pervitin: The Wonder Drug That Fueled Nazi Germany

May 25, 2020

When Heinrich Böll, the German writer and Nobel laureate, was a young man in his twenties, like many able-bodied youths of his time, he jo...

Draining of Fucine Lake

May 21, 2020

In western Abruzzo, in central Italy, about 80 kilometers east of Rome, lies one of Italy's most fertile plains. The vegetables that a...

Tsar Tank

May 20, 2020

Before World War I, military tanks were a mere concept. Leonardo da Vinci made sketches of a human-powered armored vehicle, with canons all ...