Schuttberg: Germany’s Rubble Mountains
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 7, 2020
Scores of hills dot the edges of many German cities, but these are not natural. They are known as Schuttberg, or “debris hill”. Schuttberg...
Showing posts with the label Featured
A Licence to Watch Television
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 5, 2020
In many countries, owing a television involves more than one type of cost. First the device itself, which may cost, depending on your taste,...
Nikola Tesla’s Experimental Laboratory in Colorado Springs
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 4, 2020
One of Colorado Spring’s most famous visitors was electrical engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla, who in the spring of 1899, set up a laborat...
Pelorus Jack: The Dolphin Who Piloted Ships
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 30, 2020
The northern end of New Zealand’s South Island is a chaos of bays and sounds, and within this intricate coastline lies a narrow and treacher...
The Relocation of Abu Simbel Temples
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 27, 2020
Hundreds of towns and villages have perished due to massive earth-moving projects such as the construction of dams. But the temples at Abu S...
Miss Subways: The Tube Beauty Contest
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 21, 2020
For thirty five years, between 1941 and 1976, a company called New York Subways Advertising ran a city-wide beauty contest. Any New Yorker a...
Colorado Springs: A City Built Upon Tuberculosis
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 17, 2020
One of the leading causes of death in Europe and in the United States during the 19th century was tuberculosis, a disease that has plagued h...
The Bad Beer Brawl: St. Scholastica Day Riot
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 15, 2020
On the south-west corner of Carfax, in Oxford, a small, inconspicuous inscription on the side of an old building marks the site of one of th...
Thagomizer: Why Stegosaurus’ Spiky Tail Was Named After A Cartoon
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 13, 2020
Humans and stegosaurus missed each other by more than 150 million years, but people have always wondered how difficult or terrifying life wo...
The Balloon Satellites of Project Echo
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 11, 2020
The world’s first communication satellite was remarkably unsophisticated—a big silvery plastic balloon coated with aluminum, soaring roughly...
The Soviet Bomber That Was Reverse Engineered From Stolen American B-29s
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 9, 2020
Ask anyone, what won the war against Japan during the Second World War, and the answer would invariably be the ‘atomic bomb’, but truth be...
The Masked Women of Iran
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 4, 2020
Head covering, veils and burqas are common sight among many Muslim communities around the world. There are a lot of different styles and ea...
The Windmills of Paris
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 3, 2020
Windmills of Montmartre, Maurice Utrillo. Paris is not exactly hilly, but there are a couple of high points in the city where one can ea...
Büsingen am Hochrhein: The Town Torn Between Two Countries
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 2, 2020
Büsingen am Hochrhein is a German town with a lot of Swiss character. That’s because this small town on the Rhine is entirely surrounded by ...
The Jailhouse That Got Accidentally Sold
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 30, 2020
It takes quite a stretch of imagination to call Harvard a city. With an area just over half a square mile and population of about one thousa...
The Polar Bear Jail of Churchill
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 29, 2020
Living in Churchill in northern Manitoba, Canada, has its perils. Situated on the banks of Hudson Bay, approximately 1,000 km north of the p...
The Lost Patents
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 25, 2020
The United States Patent and Trademark Office was established in 1790, and since then the federal office has issued over 10 million patents ...
The Meridian That Stood Up To Greenwich
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 24, 2020
Railways, in the late 19th century, ushered in a revolution in transport, but with that arose one unexpected problem. Back then, there was...
Turning Night Into Day: Nuclear Explosions in Space
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 23, 2020
On August 1, 1958, a few minutes before midnight, an intense flash of white light tore across the night sky illuminating everything it touch...
Liverpool’s Secret Tunnels Built By An Eccentric “Philanthropist”
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 19, 2020
Williamson Tunnels under Edge Hill, in Liverpool. Photo: Friend of Williamson’s Tunnels Joseph Williamson was a wealthy businessman, but...
