Bull Running in Britain
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 28, 2020
Bull running as a sport is mostly associated with the city of Pamplona, in northern Spain. But until the 19th century, Britain had a similar...
Showing posts with the label Featured
The Very First Image on The Internet
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 27, 2020
Back in the early nineties, when the World Wide Web was still young, a group of geeky girls hailing from the European Organization for Nucle...
The B-17 That Flew With Its Tail Sliced Off
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 26, 2020
This famous photograph of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, with its tail section severed but still flying was taken during Word War 2, towar...
Sway Tower, The 14-Story Folly And The World Tallest Unreinforced Concrete Structure
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 25, 2020
On the outskirts of Sway, a village near Lymington, on Britain’s south coast, stands a peculiar Victorian tower. Visible for miles around, t...
Arrhichion, The Olympic Champion Who Won After His Death
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 25, 2020
Pankration was a violet sport. Practiced in ancient Greece, this brutal combination of boxing and wrestling had virtually no rules. The obje...
Slip Coach: Trains That Split
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 24, 2020
In the middle of the 19th century, British railway engineers realized that journey times could be appreciably shortened if trains didn’t hav...
Michael Malloy: The Man Who Wouldn’t Die
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 21, 2020
Killing someone takes a lot of wickedness backed by an equal amount of temerity, none of which was lacking in Tony Marino, Joseph "Red...
Of Mice, Men And Moon: A Short History of Animals in Space
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 18, 2020
More animals have flown to space than human beings. In the early years of space flight, all kinds of living beings from rodents to apes were...
London Bridge’s Nonsuch House
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 17, 2020
The Old London Bridge that stood for 600 years over Thames was the river’s key crossing point, as well as the city’s prime real estate area....
A Racing Horse Named Potoooooooo
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 15, 2020
There was once a great racehorse in 18th-century Britain named Potoooooooo, who was famed for his endurance and speed. He won over 30 races ...
Thames Tunnel: The World’s First Tunnel Under a River
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 13, 2020
At the beginning of the 19th century, London was one of the busiest river ports in the world, and the 600-year old stone bridge over Thames ...
Why Britain Lost 11 Days in September 1752
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 11, 2020
Do you know how many British people were born between September 3 and September 13 in the year 1752? None. Absolutely no one was born, nobod...
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...
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...
