The Delft Tower Experiment
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 7, 2024
In 1654, twelve years after the death of the brilliant Italian astronomer and scientist Galileo Galilei, Prince Leopold de' Medici, brot...
Showing posts with the label Netherlands
Leendert Hasenbosch: The Gay Soldier Who Was Marooned on a Deserted Island
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 25, 2023
In January 1726, a British East India Company ship named James and Mary landed on Ascension Island. While exploring the island, the crew st...
World’s First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 21, 2021
A 12-meter long steel pedestrian bridge opened last week in Amsterdam. Unlike other steel bridges around the world, this was not forged in a...
The Accidental Bombing of Bezuidenhout
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 5, 2021
At eight o’clock in the morning of 3 March 1945, the air-raid sirens were heard for the first time over Hague. A short while later a wave of...
Dementia Villages
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 29, 2020
At first glance, Hogewey, a small community situated about 20 km outside of Amsterdam looks like any other Dutch town. Residents go about th...
Waterloopbos: Where Dutch Engineers Learned to Play With The Sea
Kaushik Patowary
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...
The Kettle War
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 17, 2020
Photo: B toy Anucha/Shutterstock.com The Kettle War of 1784 was a quintessential David versus Goliath story. A formidable naval fleet of...
Why Mediaeval Europeans Slept Inside Boxes
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 1, 2019
For much of human history, privacy during bedtime was an alien concept. Many poor families lived in small houses, where there was only one o...
The Islands of Loosdrecht Lakes
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 22, 2019
Narrow elongated islands seen in an area called Scheendijk in the Loosdrecht Lakes, The Netherlands. Photo credit: George Steinmetz The L...
Hellburner: The 16th Century Weapon of Mass Destruction
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 29, 2019
In the age of sail, when ships were made of wood, fire was the number one enemy of sailors, and this fearsome tool was used in diabolic ways...
The Gable Stones of Amsterdam
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 16, 2019
Before Amsterdam had house numbering, they had a curious way of identifying addresses. Each house and building in the city used to have a st...
Dutch Prisons Are Being Converted Into Hotels And Apartments Because of Lack of Prisoners
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 8, 2018
The Netherlands has a problem with prisons and prisoners, just like any other country. But while the rest of the world is struggling with ov...
Letters of Utrecht: The Endless Poem
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 3, 2018
In the Dutch city of Utrecht, a poem is growing—one letter at a time, every week, for the past six years. Every Saturday, at around one in...
Horse-Drawn Boats
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 30, 2018
Before diesel and electric engines made sailing convenient, boats and barges had to be either rowed or pulled. In many European countries su...
The 17th Century Bond That’s Still Paying Interest
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 18, 2018
Sometimes a company or a government issues bonds that never mature. They are called perpetual bond, and as the name suggests, they remain in...
Netherlandish Proverbs
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 18, 2018
Hanging at the Gemäldegalerie art museum in Berlin, Germany, is an unusual painting. Measuring 64 inches by 46 inches, this 16th century oil...
Leiden’s Love Affair With Poems And Equations
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 7, 2017
Scattered throughout the city of Leiden, in The Netherlands, are over one hundred poems carefully hand-painted on the exterior walls of buil...
How Amsterdam’s Airport Is Fighting Noise Pollution With Land Art
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 21, 2017
Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, located just 9 km southwest of the city, is the third busiest airport in Europe and one of the busiest in the ...
Mudflat Hiking in The Wadden Sea
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 1, 2017
The southeastern edge of the North Sea, along the coast from Denmark through to the Netherlands, is a shallow belt of mudflats and barrier i...
De Poezenboot: Amsterdam’s Cat Boat
Anonymous
May 3, 2017
A city with over one hundred kilometers of canals, it’s no surprise that Amsterdam is full of houseboats. However, one such boat in the hist...
