How Students Stole Britain’s Coronation Stone, The Stone of Scone
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 13, 2023
For more than seven hundred years, British monarchs have sat on a large block of rectangular sandstone during their coronations. This block ...
Showing posts with the label Scotland
The Tay Whale
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 31, 2023
The city of Dundee on the Firth of Tay, on the east coast of Scotland, was a major whaling port in the 19th century. But few locals had actu...
Curfew Bell
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 20, 2023
Nearly every medieval house in Europe used to have an open hearth where a fire was kept going at all times to keep the occupants warm, and a...
Helen Duncan: The Last Witch of Britain
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 20, 2022
The Witchcraft Act of 1735 was a landmark act for Britain. Unlike the earlier Witchcraft Acts which legalized witch-hunting and the executio...
The Vanishing of Flannan’s Lighthouse Keepers
Ria Gupta
Jun 27, 2022
During the cold December days of 1900, three men disappeared off a remote island in the Outer Hebrides. They left no trace or trail, save fo...
The Witches of Paisley
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 24, 2022
Four years after the events in Salem in Massachusetts, the United States, that saw the execution of nineteen innocent victims charged with w...
Propeller Driven Railways
Kaushik Patowary
May 31, 2021
A locomotive can derive power from many different sources. The earliest locomotives were driven by steam. Then came electric trains powered ...
The Ingenuity of The ‘Ha-Ha’
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 17, 2021
What’s in a wall but a simple structure to keep intruders out, you might say. But a surprising amount of thought goes behind the constructio...
The Balmoral Pyramid
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 7, 2020
Hidden among the trees in the woods surrounding the Balmoral Castle in Royal Deeside, Scotland, are eleven stone cairns erected by Queen Vic...
Joseph Bell, The Real Sherlock Holmes
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 28, 2020
An illustration of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson that appeared in a stamp printed in Alderney, circa 2009. Photo: Olga Popova/Shutterstoc...
The Murders Written in Stone
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 3, 2020
The Ardwell House East Lodge sits right on the edge of A716 that runs along the east coast of the Rhins of Galloway, in southern Scotland. L...
Scuttling at Scapa Flow: When The German Navy Sank its Own Ships
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 27, 2020
The Armistice of 11 November 1918, that ended hostiles between the Allied and the Allies, left little for negotiation. The Germans were give...
The Locomotive That Walked: William Brunton’s Steam Horse
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 20, 2020
Railway engineering has come a long way from Richard Trevithick’s first steam locomotive to today’s high speed Maglev trains. Throughout th...
Tron: Scotland’s Public Weighing Scales
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 3, 2020
The tron at Stenton, East Lothian, Scotland. Image credit: Studio Karel/Shutterstock.com This is the village of Stenton, in East Lothian...
Why do People Spit on The Heart of Midlothian?
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 31, 2019
Spitting on the streets is not quite gentlemanly behavior, but on the Royal Mile in Edinburg, it is almost a ritual. The object of contemp...
Britain’s Hundred Million Pound Banknotes
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 20, 2019
Scottish banknotes are weird. Although they are used all over Scotland and the rest of the UK, they are not legal tender, which means a shop...
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 Editor of Encyclopædia Britannica Once Wrote a Guidebook to Edinburg’s Prostitutes
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 13, 2019
In the late 18th century, tourists seeking carnal pleasure in Scotland’s capital city Edinburgh had a handy guidebook to start with. It det...
How Mediaeval Husbands Chastised Wives Who Talked Too Much
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 17, 2019
By putting a muzzle on them, of course. Known as Scold's bridle, these devices of torture and public humiliation were used mostly in En...
The Vitrified Forts of Scotland
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 6, 2019
Throughout the Bronze and the Iron Ages, Europeans have constructed hilltop forts and enclosures made of stone. About two hundred examples o...
