Chinese Medicine Dolls

Oct 10, 2019

For hundreds of years until the early 20th century, getting medical help for a Chinese woman was tricky. In those times the Chinese placed e...

Bouvet Island: The Uninhabited Island With Its Own Top-Level Internet Domain

Oct 8, 2019

As far as islands go, Bouvet is pretty insignificant—a speck of rock located in the South Atlantic Ocean over 1,600 kilometers off the coast...

An Incredible Move: The Indiana Bell Telephone Building

Oct 7, 2019

The relocation of the headquarters building of Indiana Bell Telephone Company in Indianapolis remains one of the most fascinating moves in t...

Shadwell Forgeries: How Two Illiterates Fooled Victorian Archeologists

Oct 5, 2019

During the middle of the 19th century, London’s antiquarian market was flooded by the sudden arrival of a large number of supposedly mediaev...

Megapode Egg Fields

Oct 2, 2019

Most birds incubate their eggs with body heat, but not megapodes, a chicken-sized bird with heavy body, short rounded wings and large, stron...

Fist Fights on Venetian Bridges

Oct 1, 2019

Throughout the Middle Ages and the early Modern Period, Venice was divided into many administrative districts and rival factions, who disp...

Fatberg: The Fatty Monster of The Sewer

Sep 30, 2019

Blockages in sewers are pretty common in cities across the globe. But how large a congealed mass of filth has to be before it gets its own n...

Russia’s Circular Warships

Sep 28, 2019

In the latter half of the 19th century, ships began to transition from wood to iron and many engineers thought the time was ripe to experime...

Fanny Burney’s Gruesome Mastectomy

Sep 26, 2019

In the days before anesthesia, the prospect of having to go under the knife was far more horrific than the affliction the procedure was supp...

The French Chateau With The World’s Largest Private Collection of Warplanes

Sep 26, 2019

Among the rolling hills of Burgundy's wine country, surrounded by vineyards and forested land, stands a 14th-century castle belonging to...