The Sculpted Rocks of Rothéneuf
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 10, 2022
In 1879 in a small town in the south-east of France called Châteauneuf-de-Galaure, a postman began the construction of a fantastic palace, w...
Ambergris: The Highly Sought-After ‘Whale Vomit’
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 9, 2022
The sea washes up all kinds of strange stuff , from carcasses of whales and squids to fossils and ancient shipwrecks. But nothing is as prec...
Thomas Midgley Jr.: The One-Man Environmental Disaster
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 8, 2022
The unnatural warming of the Earth’s atmosphere in the past century or two can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution when humans began...
The Field of Cloth of Gold
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 4, 2022
Situated just ten miles south of Calais, Balinghem is an unremarkable little village, but five hundred years ago this quiet countryside play...
The Turf Mazes of Britain
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 3, 2022
Turf mazes are labyrinths made by cutting a convoluted path in an area of short grass or lawn, and were once a common feature of the English...
Tarrare: The Man Who Ate Too Much
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 1, 2022
If gluttony is a sin, then perhaps the worst offender was a man named Tarrare who lived in 18th century France. He had such an insatiable ap...
Mensur And Bragging Scars
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 25, 2022
This is Otto Skorzeny, often regarded as Hitler’s deadliest general. An Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the SS during World W...
Giuseppe Fieschi’s Infernal Machine
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 24, 2022
On July 28, 1835, Giuseppe Marco Fieschi positioned himself in front of an open window on the third floor of N. 50 Boulevard du Temple in Pa...
The Eagle Made Out of Lincoln's Hair
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 23, 2022
In a small dimly lit back room of the Onondaga Historical Association in Syracuse, New York, is a unique and priceless treasure—a civil-war ...
The Clink: England’s Oldest Prison
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 22, 2022
The oldest prison in England and the country’s most notorious was owned not by the reigning monarch but the Bishop of Winchester. Now why wo...
