 Hostile Façades
The old city of Segovia, about 90 km north of Madrid, is best known for its aqueduct, but this historic city is full of architectural curiosities, such as the ornamental façades and geometric textures on the walls of many of the houses, the strangest of which is Casa de los Picos, or the "House of Peaks". The façade of this house is covered entirely by granite blocks carved into pyramid-shaped reliefs. There are more than six hundred pyramids jutting out of the walls giving the impression ...
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The Great Glass Slab at Beth Shearim
In a cave adjacent to an ancient cemetery near Beit She'arim, an old Jewish town in northern Israel, there lies a huge slab of glass approximately 6.5 feet wide, 11 feet long and 18 inches thick. It weighs 9 tons. Although chemical analysis confirm it's glass, the slab doesn't look anything like the delicate, translucent material. Rather, it looks like a large block of limestone, for it is completely opaque and bluish-gray. When the slab was discovered in the 1960s during an exploratio...
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The Wine Cellars of Hercegkút
The Tokaj wine region in northeastern Hungary has been producing wine since Roman times. Tokaj's wines were historically prized throughout Europe, thanks to a gift of numerous bottles that the prince of Transylvania presented to King Louis XIV. Delighted with the precious beverage, Louis XIV declared it the "Wine of Kings, King of Wines". Subsequently, Tokaj's wine became the main drink served at the Versailles Court, where it became known under the name of Tokay. Hobbit's home like...
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The Great Bed of Ware
For much of human history, sleeping arrangements were very informal. You heaped a pile of straw or leaves on the floor, covered it with animal skin or a large linen cloth, and tucked yourself in with a cloak or a blanket. It wasn't until the Middle Ages that people started to afford a bit of luxury. Mattresses were stuffed with feathers, wool, or horse hair, depending on the level of comfort desired, with feathers being the softest and the costliest of stuffing. Considerable attention was give...
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Charles Crocker's Spite Fence
Back when San Francisco's luxurious destination Nob Hill was just another neighborhood in the newly incorporated city, a young German immigrant named Nicholas Yung built himself a modest three-story house at the top of what was then California Hill. Away from the hustle and bustle of the burgeoning city swamped by gold prospectors, California Hill's steep climb afforded the undertaker and his wife Rosina a peaceful, isolated existence with stunning view of the Bay to the east and the Golde...
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The Lost Villages of The Port of Antwerp
In the middle of the Port of Antwerp, in Belgium, surrounded by an endless sea of shipping containers, stands an old church tower on a small patch of grass. Out of place and out of time, this centuries-old tower in the middle of a modern container port is all that remains of the former village of Wilmarsdonk that was wiped away in the 1960s, along with three others, to make way for the expansion of the port. The tower of the St. Laurence church of Wilmarsdonk standing in the middle of the bus
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George Cayley: The Man Who Invented Flight
History credits Orville and Wilbur Wright for flying the world's first aircraft, but it was Yorkshire Baronet Sir George Cayley who first proposed, propounded and published the principles of modern aerodynamics. It was George Cayley, who, more than a century before the Wright Brothers took flight, set forth the concept of the modern airplane as a fixed-wing flying machine as opposed to the comical flapping winged machines that many of his predecessors had imagined. It was George Cayley who pro...
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How Alexander Turned The Island of Tyre Into a Peninsula
The city of Tyre in southern Lebanon is one of the oldest cities in the world. Originally founded by settlers from the nearby city of Sidon in the 3rd millennium BCE, Tyre became politically independent when Egyptian influence in Phoenicia declined, and later it surpassed even Sidon to become the most important Phoenician trade center and seaport having commercial ties with all parts of the Mediterranean world. The city is situated on a small bulbous peninsula that juts out from the Lebanese co
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Pericles' Funeral Oration, The Most Famous Speech in History
The Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens began in 431 BC and would last for almost 28 years. In the end, Sparta prevailed, but its hegemony would not last long, since first Thebes and then Macedonia, would end up imposing themselves on the Greek world. At the end of the first year of the war, the Athenians, as was their custom, gathered for a ceremony to honor and remember the fallen. As Thucydides recounts, it consisted of a procession that accompanied the ten coffins (cypress coffers,
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Australia's Great Artesian Basin
Australia is dry, hot, unimaginably infertile and the most inhospitable of all inhabited continents. Yet, underneath the parched land, lies one of the world's largest source of groundwater—a vast underground aquifer, trapped within layers of impermeable rock and clay, containing an astounding 65,000 cubic kilometers of fresh water, enough to fill the Great Lakes of Northern America nearly three times over. Even the world largest freshwater lake, Lake Baikal, is 2.7 times smaller than the Gre...
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The Dambusters Raid of 1943
On the night of 16-17 May 1943, a squadron of the Royal Air Force conducted a daring mission deep into German territory to destroy two dams in the Ruhr valley, the industrial heartland of Germany. The subsequent flooding destroyed two hydroelectric power plants and several factories and mines, crippling Germany's steel and coal production. The mission was codenamed Operation Chastise. One of the targets, the Möhne dam in North Rhine-Westphalia, was the largest in Europe. It was built to he...
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How Mining Engineers Helped NASA Get to The Moon
The outrageous plot of NASA hiring a group of miners for a space mission may remind you of a certain Hollywood movie, but back in the mid-1960s when the space organization was trying to reach the moon, they did, in fact, look towards coal miners and their tools for inspiration. Back then, NASA had just completed designing the Saturn V, the behemoth of a rocket weighing nearly 3,000 tons that would take the first men to the moon, but they had yet to figure out how to deliver this monstrous rocket
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The Nottingham Cheese Riot of 1766
1766 was a bad year for farmers. Crops failed all across Europe, and prices of wheat, flour, corn and other foodstuffs shot up as a consequence. English producers and dealers were tempted to ship much of their supplies to profitable foreign markets, and there were loud cries of protests everywhere. Dozens of food riots broke out across England where goods were seized by force. A satirical cartoon depicting a fat 'forestaller' being dragged along by a rope round his neck by a chain of
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Rushton Triangular Lodge
The Triangular Lodge near Rushton, in Northamptonshire, England, is an unusual building. This three-sided house was built in the late 16th century by Sir Thomas Tresham, a devout Catholic, as a way of expressing his faith. The number three, symbolizing the Holy Trinity, is apparent everywhere, from the triangular shape to the use of the trefoil window designs, to the number of floors, the various dimensions and symbolic letters, dates, and numbers which are all multiples of three. Photo: Awe
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The Turin Erotic Papyrus
The Turin Erotic Papyrus is an ancient Egyptian papyrus scroll-painting that has long been a subject of intense interest among Egyptologists, because it deals with the subject of sex rather graphically. The Turin Erotic Papyrus is believed to be created during the time of Ramesses III (roughly 1184-1153 BCE), which makes it about a thousand years older than the Kamasutra, the only other great treatise on sex from the ancient world. The original papyrus is in tatters.
© Amusing Planet,
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New York Moving Day: Mayhem on The Streets
The first day of May used to be absurdly chaotic for New Yorkers, for it was "Moving Day"—the once a year tradition when nearly a million tenants across the city swapped homes. Up until the end of World War 2, all leases expired simultaneously on May 1, causing everyone to change their residences, all at the same time. The landlords gave their tenants a 3-month notice informing them what the new rent would be after the end of the quarter. That day, February 1, was sometimes called "R...
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Banda: The Secret Island of Nutmegs
In the Banda Sea, roughly 2,500 km east of Jakarta lies the Banda Islands, a part of Indonesia. For thousands of years, this group of ten islands were the world's only source of nutmeg and mace, which is derived from nutmeg's shell. Before the arrival of Europeans, Banda was ruled by the nobles called orang kaya, who traded with the Indians and the Arabs, who in turn sold spices to the Europeans for exorbitant prices. In those days nutmeg was worth more by weight than gold, as the spice wa...
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The German-Japanese Village Where The Most Fearful Weapon Was Tested
One of the most devastating weapons ever invented was not the atomic bomb but napalm, the incendiary agent that was used extensively against German and Japanese cities during the Second World War. Napalm is a thick inflammable gel that sticks to anything that is thrown at and burns at a torturously high temperature destroying buildings made of wood or other combustible materials. Despite being inflammable, napalm is surprisingly stable at high temperatures that allow it to be easily handled and
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A la Ronde: The 16-Sided House That's Never Short of Sunlight
Near the village of Lympstone, in Devon, England, stands a unique 18th century property—a one of a kind 16-sided house built by two fiercely independent spinster cousins, Jane and Mary Parminter, after they returned from a decade-long tour of Europe. Jane Parminter was the daughter of a wealthy Devon wine merchant. After her father's death in 1784, Jane set off on a grand tour of Europe, as was the custom among upper-class Britons in those times, accompanied by her invalid sister Elizabeth...
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Broomway: Britain's Deadliest Path
Situated on the east coast of Essex, England, on the estuary of River Roach, Foulness Island has long been controlled by the military. The artillery range there was first established by the War Office in the mid-19th century, and is now operated by the Ministry of Defence for testing new weapons and ammunition. Being located a long way from large population centers, the island is ideally suited for this purpose. The island itself, however, is not free of civilians. Cohabiting with killer grena
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Casa de las Conchas: The House of Shells
Casa de las Conchas, or the House of Shells, is a curious attraction in Salamanca, Spain. This stately mansion built between the late 15th and early 16th centuries has a façade covered with carvings of scallop shells, the symbol of the military Order of Santiago of which its first owner, Talavera Maldonado, was chancellor. Construction of the house began in 1493, but Maldonado didn't live to see its completion. After his death, the house was completed by his son Rodrigo Arias Maldonado in 15...
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Huer's Hut And Pilchard Fishing
Cornwall, in southwest England, once had a thriving fishing industry and at the heart of this industry was the pilchard, also known as sardines. Cornwall fishermen caught sardines in enormous quantities and shipped them to France, Spain and Italy, where salted pilchard was in great demand especially in the remote rural regions. During the mid-18th century, Cornwall exported 30,000 hogsheads (around 6,300 tons) of pilchards every year on average. This rose to more than 40,000 hogsheads (around 8,
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The Vespasianus Titus Tunnel
Around 300 BC Seleucus I founded, on the current southeast coast of Turkey, the city of Seleucia Pieria. Located north of the mouth of the Orontes River and at the foot of the Amanus Mountains, he gave it the name of Pieria, because the place reminded him of the Macedonian region of the same name. Seleucia Pieria soon became the seaport for the main city in the area, Antioquia del Orontes, and was a strategic enclave for the control of the Syrian region. For this reason, in 64 BC it was conquer
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How Medieval Bridges Were Built—An Animation
Building a bridge over water is a daunting task, and despite the many technological progresses, the basics have remain unchanged since ancient times. First a cofferdam is constructed on the riverbed and the water inside this enclosed structure is pumped out, exposing the muddy button. Upon this ground the piers of the bridge are erected. The historic Charles Bridge in Prague. Photo: Adisa/Shutterstock.com
© Amusing Planet, 2020.
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Fokker's Synchronizing Gear And The Birth of Fighter Planes
The first airplanes to join the First World War were not made for combat. They merely played the role of an observer, scouting enemy positions and movements. Intelligence gathering was essential for warfare, and this new technological innovation made it possible for an observer to look into enemy territory surreptitiously. Predictably, the enemy began doing the same, and soon it became necessary to prevent enemy airplanes from conducting reconnaissance and surveillance. A British World War On
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The Space Museum Inside a Church
About 80 km outside of Kyiv, in the small Ukrainian town of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyy, there is a large complex of museums dedicated to preserving the history, culture and architecture of Ukrainian people. The National Historical and Ethnographic Reserve contains around 30 thematic museums on different profile—history, archaeology, literacy, ethnography, technology, etc. Among these, the museum dedicated to Space Exploration is the most curious, because it is housed inside a 130-year-old wooden ...
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Aqueduct of Segovia: The Mortar-Less Miracle
The aqueduct of Segovia is a classic example of Roman water transport architecture—simple in design, yet magnificent to behold, and surprisingly durable. The aqueduct was built in the 1st century AD to convey water from FrÃo River, 17 km away, to the city, and it has been carrying out this function in one form or another for the past 2,000 years. This is all the more impressive when you realize that this aqueduct was built without a single ounce of mortar. Segovia, situated approximately 100...
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Writing Sheds of Famous Writers
Writers usually have their favorite writing spots, a small, secluded space, sparsely furnished, where creativity flows unimpeded. The chosen environment is typically distraction-free, like the library, a hotel room, inside a car, or even a prison cell. Many significant literary works have been produced from within prisons. Indeed, locking oneself up with only a typewriter, or pen and paper, is a reasonable strategy. The The Hunchback of Notre Dame became possible only because Victor Hugo placed
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Glacier Birds
High in the Andes among frozen glaciers, where virtually nothing survives, a small and plump, blue-gray feathered bird lays eggs and raises their young. It is the only bird, other than emperor penguins, known to nest on ice—the most ill-suited of environments for raising young ones. The species known as the white-winged diuca-finch (Diuca speculifera) inhabits the high mountain meadows in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru. The diuca finch belongs to the large Emberizidae family, members of w...
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The Spectacle of Death at The Paris Morgue
Throughout the 19th century, the Paris morgue attracted thousand of visitors every day. Eager tourists consumed by a morbid fascination with death jostled in front of a large glass viewing window and craned their necks to see the corpses recently fished out of the River Seine or murdered in a gruesome fashion. Going to the morgue was often compared to going to the theatre. The official function of the morgue was identification of the bodies, but few, if any, went there with the intention of hel
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The Storybook Houses of California
At the intersection of Carmelita Avenue and Walden Drive, in Beverly Hills, California, there stands a house which appears straight out of a fairytale. With its steeply pitched gable roof, wooden shingles, shutters that hang askew and small leaded-glass windows, the house appears jarringly out of place among its upscale neighbors. But the interior is quite charming and spacious with two master suites and a 3,500-square-foot floor plan. The Witch's House. Photo: Lori Branham/Flickr
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The Huron King Nuclear Test
The Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles northwest of the city of Las Vegas, is scattered with relics from the United States' nuclear age. Nearly a thousand nuclear tests were conducted at this place, of which about a hundred were atmospheric. Mushroom clouds from these tests were visible from almost one hundred miles away, and their tremors were felt as far away as Las Vegas. The subsidence crater of the Huron King Test of 24 June 1980.
© Amusing Planet, 2020.
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Abu Ballas: The Pottery Hill
In 1917, British surveyor Dr. John Ball made an unusual discovery in the Libyan desert in Egypt. About 180 km south-west of the Dakhla Oases, he discovered two isolated sandstone cones jutting out of the desert sand. Both hills were covered with thousands of pottery, many broken but some still intact. The Egyptian explorer Prince Kamal el Dine Hussein named the archeological site Abu Ballas, or the "hill of pottery". Prince Kamal el Dine Hussein assumed that the jars were relics of fairly ...
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The Strange 1940 Mid-Air Collision at Brocklesby
In New South Wales, Australia, about 120 km south of Wagga Wagga, lies a small community of farmers and cattle rearers called Brocklesby. The village was once an important station on the Culcairn-Corowa railway line, whose main purpose was to haul wheat from the region to the ports for export. Then the railway closed, and now all that remains in Brocklesby are the grain silos, the defunct railway tracks and a couple of scattered houses. It is said that the only exciting thing that ever happened
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The Shirt Collar Mail
On April 21, 1906, three days after the terrible San Francisco earthquake, James Graves Jones dispatched a letter to his family in New York, informing them that he was safe and also describing the devastation in the city. The letter read: Dear Wayland and Gussie: All safe but awfully scared. Frisco and hell went into partnership and hell came out winner—got away with the sack. Draw a line from Ft Mason along Van Ness Ave. to Market St., out Market to Dolores to Twentieth, thence to Harriso...
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Gbadolite: The Versailles of The Jungle
Deep in the rainforest, more than 1,000 km from Kinshasa, the capital of Democratic Republic of the Congo, lies the decaying city of Gbadolite, home to nearly two hundred thousand people. Fifty years ago, Gbadolite was a just small village of 1,500 with mud brick houses. It wasn't even marked on maps, until Mobutu Sese Seko became the president. Within a decade, Gbadolite was transformed into a sprawling city with an airport, five-star hotels, supermarkets, hospitals with high tech facilities,...
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The Failed British Plan to Destroy Nazi Factories With Exploding Rats
During the Second World War, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE)—a secret organization whose job was to conduct espionage and sabotage in occupied Europe, as well as aid local resistance movements—devised an ingenious plan to blow up Nazi factories. A SOE officer posing as a student, procured about a hundred rats under the pretext of conducting laboratory experiments. The rats were killed, and their carcasses were filled with plastic explosives. The idea was to get French Resist...
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Pierre André Latreille: The Entomologist Who Escaped Death Because of a Beetle
Pierre Andre Latreille owed his life to a beetle. The French zoologist is often considered to be the father of modern entomology, having made considerable additions to our knowledge of that branch of natural science, especially in the field of crustaceans and insects. He named hundreds of taxa, as well as many species and countless genera. He was the first person who attempted a natural classification of the arthropods. The concept of the "type species", where a species of a genus is regard...
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The 1925 Serum Run To Nome: The Incredible Story of How a Remote Alaskan Town Was Saved From an Epidemic
In the winter of 1925, a small Alaskan town called Nome, situated on the edge of the Arctic circle, found itself on the brink of an unimaginable crisis. An outbreak of diphtheria threatened to wipe out the entire community of 1,400. Nome's lone physician, Curtis Welch, feared that if the infection spread, it could put at risk the surrounding communities totaling more than 10,000 people. A large number of these were natives who had no resistance to the disease. To make matter worse, Dr. Welchâ...
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Petrozavodsk Phenomenon
On September 20, 1977, between midnight and the early hours of the morning, people over a vast region in eastern Europe, stretching from Copenhagen and Helsinki in the west to Vladivostok in the east, observed an unusual light phenomenon in the sky. According to various eyewitness reports, an unidentified luminous object appeared suddenly on the dark sky, sending pulsed shafts of light to earth. It then moved slowly and silently towards the city of Petrozavodsk and spread over it in the form of
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The Underground Fortress of Château de Brézé
Château de Breze is a small castle by European standards. Occupying less than 2 acres, this modest U-shaped building surrounded by a dry moat appears nothing out of the ordinary. But beneath its humble foundation lies one of Europe's largest underground fortress. Château de Breze is located on the outskirts of the small village of Breze, in the Saumur region of the Loire Valley, France. It was built by Arthus de Maille-Breze, the then lord of the castle, in the mid-16th century. Fear...
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The Disgrace of Gijon: The Match That Changed World Cup Football
For the first time in the history of FIFA World Cup, the 1982 edition of the tournament in Spain saw 24 teams take part instead of the usual 16. There were a lot of new faces, such as Algeria, Cameroon, Honduras, Kuwait, and New Zealand. Some of the regulars like Netherlands, Mexico and Sweden also failed to qualify, and this left a lot of vacancies up for grabs. Belgium, Czechoslovakia, El Salvador, England and the Soviet Union were all back in the field after more than a decade of absence. T
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The Iron Bridge of Shropshire
The world's first cast iron bridge still stands in Shropshire, England, across River Severn. It's more than two hundred years old. Although cast iron has been used since ancient times to make pots and pans, cannon balls, and decorative pieces such as window grills and chimneypieces, it was never used for structural purposes until architect Thomas Farnolls Pritchard suggested that a cast iron bridge be constructed to span the Severn Gorge in Shropshire. The Severn Gorge, later renamed to the...
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The Four Inch Flight: The Comical Beginning to Project Mercury
Like many firsts in spaceflight, Project Mercury began with a failure. The goal of the mission was to put a man in space and bring him safely back to earth, ideally before the Soviet Union did. The Soviets beat America by putting into orbit the first satellite, and now the race was on to put the first human. Unfortunately, Project Mercury was having trouble getting off the ground. In July 1960, the very first attempt to launch a Mercury capsule (that would carry future astronauts) on top of an
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Vladimir Tatlin's Unbuilt Tower
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the leader of the victorious Bolshevik Party, Vladimir Lenin, launched a massive monument-building program across the Russian Soviet Republic, the precursor to the Soviet Union, as means for propagating revolutionary and communist ideas. As part of this unabashedly-called "Monumental Propaganda", Lenin put a young Bolshevik architect named Vladimir Tatlin in charge of creating the headquarter for the Third International—an organization that Lenin found...
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Etienne Bottineau And The Lost Art of Nauscopie
Etienne Bottineau was a sailor and an employee of the French East India Company who possessed a remarkable skill. Bottineau could detect ships located beyond the horizon hundreds of miles from the coast and invisible to the eye. He would baffle anybody including his superiors by predicting the arrival of these yet-to-be-seen fleets up to four days in advance, and even correctly estimate the number of ships in the fleet. One particularly famous anecdote involving Bottineau's almost supernatura...
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Désert de Retz
François Racine de Monville had at his disposal a large estate on the edge of a 2,000-hectare-forest, in the commune of Chambourcy, about 15 km to the west of Paris. Being an 18th-century French aristocrat with a sizeable passive income generated from numerous land holdings in Normandy, Monville had little to worry about finances, so he spent most of his spare time learning new social skills and honing his many talents that made him very popular at parties. A handsome and charming man, Monville...
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The Audacity of Peter Tordenskjold: The Naval Captain Who Asked His Enemy For Ammo in The Middle of a Battle
On November 12, 1720 Peter Tordenskjold died in a sword duel. It will not sound familiar to most people, but he was one of the great national heroes of Denmark and Norway—countries that were once united, a daring sailor who would be the equivalent of what Nelson is to the British, Ruyter to the Dutch, Jones to the Americans or Bazan to the Spanish. Remembered in several popular songs and honored with several statues, streets, books, films and even a festival, a corvette of the Danish navy and...
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Chinese Magic Mirrors
For over a thousand years, a rare type of Chinese artifact has been baffling researchers. It's a polished bronze mirror with a pattern cast on its reverse side. The polished surface appears normal and can be used as a regular mirror. But when a bright light is shone on the mirror face and the reflected light is projected on to a surface, the pattern decorating the reverse face mysteriously appears in the projected reflection, as if the solid bronze mirror had become transparent. The Chinese na...
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Burnley Embankment
Regarded as one of the "Seven Wonders of British Waterways", the Burnley Embankment, locally known as "The Straight Mile", is an impressive earth embankment that carries The Leeds and Liverpool Canal some sixty feet above the town of Burnley. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal, that began construction in 1770, was originally designed to bypass Burnley in favor of the coal-and-lime-rich regions lying to the south. Burnley would have been connected to the canal by a branch heading up the valle...
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The Train of The End of The World
At the southernmost tip of South America, beyond the Andes, lies the beautiful and colorful city of Ushuaia, regarded by some as the southernmost city of the world. And just beyond the city's outskirts run a small steam railway originally built to serve the penal colony of Ushuaia. Today, the Southern Fuegian Railway takes tourists along the picturesque Pico Valley, through the thickly-forested Toro gorge and into the stunning national park. Photo: Deensel/Flickr
© Amusing Planet, 20...
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The Post Offices of Love and Romance
The town of Bridal Veil, located in Multnomah County, Oregon, the United States, a little distance from the Bridal Veil waterfalls, remains awfully quiet throughout the year, except during wedding season. Thanks to its unique name and a small one-room post office—the town's only functioning business—Bridal Veil sees an influx of would-be couples every spring and summer, who come to this forgotten outpost just to get their wedding invitation mails cancelled by a special postmark.
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Anthropology Days: The Racist Olympic Event of 1904
Starting from the late 19th century through the early 20th, human exhibitions were a routine part of circuses, traveling shows, and major expositions in the west, where indigenous people from around the world and their cultures were exhibited as one displayed animals in a zoo. Exhibits for these human zoos were sourced from the tribes of Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, the Americas, and elsewhere. These men, women and children were often displayed living in mock eth
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The Balmoral Pyramid
Hidden among the trees in the woods surrounding the Balmoral Castle in Royal Deeside, Scotland, are eleven stone cairns erected by Queen Victoria in honour of her family, the largest being an impressive pyramid built to commemorate the death of her beloved husband. The Balmoral Estate was bought by Prince Albert in 1852 as a gift for his wife, Queen Victoria. Because the residence that originally stood on the property was not befitting the Royal Family, Prince Albert built a bigger castle about
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Vinkensport: Belgium's Competitive Bird Calling
In the Flanders region of Belgium, a favorite pastime among the old Dutch-speaking folks is raising and training the common chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs)—a small passerine bird about an ounce in weight, with a bright blue-grey cap and rust-red underparts. The males of the species are the most sought after because of their brighter plumage and stronger voice, which makes them a popular caged songbird. The chaffinch breed between spring and early summer. During this period, the male chaffinch t...
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Gallaudet Eleven: The Deaf 'Astronauts'
In the late 1950s, when NASA was still a young organization, one of the biggest challenges for them was to determine whether human spaceflight was a realistic possibility. One thing that was poorly understood was the the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the human body, and whether motion sickness could hinder space missions and endanger crews. In order to test how the body might react to the stomach-churning rigors of spaceflight, NASA needed people who were immune to motion sickness. An
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Turlough: Ireland's Disappearing Lakes
Many lakes whose existence depends wholly on rainwater runoffs are seasonal. The phenomenon is not particularly mysterious—the lake forms when rainwater accumulates in a depression, and disappears when the water dries off. However, in Ireland, there is a type of disappearing lake that does not evaporate into the air; it drains underground. They are known as turloughs. Lough Bunny in The Burren, County Clare, Ireland, is a turlough. Every summer it drains into fissures around the lake's ...
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The Erfurt Latrine Disaster
Deaths are always unfortunate and even more so if they occur as a result of an accident. But sometimes there are incidents that have particularly humiliating characteristics and probably among the worst recorded in history is the incident that occurred in Erfurt in the middle of the Middle Ages, when dozens of members of the court of Henry VI perished when the floor of the building where they were standing collapsed. Many lost their lives from the fall but others drowned in excrement as they fel
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Medieval Rabbit Warrens
Back in medieval England rabbits were not bred in cages but in specially crafted earthen burrows called warrens, or pillow mounds. These were heaps of earth with multiple, well-ventilated inner chambers where rabbits mated, gave birth and raised their families. The pillow-like mounds were often built in oblong shape and sometimes were connected with each other with stone-lined tunnels. To prevent the rabbits from escaping, a field of pillow mounds was surrounded by a moat, or ditch filled with w
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The Uranium Cubes From a Nazi Nuclear Reactor
In the summer of 2013, Physicist Timothy Koeth of University of Maryland received an unexpected gift from one of his friends. It was a small metallic cube, 2 inches per side, wrapped in a piece of paper. Koeth recognized the cube immediately from old grainy photos he saw in books on nuclear history, and if there was any doubt, the accompanying note settled it. It read: "Taken from Germany, from the nuclear reactor Hitler tried to build. Gift of Ninninger." This cube was one of hundreds that...
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Bull Running in Britain
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 thirst for blood sport. The first documented bull running event in the British Isles took place in 1389 in the town of Stamford, in Lincolnshire. In a document recovered from the "Gild of St. Martin", the event was describes as thus: on the feast of St. Martin, this gild, by custom beyond reach of memory, has a bull; which bull is hunted [not baite...
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The Very First Image on The Internet
Back in the early nineties, when the World Wide Web was still young, a group of geeky girls hailing from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)—the birth place of the World Wide Web—used to perform at the organization and other HEP (High Energy Physic) events. They called themselves the "Les Horribles Cernettes" which translates to "The Horrible CERN Girls". They sang about colliders, antimatter, Higgs boson and cosmic rays.
© Amusing Planet, 2020.
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The Ruins of Gleno Dam
In a small valley, among the mountains of Lombardy, in northern Italy, stands a dam, or rather, half a dam. Built on the Gleno Creek, the Gleno Dam was supposed to provide hydroelectric power to the region, but because of shoddy construction, the middle section of the dam collapsed after the reservoir was filled, leading to huge destruction along the downstream valley and the death of over 350 people. The wide gash in the dam is still visible to this day. The Gleno Dam with its gaping hole in
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The B-17 That Flew With Its Tail Sliced Off
This famous photograph of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, with its tail section severed but still flying was taken during Word War 2, towards the end of the North African campaign. The story behind this photograph is an interesting one. The airplane shown in the photograph was named "All American" and belonged to the 97th Bomb Group, 414th Bombardment Squadron of the United States Air Force.
© Amusing Planet, 2020.
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Battle of Surfaces: The Epic Nadal Vs Federer Match
In the spring of 2007, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were two of the best tennis players in the world. But they excelled on different surfaces. Federer was the champion on grass, having won 48 consecutive encounters for 5 straight years, while Nadal was undefeated on clay for an astounding 72 consecutive matches played for 3 years. A question that invariably arose among tennis fans was: who would come out on top if Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer played on a court that is half clay and half gr
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Sway Tower, The 14-Story Folly And The World Tallest Unreinforced Concrete Structure
On the outskirts of Sway, a village near Lymington, on Britain's south coast, stands a peculiar Victorian tower. Visible for miles around, the narrow rectangular tower shoots straight up into the sky for more than two hundred feet, and is crowed by a cupola. A spiraling staircase housed within a separate but adjacent hexagonal tower allows visitors access to all the fourteen floors and the top. Sway Tower is a folly, a purposeless building, that housed nothing but pigeons for more than a hun...
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Arrhichion, The Olympic Champion Who Won After His Death
Pankration was a violet sport. Practiced in ancient Greece, this brutal combination of boxing and wrestling had virtually no rules. The object was to defeat the opponent by any means necessary, and this included hitting, kicking, twisting of limbs, and even strangling. The only thing competitors were not allowed to do was bite or gouge the eye. The contest ended when one of the fighters acknowledged defeat or was rendered unconscious. Many fighters lost their lives playing Pankration. Two me
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Slip Coach: Trains That Split
In the middle of the 19th century, British railway engineers realized that journey times could be appreciably shortened if trains didn't have to make intermediate stops to drop off passengers. This was an era when railway companies were highly competitive, and being efficient and on time were the qualities that set apart one from another. So instead of making a stop and unloading passengers, they decoupled entire passenger cars on the fly and let them roll into the station on their own device,...
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Michael Malloy: The Man Who Wouldn't Die
Killing someone takes a lot of wickedness backed by an equal amount of temerity, none of which was lacking in Tony Marino, Joseph "Red" Murphy, Francis Pasqua, Hershey Green, and Daniel Kriesberg, when they gathered at a shabby speakeasy in New York City on a cold winter night in 1933, and hatched a scheme. It was the height of the Depression, and these five lowly men were struggling to make their ends meet. Tony was the proprietor of the establishment—a derelict store wedged between...
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Middleton, The World's Oldest Operating Railway
The Middleton Railway in Leeds has been chugging along for the past 260 years, longer than any other railways in the world. It was established by an Act of Parliament in 1758 to transport coal from the collieries of Middleton to the factories of Leeds. At that time, rails were made of wood and although steam engines were being used in industries to drive blast furnaces and pump water from mines, nobody had incorporated one on wheels yet. The Brandlings, who operated the Middleton collieries, w
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Of Mice, Men And Moon: A Short History of Animals in Space
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 strapped onto rockets and blasted out of the earth's cocoon and into the uncharted waters of space. Once they came back, their psychological effects were observed and physiological changes studied to understand the impact of exposure to space on living tissues. Many of them never made back alive. Many of us have heard of Laika, the world's first spac...
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London Bridge's Nonsuch House
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. During medieval times, it was natural for bridges to have buildings built upon them. Usually, it was a couple of shops, the bridge keeper's house, and maybe a church. But London Bridge, being long and spacious, accommodated hundreds of buildings, some of which stood seven stories high and overhung the river precariously by several feet. The London Br...
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A Racing Horse Named Potoooooooo
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 defeating some of the best racehorses of the time, and many of his victories were at distances over four miles—more than twice the distance of a typical race. Potoooooooo also had significant influence on the thoroughbred breed, having been sired by a horse named Eclipse, who was a great racehorse himself. Standing 163 cm tall, the bright chestnut Eclipse ...
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Thames Tunnel: The World's First Tunnel Under a River
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 was long out of capacity. Like many medieval bridges, this too was crammed with buildings, some of which overhung the road creating a dark tunnel through traffic passed. Although the bridge was some 8 meters wide, only half of it was available for traffic. This roadway was shared by ox-carts, wagons, coaches and pedestrians coming from both directions. At pe
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Why Britain Lost 11 Days in September 1752
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, nobody died, and no marriages took place during that period. No wars were fought, no bets were made, no trade deals were signed. As a matter of fact, these eleven days didn't even exist in the British calendar. People went to bed on the night of September 2, 1752, and woke up on September 14. The loss of eleven days was the expected consequence of changing ca...
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Schuttberg: Germany's Rubble Mountains
Scores of hills dot the edges of many German cities, but these are not natural. They are known as Schuttberg, or "debris hill". Schuttbergs arose after the end of World War 2, and were created primarily from rubble generated by the destruction of German cities. Allied bombing during the six years of war laid to waste nearly every German city, town and village, destroying millions of homes, public buildings, schools, factories, as well as centuries-old cathedrals, mediaeval houses and other ...
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A Licence to Watch Television
In many countries, owing a television involves more than one type of cost. First the device itself, which may cost, depending on your taste, from several hundred to several thousand dollars. Then, there are subscription fees for television channels and online streaming, as well as electricity cost. And lastly, a tax for owning the television set, especially if you live in Europe. The purpose of television licence is to fund public broadcasting services. Many state-owned TV channels are largely
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Graft Chimera
On a small traffic island on Rodney Road, in Backwell, in the English county of North Somerset, stands a horticultural curiosity—a cherry tree producing two distinct colors of blossom: pink on one side and white on the other. The dual-color tree is thought to have been planted in the late 1950s. Its name, Strawberries and Cream Tree, was given by the town's children. The Strawberries and Cream Tree in Backwell, North Somerset, England. Photo: Mojo0306/Wikimedia Commons
© Amusing Pla...
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Nikola Tesla's Experimental Laboratory in Colorado Springs
One of Colorado Spring's most famous visitors was electrical engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla, who in the spring of 1899, set up a laboratory on a small grassy hill in what is now Knob Hill. Tesla was drawn to Colorado Springs by the same qualities that brought thousands of tuberculosis patients to the mountain city—the city's thin and dry air. But unlike the city's many residents, Tesla was not looking for a cure. Tesla believed that electricity could be transmitted across vast di...
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Kinzua Viaduct: The Fallen Bridge
On 21 July 2003, a fierce tornado struck northern Pennsylvania and destroyed a large section of the Kinzua Viaduct, a historic railroad trestle that was once billed as the "Eighth Wonder of the World". The Kinzua Viaduct was first constructed in 1882, and at that time it was the highest and longest viaduct in the world measuring 92 meters tall and 625 meters long. The viaduct was built by the Lake Erie and Western Railway as part of a line from Bradford south to the coal fields in Elk Count...
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Pelorus Jack: The Dolphin Who Piloted Ships
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 treacherous stretch of water called the French Pass. Ships avoid it because the currents here are so strong that it can easily drag a vessel and smash it against the rocks. The very first European attempt to navigate through these narrows was a near disaster. French Admiral Jules Dumont d'Urville was mapping the coast of the South Island in 1827 when he inst...
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Dementia Villages
At first glance, Hogewey, a small community situated about 20 km outside of Amsterdam looks like any other Dutch town. Residents go about their lives normally, picking up groceries, going to the movies and catching up with friends. But unknown to them, they are leading an orchestrated life, a false reality. There are surveillance cameras everywhere, and residents are watched every hour of the day. From the shopkeeper to the gardener, from the hair stylist to the dentist, every one is part of the
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The Relocation of Abu Simbel Temples
Hundreds of towns and villages have perished due to massive earth-moving projects such as the construction of dams. But the temples at Abu Simbel, in Egypt, were historically and culturally far too important to let that happen. So when the newly built Aswan High Dam and reservoir threatened to swallow the 3,300-year-old temples, the international community banded together for an extraordinary salvage operation. The Abu Simbel temples were originally located along the Nile river, carved out of t
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Christopher Columbus's House in Genoa
It would have been wonderful to see the actual house where Christopher Columbus grew up. Unfortunately, the one that stands in Genoa today is only a reconstruction. Nevertheless, it's an incredibly old structure and was reconstructed only a few decades after the original house was destroyed. Christopher Columbus, a figure of both pride and shame, was born in the city of Genoa, Italy, in 1451. His father was a wool weaver who also owned a tavern where young Christopher worked as a helper. Very...
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Astola Island: Pakistan's Hidden Gem
About 25 km off the coast of Balochistan, in the Arabian Sea, lies a large uninhabited island about 7 km long and 2.5 km wide, with sheer white cliffs surrounded by warm turquoise water. A narrow white beach runs around the periphery of the island. At places, the cliffs shrink inland to create secluded cloves. It's almost like in the Mediterranean. Astola Island, also known as Jezira Haft Talar (Island of the Seven Hills), has long been Pakistan's secret. This largely unspoiled island has ...
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Malbork Castle: The Brick Marvel
The Malbork Castle in northern Poland wears two feathers in its cap. Not only it is the largest castle in the world measured by land area, it is also the world's largest brick castle. The castle was originally constructed in the 13th century by the Teutonic Knights, a German Catholic religious order of crusaders, after the conquest of Old Prussia, in order to strengthen their own control of the area. Over the next hundred years, the castle was enlarged, embellished and fortified until it had ...
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Miss Subways: The Tube Beauty Contest
For thirty five years, between 1941 and 1976, a company called New York Subways Advertising ran a city-wide beauty contest. Any New Yorker and female, and between the ages of 14 to 30 could enter it, but to see the contestants and the winners, one had to go underground and ride the transit. The Miss Subways was not a typical pageant. Each month, women across New York City mailed in their photos and biographies to John Robert Powers' modeling agency, and the lucky winners had their photos pri...
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Colorado Springs: A City Built Upon Tuberculosis
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 humans since ancient times. Tuberculosis is caused by a bacterium that primarily attacks the lungs, causing chronic cough, high fever and significant weight loss. A person suffering from tuberculosis practically wastes away, earning the disease many names such as "consumption" and "white plague". Tuberculosis was an incurable disease, before antibiot...
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The Bad Beer Brawl: St. Scholastica Day Riot
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 the bloodiest pub brawls in history. Before this building was sold to the Abbey National Building Society, it was occupied by the Swindlestock Tavern, a popular watering hole among Oxford University's students and the townsfolk alike. On 10 February 1355, the entire town was celebrating the feast day of Saint Scholastica. Some students were drinking at Swin...
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The Great Colonnade at Apamea
One of the main characteristics of the most important cities of Antiquity in the Hellenistic kingdoms, first, and in the Roman territories of the East, later, are the great column avenues. They also existed in Rome itself and other European cities, but the eastern examples are usually larger and many of them are in better condition. The largest of all, and possibly also the first to be built, is the one flanking the thistle of Antioch, which is about 2,275 meters long, that is, just over 2 kilo
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Thagomizer: Why Stegosaurus' Spiky Tail Was Named After A Cartoon
Humans and stegosaurus missed each other by more than 150 million years, but people have always wondered how difficult or terrifying life would have been if dinosaurs and humans co-existed. This premise is often explored humorously in cartoons and in movies. Cavemen and dinosaurs frequently featured in cartoonist Gary Larson's The Far Side— a single-panel comic that ran for fifteen years during the 1980s and 90s. The Far Side was known for its surrealistic and dark humor based on uncomfortab...
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The Balloon Satellites of Project Echo
The world's first communication satellite was remarkably unsophisticated—a big silvery plastic balloon coated with aluminum, soaring roughly 1,000 miles above the earth. It carried no active communication components, no relays. Just two FM transmitters for telemetry purposes, powered by nickel-cadmium batteries charged by solar cells. The satellite achieved its purpose by passively reflecting any radio signal directed towards its large shiny surface. For eight years it relayed radio and tele...
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A Hidden Memorial to Lenin in a Forest
Vladimir Lenin was a controversial Russian revolutionary leader who has been idolized and demonized in equal proportions since his death in 1924. Even during his lifetime, Lenin had developed a cult of personality rivaled only by America's George Washington, according to historian Nina Tumarkin. Tens of thousands of Lenin statues were erected across the Soviet Union and in allied Communist countries. Almost every village had one. His face adorned postage stamps, crockery, posters, and the fron...
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The Soviet Bomber That Was Reverse Engineered From Stolen American B-29s
Ask anyone, what won the war against Japan during the Second World War, and the answer would invariably be the 'atomic bomb', but truth be told, it was the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that broke Japan's back. Months before Bockscar delivered the final payload of the war, hundreds of American B-29s had flown across the Pacific in thousands of sorties to destroy Japanese cities as well as their ability to fight. The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was every nation's envy. It was the most advanc...
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The Vajont Dam Disaster
In the valley of the Vajont River, about a hundred kilometers north of Venice, stands an old, disused dam. The vast wall of white, wedged high up in the rocks of the narrow gorge, was constructed to harness the waters of a small mountain river in order to create a lake from which hydroelectric power could be generated to feed northern Italy's postwar development and economic growth. But the engineers and geologists ignored the early warning signs, leading to a disaster of cataclysmic proport
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The Masked Women of Iran
Head covering, veils and burqas are common sight among many Muslim communities around the world. There are a lot of different styles and each have their own name, but none of these come even remotely close to the vibrancy of the boregheh mask. These colorful masks are donned by the women of the Hormozgan Province in southern Iran. They are available in a variety of shapes and styles, but the most common ones are rectangular, pinched between the eyebrows to create a sort of vertical wall running
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The Windmills of Paris
Windmills of Montmartre, Maurice Utrillo. Paris is not exactly hilly, but there are a couple of high points in the city where one can easily catch the breeze. Back when Paris had a flourishing grain milling industry, these hills were dotted with numerous wind mills—more than three hundred, some say. Enormous quantities of grain arrived from the Americas and mills in the area ground them up into fine flour for local consumption. Bread was the staple food for the poor French peasants. Durin...
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Büsingen am Hochrhein: The Town Torn Between Two Countries
Büsingen am Hochrhein is a German town with a lot of Swiss character. That's because this small town on the Rhine is entirely surrounded by Switzerland. That makes Büsingen an enclave, and like many territorial enclaves, Büsingen has absorbed the many forms and conventions of its host nation—perhaps a little more willingly. Residents of Büsingen speak Swiss and prefer to use Swiss francs instead of Euro. In fact, until the late 1980s, Büsingen didn't even accept the Deutsche Mark. E...
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Dürkheimer Riesenfass: The Giant Cask
The historic town of Bad Dürkheim lying on the edge of Palatinate Forest on Germany's oldest wine routes, is well known for its vineyards and mineral springs. Every year, on the second and third weekend of September, corresponding to Oktoberfest celebrations around the country, Bad Dürkheim holds the world's biggest wine festival called Wurstmarkt—which actually means "sausage market". The festival takes its name from the spacious sausage market area in the middle of the town whe...
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The Jailhouse That Got Accidentally Sold
It takes quite a stretch of imagination to call Harvard a city. With an area just over half a square mile and population of about one thousand, Harvard, in Clay County, Nebraska, is little more than a town. Nobody ever goes there unless they have family, friends, or business. But if you are passing through Clay County, take a detour and make a quick stop at Harvard in order to marvel at a nondescript two-room brick building and chuckle at the historic marker that describes how this small structu
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