The Wonders of New York: a Midcentury Map packed with weird local stories
There is an old board game, in which someone throws a die at a map, and then dreams traveling wherever it lands. However, If you happened to find yourself in […]
The true story of Trim, the adventurous cat belonging to navigator Matthew Flinders
Outside Sydney’s Mitchell Library stands a statue of Matthew Flinders, the celebrated English navigator and cartographer who helped map Australia, declared it a continent, and was influential in giving it […]
Vyborg: Once Finland’s 2nd most influential city, now only a small provincial town somewhere in Russia
In Vyborg, Russia, time seems to have stopped. The city has a long history behind it that the ruins of its past never cease to pass down. Once Finland’s second […]
The sunken city of Pavlopetri: the oldest submerged city in the Mediterranean
Pavlopetri, in Greek: Παυλοπέτρι, is an anonymous village opposite the island of Elafonisos, on whose beach, in 1967, an exceptionally important discovery was made for world archeology: an ancient submerged […]
536 AD: the never-ending winter of the worst year in history
If you ask medieval historian Michael McCormick of the University of Harvard what year was the worst to be alive, and he’s got an answer. Not 1349, when the Black […]
12 rare Color Photographs show the First Nazi Concentration Camps in 1933
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled before and during the Second World War. Killed in gas chambers, starved to death, killed during experiments or shot by […]
The Snow Child: a black humor medieval folktale
In medieval France a few different type of story was told as an alternative to the fairy tales or the popular fables, know as “Fabliaux”, in French, with a simple […]
Joan of Leeds: the nun who faked her own death to escape convent
Being a nun and living in a convent is one that requires extreme commitment, particularly in the 14th century. For Joan of Leeds, a rather rebellious English nun at St. […]
Nellie Bly: the Journalist who let herself be interned in Asylum to save the patients
Elisabeth Cochran Seaman (1864-1922) is probably not a well-known name, although perhaps the pseudonym with which she signed her articles, Nellie Bly, is better known. She became popular all over […]
The massacre of Gorla and the sad story of its little martyrs
Not many know that today is a sad day for the metropolis of Milan, Italy: October 20, 1944 is sadly remembered as the day of the Gorla massacre, an event […]
Prague: the magnificent European capital cobbled with Jewish gravestones
Prague is one of the most touristic cities in Europe. It is a large UNESCO World Heritage site, full of fairytale towers, ornate statues and art nouveau façades. The beauties […]
1950s Berlin: Photographs of a destroyed city
Berlin, 1956. About ten years have passed since the end of the Second World War, and Germany was at the beginning of a reconstruction, first architectural and then political, which […]
Kola Superdeep Borehole: 12 Km towards the Earth’s core
Someone said that the human beings knows more about certain distant galaxies than it does about the ground that lies beneath its very feet. In fact, while it took the […]
Malinta tunnel: war and ghosts in the Philippines
We are off the coast of the Philippines. Corregidor Island was a strategic place to hold during WWII, in fact the island was seen as the key to Manila, sitting […]
The macabre egyptian “Voodoo” Doll, dated back about 3rd-4th Century AD
A binding spell is a magical formula intended to “bind” or restrain a person’s will or behavior. Examples of binding spells include love spells, attempts to silence enemies, or any […]
The bizarre medieval trials against animals
Even if it might seem bizarre to modern observers, animal trials were commonplace public events in medieval and early modern Europe. Pigs, cows, goats, horses, and dogs that allegedly broke […]
