Who needs a precisely machined firearm? The ammunition is where all the magic happens anyways… “Improvised firearms (sometimes called zip guns, pipe guns, or slam guns) are firearms manufactured by an entity other than a registered firearms manufacturer or a gunsmith. Improvised firearms are typically constructed by adapting existing materials […]
Byzantine historian Procopius documented many details from the empire’s numerous wars, but he also mentions something that modern historians can’t quite figure out. “Porphyrios is mentioned in the writings of the 6th-century Byzantine historian Procopius, both in the History of the Wars (VII 29) and The Secret History. According to […]
The British are very serious about Paddington Bear – not even members of the armed forces are shown mercy when it comes to Paddington. “Paddington Bear is among the most popular characters in children’s literature. The actor Stephen Fry, who narrated Paddington audiobooks, stated “Michael Bond’s bear is a Great […]
Incredibly these trumpets survived over 3,000 years – more incredibly; some madmen decided to play them to hear what they sound like. “Tutankhamun’s trumpets are a pair of trumpets found in the burial chamber of the Eighteenth Dynasty Pharaoh Tutankhamun. The trumpets, one of sterling silver and one of bronze […]
This 1,600-year-old poem has never been replicated in English, because it would be virtually impossible. “The Star Gauge (Chinese: 璇璣圖; pinyin: xuán jī tú), or translated as “the armillary sphere chart”, is the posthumous title given to a 4th-century Chinese poem written by the Sixteen Kingdoms poet Su Hui for […]
This was not a job with a lot of scope for career progression – but overall it might not have been so bad, depending on your outlook… “Garden hermits or ornamental hermits were people encouraged to live alone in purpose-built hermitages, follies, grottoes, or rockeries on the estates of wealthy […]
Genius or deranged? This man made a living from a fountain for over four decades completely unauthorised. “The Trevi Fountain (Italian: Fontana di Trevi) is an 18th-century fountain in the Trevi district in Rome, Italy, designed by Italian architect Nicola Salvi and completed by Giuseppe Pannini in 1762 and several […]
In one of the most bizarre legal cases of the past 200 years, a man shot a ghost, and suffered the consequences. “The Hammersmith Ghost murder case of 1804 set a legal precedent in the UK regarding self-defence: that someone could be held liable for their actions even if they […]
You may have seen a photo of the goat tower before, but what really is it, how did it come to exist, and which came first; the goats or the tower? “The first goat tower was built in Portugal in the 19th century and modeled on a garden folly. Known […]
Ireland is covered in old, historic structures, but bizarrely, some of this architecture serves no purpose – so who built them and why? “In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but suggesting through its appearance some other purpose, or of such extravagant appearance that it transcends […]
