Grosse Île lies 50km east of Quebec City, one of 21 islands in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. Though its name means “Big Island” in French, Grosse Île is barely two kilometres square, home to a small collection of buildings from its days as a quarantine station for Irish immigrants arriving in Canada. Designated a National Historic […]

If you were to ask the average American “who invented the aeroplane?” the answer you would most likely get is the Wright Brothers. Indeed, the two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, are generally acknowledged to have carried out the first controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flight in history, piloting their aircraft the Flyer a distance of 36.5 metres at Kitty Hawk, North […]

In September of 1808 Covent Garden Theatre in London burned to the ground. The exact cause of the fire has never been established but due to the extensive amount of flammable items throughout combined with an amazing number of flaming light fixtures, fires of some sort at theaters were relatively common, even inspiring a London fire code requiring several wet […]

The Pyramids of Giza. The Pharos of Alexandria. The Colossus of Rhodes. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia. The Mausoleum at Halicanarnassus. These are the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, celebrated for millennia as the greatest architectural achievements of antiquity. Sadly, today only one of the original wonders […]

“An army marches on its stomach.” This adage, variously ascribed to Frederick the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte, captured one of the universal truths of warfare: that battles are won not by men and weapons, but by logistics – the ability to efficiently and reliably supply said men and guns with the ammunition, food, medicine, and any other resources required to […]

In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a massive armada of more than 5,000 ships and 1,200 aircraft appeared off the coast of Normandy in northern France. Moments later, some 160,000 American and British Commonwealth troops stormed onto the beaches or landed by parachute behind enemy lines. Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe, had begun. The […]

In the first two years of WWII, the German armed forces – or Wehrmacht- and especially the Army – or ‘Heer’- stunned the world with an unprecedented string of victories against several otherwise prominent nations that it boggles the mind one small nation could so easily conquer, let alone so rapidly. From September 1939 to December 1941, German troops occupied […]

“All the old paintings on the tombs They do the sand dance, don’t you know? If they walk too quick (oh way oh) They’re falling down like a domino Slide your feet up the street, bend your back Shift your arm then you pull it back Life is hard you know (oh way oh) So strike a pose on a […]

In the early morning hours of June 13, 1944, the residents of East London were awoken by an unusual sound: a loud, high-pitched chugging like a motorcycle with a broken muffler. Looking up, they saw a small aircraft skimming over the rooftops at tremendous speed, a tongue of flame trailing from its tail. Moments later, the aircraft plunged to the […]

Lasting from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War was among the most dangerous periods in all of human history. For over four and half decades, the communist east and the capitalist west eyed each other suspiciously across the Iron Curtain, locked in a deadly game […]

Selfie stick. Electrical banana. Pocket pleaser. Magic wand. Divorce maker. Buzz Nightgear. Battery Operated Boyfriend. These are but a few colourful euphemisms for womankind’s best friend, found in millions of nightstand drawers across the globe: the vibrator. If you are a connoisseur of strange product origins then you’ve likely heard the quirky and unlikely story of the vibrator’s creation, which […]