The July 1843 edition of the now defunct ‘Calcutta Journal of Natural History’, edited by John Mclelland of the Bengal Medical Service and Asiatic Society, contained an interesting paper by a now unknown author, titled ‘Proposal to form a Zoological Garden in Calcutta’. Citing the example
Representative Image IGiven Calcutta’s status as the ‘second city of the British Empire’, it should come as no surprise that it became a target for Japan at the height of World War II (1939-45). A paranoid British-Indian government clearly believed very strongly in the possibility of
In the decade of 2000-2010s very few science students of Kolkata missed the experience of watching the towering statue of a T-Rex greeting them enroute to India’s largest science museum, the Science City. As Science City touches 25 years of a fascinating journey which started
“None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try.” – Mark Twain In this fast-paced world where everything is transient and innovations keep replacing older models, there are people who hate to sever their ties with
Some would say this was long overdue. On June 12, the Lalit Great Eastern Hotel received a Culinary Heritage Award from the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). These awards have been instituted to “create and enhance awareness of heritage in general,
To try, test and feel the courage of the Indian Army and the power of our defence systems, there is no better place to visit than the newly opened Aircraft Museum in Kolkata, the first-ever aircraft museum in West Bengal and second in India, the
You must have often stepped into the General Post Office of Kolkata, but have hardly ever realised this iconic building is not just a place where you get postal services, post cards, envelopes and stamps. There is also a world-renowned Postal Museum and Philatelic Library,
On April 1, 1868, a pretty young Anglo-Indian woman named Rose Brown was murdered in Calcutta, her throat slit almost ear to ear. Her body, discovered late at night by a beat constable on patrol duty, lay where she had died, mere minutes away from
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…” Poet Allen Ginsberg first read out these lines from his poem ‘Howl’ at a reading at the Six Gallery in December 1955. The reading was an immediate success and nearly 65 years on, the lines
Tauseef Rahman has set a new standard for love and humanity. This 29-year-old resident of Alimuddin Street, is often seen distributing sanitary pads, building toilets under canals, providing daily meals to those who cannot afford even the basic food. Or he is seen installing fridges