Giovanni della Porta, the Renaissance scholar who encrypted messages inside eggs to fool the Inquisition

Giovanni Battista della Porta was born in November 1535 in Vico Equense, a municipality of the Kingdom of Naples that…

How two Byzantine princesses scandalized Europe by using a fork

A few years ago I was invited to dinner by some Bengali friends and when we sat down what was…

Thurn und Taxis, the family that controlled Europe’s postal mail until the 18th century

When we call a taxi we are not only asking for a transport service; implicitly, we evoke the surname of…