Futility Closet 2

Author : Greg Ross
Publisher : Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN 13 : 9780989887106
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Futility Closet written by Greg Ross and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nine years the popular website Futility Closet has collected arresting curiosities in history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and mathematics. This book presents the best of them: pipe-smoking robots, clairvoyant pennies, zoo jailbreaks, literary cannibals, corned beef in space, revolving squirrels, disappearing Scottish lighthouse keepers, reincarnated pussycats, dueling Churchills, horse spectacles, onrushing molasses, and hundreds more. Plus the obscure words, odd inventions, puzzles and paradoxes that have made the website a quirky favorite with millions of readers -- hundreds of examples of the marvelous, the diverting, and the strange, now in a portable format to occupy your idle hours.

Author : E. H. Jones
Publisher : Hesperus Press
ISBN 13 : 1780941587
Total Pages : 410 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Road to En-dor written by E. H. Jones and published by Hesperus Press. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The incredible true story of two WWI POWs who used amateur magic to convince their captors that they were in touch with the spirit world Captured during World War I, Lieutenant E. H. Jones, a Welsh officer in the Indian Army, and Lieutenant C. W. Hill, an Australian serving in the R.A.F., were prisoners of war at the Yozgad prison camp in Turkey. Duty-bound as officers to attempt to escape, Jones sensed that what had previously been the harmless fun of fooling around with a homemade Ouija board could be turned into something much more productive. Playing on the credulous nature of their captors, Hill and Jones weaved an incredibly elaborate plot, hatched to plan their escape. Acting as mediums for the Ouija board, they attempted to convince their captors that they were gradually descending into insanity—which, had it been true, would have seen them repatriated. A true story of bravery, dedication, and extreme hardship, this book is a fascinating insight account of a daring escapade. As well as containing astonishing original materials including photographs, letters, and postcards, the book contains a preface by the author's grandson, as well as a foreword by Neil Gaiman who is linked to a film which is currently in pre-production. A free companion ebook is available to download from the Hesperus website (www.hesperuspress.com/the-road-to-en-dor) which includes back stories on the characters, maps, letters,and coded messages; and an exclusive short story written by Jones.

Author : Greg Ross
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780989887120
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.2X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Futility Closet 2 written by Greg Ross and published by . This book was released on 2014-10-27 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here's a second helping of entertaining oddities in history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and mathematics from Futility Closet, the online catalog of beguiling curiosities: joyous dogs, soul-stirring Frenchmen, runaway balloons, U-turning communists, manful hummingbirds, recalcitrant Ws, intractable biplanes, vengeful whales, hairless trombonists, abusive New Zealanders, unreconstituted cannibals, mysterious blimps, thrice-conscripted Koreans, imaginary golf courses, irate Thackerays, and hundreds more. Plus the amusing inventions, curious words, puzzles and oddities that regularly entertain millions of website visitors and podcast listeners. Editorial Reviews "A wild, wonderful, and educational romp through history, science, zany patents, math puzzles, wonderful words (like boanthropy, hallelujatic, and andabatarian), the Devil's Game, self-contradicting words, and so much more. Buy this book and feed your mind " -- Clifford A. Pickover, author of The Mathematics Devotional "Futility Closet delivers concentrated doses of weird, wonderful, brain-stimulating ideas and anecdotes, curated mainly from forgotten old books. I'm hooked -- there's nothing quite like it " -- Mark Frauenfelder, founder, Boing Boing

Author : Edmund Lester Pearson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 50 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Old Librarian's Almanack written by Edmund Lester Pearson and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Jason Roberts
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0061979945
Total Pages : 526 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Sense of the World written by Jason Roberts and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2008-12-20 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He was known simply as the Blind Traveler -- a solitary, sightless adventurer who, astonishingly, fought the slave trade in Af-rica, survived a frozen captivity in Siberia, hunted rogue elephants in Ceylon, and helped chart the Australian outback. James Holman (1786-1857) became "one of the greatest wonders of the world he so sagaciously explored," triumphing not only over blindness but crippling pain, poverty, and the interference of well-meaning authorities (his greatest feat, a circumnavigation of the globe, had to be launched in secret). Once a celebrity, a bestselling author, and an inspiration to Charles Darwin and Sir Richard Francis Burton, the charismatic, witty Holman outlived his fame, dying in an obscurity that has endured -- until now. A Sense of the World is a spellbinding and moving rediscovery of one of history's most epic lives. Drawing on meticulous research, Jason Roberts ushers us into the Blind Traveler's uniquely vivid sensory realm, then sweeps us away on an extraordinary journey across the known world during the Age of Exploration. Rich with suspense, humor, international intrigue, and unforgettable characters, this is a story to awaken our own senses of awe and wonder.

Author : Jennifer Weiner
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1847395821
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Good In Bed written by Jennifer Weiner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of In Her Shoes, All Fall Down and the forthcoming novel Who Do You Love, Good in Bedis a funny and tender story full of heart. Cannie Shapiro never wanted to be famous. The smart, sharp, plus-sized reporter was perfectly happy writing about other people's lives for her local newspaper. And for the past twenty-eight years, things have been tripping along nicely for Cannie. Sure, her mother has come charging out of the closet, and her father has long since dropped out of her world. But she loves her job, her friends, her dog and her life. She loves her apartment and her commodious, quilt-lined bed. She has made a tenuous peace with her body and she even felt okay about ending her relationship with her boyfriend Bruce. But now this... 'Loving a larger woman is an act of courage in our world,' Bruce has written in a national woman's magazine. And Cannie - who never knew that Bruce saw her as a larger woman, or thought that loving her was an act of courage - is plunged into misery, and the most amazing year of her life.

Author : Nigel Randell
Publisher : Constable
ISBN 13 : 1472113322
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The White Headhunter written by Nigel Randell and published by Constable. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shanghaied in San Francisco in 1868, teenage Scots sailor Jack Renton then found himself on a voyage into the heart of darkness. Escaping from his floating prison in an open whaleboat, Renton drifted for 2000 miles, only to be washed up on the shores of a Pacific island shunned by 19th-century mariners, Malaita in the Solomon Islands. There he was stripped of his clothes by headhunters and forced to 'go native' to survive. Initially a slave to their chief, Kabou, he eventually became the man's most trusted warrior and adviser. Renton's own account of his eight-year exile, published after he was rescued, remains the only authenticated account of a mental and physical ordeal that still haunts the imagination to this day. It caused a sensation at the time, though it is now clear that it airbrushed out most of the key events. Researching the Renton legend, Nigel Randell spent several years talking to the Malaitans and piecing together a very different account from Renton's sanitised version. The ultimate irony is that a man so keen to conceal his 'crimes' should have bequeathed their evidence - a necklace of 60 human teeth - to a collector who donated it to a national museum.

Author : Stephen Puleo
Publisher : Beacon Press
ISBN 13 : 0807078018
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dark Tide written by Stephen Puleo and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new 100th anniversary edition of the only adult book on one of the odder disasters in US history—and the greed, disregard for poor immigrants, and lack of safety standards that led to it. Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters were playing cards in Boston’s North End when they heard a tremendous crash. It was like roaring surf, one of them said later. Like a runaway two-horse team smashing through a fence, said another. A third firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window—“Oh my God!” he shouted to the other men, “Run!” A 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses had just collapsed on Boston’s waterfront, disgorging its contents as a 15-foot-high wave of molasses that at its outset traveled at 35 miles an hour. It demolished wooden homes, even the brick fire station. The number of dead wasn’t known for days. It would be years before a landmark court battle determined who was responsible for the disaster.

Author : Richard Proenneke
Publisher : Alaska Northwest Books
ISBN 13 : 9780882409429
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book One Man's Wilderness written by Richard Proenneke and published by Alaska Northwest Books. This book was released on 2013-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "To live in a pristine land, unchanged by man; to roam a wilderness through which few other humans pass; to choose an idyllic site, cut trees and build a log cabin; to be a self-sufficient craftsman, making what is needed from materials available; to be not at odds with thye world, but content with one's own thougts and company. Thousands have had such dreams but Richard Proenneke lived them. He found a place, built a cabin and stayed to become part of the country. [This] is a simple account of the day-to-day explorations and activities he carried out alone and the constant chain of nature's events that kept him company"--Publisher's description.

Author : Wacław Sierpiński
Publisher : Elsevier Publishing Company
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 142 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book 250 Problems in Elementary Number Theory written by Wacław Sierpiński and published by Elsevier Publishing Company. This book was released on 1970 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: