King Penguin
King Penguin books was a series of pocket-sized monographs published between 1939 and 1959. The books were the first Penguins to feature hardback covers as well as color printing.
Observer’s Books
The Observer's Books are a series of small, pocket-sized books, published by Frederick Warne & Co in the United Kingdom from 1937 to 2003. They covered topics such as hobbies, art, history and wildlife. Intended for children, the aim of these books was to interest the observer.
Red tides
Red tide is a phenomenon caused by algal blooms during which algae become so numerous that they discolor coastal waters.
Titan arum
The titan arum, also called corpse flower, is known for its massive foul-smelling inflorescence (cluster of flowers). The plant is endemic to the steep hillsides of rainforests in western Sumatra but is cultivated in botanic gardens worldwide.
Halley’s Comet
Halley's Comet is the best-known of the short-period comets, and is visible from Earth every 75 to 76 years. Halley is the only short-period comet that is clearly visible to the naked eye, and thus, the only naked-eye comet that might appear twice in a human lifetime. Other naked-eye comets may be brighter and more spectacular, but will appear only once in thousands of years. Halley's returns to the inner solar system have been observed by astronomers since at least 240 BC, and recorded by Chinese, Babylonian, and mediaeval European chroniclers.
Daido Moriyama
Daido Moriyama is a Japanse photographer.
The Franklin Library Signed First Edition Collection
Published from 1983 to 2000, each volume is bound in beautiful plush full leather with elaborate decorative artwork, marbled endpapers, gold gilding and gilting, and a built in matching satin bookmark.
Daisy and Violet Hilton
Daisy Hilton and Violet Hilton were a pair of conjoined twins who toured in the U.S. sideshow and vaudeville circuit in the 1930s.
Al-Jazari
Al-Jazari was a prominent Arab polymath.
Al-Jazari created a programmable drum machine with pegs (cams) that bump into little levers that operated the percussion. The drummer could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns if the pegs were moved around. According to Charles B. Fowler, the automata were a “robot band” which performed “more than fifty facial and body actions during each musical selection.”
The elephant clock was described by Al-Jazari in 1206 is notable for several innovations. It was the first clock in which an automaton reacted after certain intervals of time (in this case, a humanoid robot striking the cymbal and a mechanical robotic bird chirping) and the first water clock to accurately record the passage of the temporal hours to match the uneven length of days throughout the year.
M.P. Shiel
Prince Zaleski, an exiled Russian nobleman, inhabits a half-ruined abbey in Wales, where he spends most of his time smoking cannabis and opium, reading from his library of medieval books, or admiring his collection of rare curios dating from ancient antiquity. His retirement from the world is occasionally interrupted by his friend Shiel, who comes to seek Zaleski's help in solving mysteries that have baffled the greatest minds in Britain.