A Curious Man

Author: Neal Thompson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448184371
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 411

Book Description
One of the most successful entertainment figures of his time, Robert Ripley’s life is the stuff of a classic American fairy tale. Bucktoothed and hampered by shyness, Ripley turned his sense of being an outsider into an appreciation of the weird and wonderful. He sold his first cartoon to LIFE magazine at eighteen, but it was his wildly popular ‘Believe It or Not!’ radio shows that won him international fame, and spurred him on to search the globe’s farthest corners for bizarre facts, human curiosities and shocking phenomena. Ripley delighted in making preposterous declarations that somehow turned out to be true – such as that Charles Lindburgh was only the sixty-seventh man to fly across the Atlantic or that ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ was not the USA’s national anthem. And he demanded respect for those who were labelled ‘eccentrics’ or ‘freaks’ – whether it be E. L. Blystone, who wrote 2,871 alphabet letters on a grain of rice, or the man who could swallow his own nose. By the 1930s, Ripley possessed a wide fortune, a private yacht and a huge mansion stocked with such oddities as shrunken heads and medieval torture devices. His pioneering firsts in print, radio and television tapped into something deep in the American consciousness – a taste for the titillating and exotic, and a fascination with the fastest, biggest, wackiest and weirdest – and ensured a worldwide legacy that continues today. This compelling biography portrays a man who was dedicated to exalting the strange and unusual – but who may have been the most amazing oddity of all.

The Curious Man

Author: Nieper
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1449067557
Category : Cancer
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description

Birdseye

Author: Mark Kurlansky
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0767930304
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
While working as a fur trapper in Labrador, Canada, Clarence Birdseye encountered an age-old problem: bad food and an unappealing, unhealthy diet. However, he observed that fresh vegetables wetted and left outside in the Arctic winds froze in a way that maintained their integrity after thawing. As a result, he developed his patented Birdseye freezing process and started the company that still bears his name. Birdseye forever changed the way we preserve, store, and distribute food, and the way we eat. Mark Kurlansky’s vibrant and affectionate narrative reveals Clarence Birdseye as a quintessential “can-do” American inventor—his other patents include an electric sunlamp, a harpoon gun to tag finback whales, and an improved incandescent lightbulb—and shows how the greatest of changes can come from the simplest of ideas and the unlikeliest of places.

The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man

Author: Mark Hodder
Publisher: Pyr
ISBN: 1616143606
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 495

Book Description
Mark Hodder's second Burton & Swinburne steampunk adventure, following the acclaimed The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, is filled with eccentric steam-driven technology, grotesque characters, and a deepening mystery. When a clockwork-powered man of brass is found abandoned in Trafalgar Square, Burton and his assistant, the wayward poet Algernon Swinburne, find themselves on the trail of the stolen Garnier Collection--black diamonds rumored to be fragments of the Lemurian Eye of Naga, a meteorite that fell to Earth in prehistoric times. From a haunted mansion to the Bedlam madhouse, from South America to Australia, from séances to a secret labyrinth, Burton struggles with shadowy opponents and his own inner demons. Can the king's agent expose a plot that threatens to rip the British Empire apart, leading to an international conflict the like of which the world has never seen? And what part does the clockwork man have to play? From the Trade Paperback edition.

Man vs Maths

Author: Timothy Revell
Publisher: Aurum
ISBN: 178131621X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Could we solve queuing with an equation? How do algorithms control our news? What is the secret behind encryption codes? Mathematics is inescapable. Wherever you go, whatever you do, however you live your life, mathematics plays a role. From controlling a city’s traffic to finding love, spending money online to building a skyscraper, the mathematics at play in our world is fascinating. Yet despite its ubiquity, for many of us, how the maths of today really works remains complex. Timothy Revell distils these complexities in this essential guide to modern-day mathematics. Along the way we discover how social media trends work, why the universe has a favourite number and what this means for you. Man vs Maths shows you how understanding a little more mathematics can help improve your life.

A Curious Mind

Author: Brian Grazer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 147673075X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Brian Grazer knows the one thing that can instantly connect you with anyone: Curiosity. A Curious mind offers a brilliantly entertaining and inspiring account of how his courage and enthusiasm for talking with complete strangers have been the secret of his success as a leading Hollywood producer.

Curious Men

Author: Francis Trevelyan Buckland
Publisher: McSweeney's
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 124

Book Description
This collection brings back to life eighteen tales from one of the most curious men of all.

The Curious Man

Author: Hans A. Nieper
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1449067565
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description
The Curious Man documents Dr. Hans Niepers career and extensive experiences at the cutting edge of alternative, innovative, life-saving medicne and clinical research. This book details the evolution and rise of metabplic medicine as a successful non-toxic alternative to toxic chemotherapy in the treatment of cancer and other life-threatening chronic diseases. Among these are cancer gene-extinguishing and repairing substances: the iridodials; squalene (shark-liver oil); the carnivora plant; didrovaltrate, an herbal extract; acetaldehyde and benzaldehyde; DHEA; the oncostatins; and tumosterone. In addition, this book describes the highly successful immune-supportive substances developed by Dr. Nieper and now available for use in the United States. The Curious Man documents Dr. Niepers success in the treatment of over 3000 multiple scerosis patients from the United States, as well as his success in achieving cancer remissions in a number of cancer patients using non-toxic imuno-suportive drugs and supplements developed by him in Germany.

The Golden Ass (or the Curious Man)

Author: Peter Oswald
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1849438021
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 122

Book Description
A comedy written for the Shakespeare's Globe, telling the story of an insatiably curious young man who, wishing to turn himself into a wise owl, takes the wrong drug and finds himself transformed into an ass. His subsequent travels lead him to encounter the chaos of human desire from the perspective of a servile donkey. The most exquisite tale in this wonderful epic, as originally told by Lucius Apuleius, is the first known account of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, which is perhaps the archetypal myth behind modern psychology. Inspired by The Golden Ass, Peter Oswald has written a riotous erotic comedy of love and desire, which premiered at the Globe Theatre, London in August 2002. This version is true to the original: in the words of C S Lewis is 'a strange compound of picaresque novel, horror comic, mystagogue's tract, pornography and stylistic experiment.'

Never Suck a Dead Man's Hand

Author: Dana Kollmann
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0806541261
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Step past the flashing lights into the true scene of the crime with this frank, unflinching, and unforgettable account of life as a crime scene investigator. Whether explaining rigor mortis or the art of fingerprinting a stiff corpse on the side of the road, Dana Kollmann details her true, unvarnished experiences as a CSI for the Baltimore County Police Department. Unlike the popular crime dramas proliferating on today's television networks, these forensic tales forgo glitz for grit to show what really goes on. Kollmann recounts stories that the cops and the CSI's usually leave in the field, bringing the sights, smells and sounds of a crime scene alive as never before. Unveiling the process and science of crime scene investigation in all its can't-tear-your-eyes-away fascination, Never Suck a Dead Man's Hand takes you into the strange world behind the yellow tape, offering a truly eye-opening perspective on the day-to-day life of a CSI.