Does Bigfoot Exist?In 1924, a group of miners working in the Cascade Mountain Range in the state of Washington were startled to see a huge simian creature staring at them from behind a tree. Panic-stricken, one of the men fired at it and although the bullet appeared to hit the giant ape in the head, the beast ran off, apparently unharmed.Soon afterwards another of the miners, Fred Beck, spotted it again on the edge of a canyon and again fired, this time hitting the creature...

IntroductionCuriosity will eventually lead to innovation. Fortunately we are an imaginative species who does a lot of wondering. Way back to when man first learned to walk upright and began communicating with each other, by pointing and shouting, we can find the earliest examples. Somebody once thought, 'I know, we can move that heavy rock, or dead buffalo, by rolling it along on tree trunks because it is easier than dragging it over the ground.'This, of course, led to the ...

Try to See It from My Angle: The Bermuda TriangleWhat is it about this infamous stretch of ocean (and sky) that causes ships and planes to vanish without a trace?At ten past two in the afternoon of 5 December 1945, five US Navy Avenger torpedo bombers took off from the naval air station at Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The commander of Flight 19, Lieutenant Charles Taylor, had been assigned a routine two-hour training flight of fifteen men on a course that would take them out t...

FOREWORDPlenty has been written about The Jam over the years, some of it has been true, and some of it I didn't recognise at all when I read it. When Albert told me earlier in the summer he was going to write a biography of the band I was surprised as I didn't think there was much more to add to what has already been written. But in this case he seems to have found plenty more, some of it I had even forgotten myself.In the past when I have been interviewed I have always par...

IntroductionAmerican History is the second 'best of' collection of best-selling books that reveal the origins and history of just about everything we can think of. (Money for Old Rope is the first in the series) In fact, as one wise man suggested, it is the history of everything you didn't realise you wanted to know about, until you found out about it. A must have for dinner conversations and pub chat the world over, this book of history will help to make you feel clever.In...

Robert Kennedy, JFK and the Death of Marilyn Monroe.Who Didn't Kill Them?For five decades the world has been told that the killers of John F Kennedy and his brother Bobby were either already dead or languishing in prison.Lee Harvey Oswald was shot the day after the assassination but the Warren Commission, set up to investigate the brutal murder of the President, insists that he did. And that he acted alone. Details in this essay prove beyond doubt that the small pie...

The international bestseller. "Amusing and informative . . . [takes] you on a trip through the most fascinating and richest regions of the English language." —Knutsford Guardian (UK)Mad hatter . . . pie in the sky . . . egg on your face. We use these phrases every day, yet how many of us know what they really mean or where they came from?From bringing home the bacon to leaving no stone unturned, the English languag...

IntroductionThe subject of urban myths and legends is one I have been interested in for a couple of years now. It occurred to me, one day at lunch with friends on the Isle of Dogs, that many long rambling conversations (and ours are certainly long and always rambling) will include a tall tale or two.One person will then be reminded of a story he or she once heard which is then presented as near or actual fact. The story will be introduced like this: 'That reminds me of a st...

Extract;Humpty DumptyHumpty Dumpty sat on the wall,Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;All the king's horses and all the king's menCouldn't put Humpty together again.The real Humpty Dumpty was a powerful cannon used by the Royalist forces during the English Civil War of 1642 to 1651. Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle led the king's men and overpowered the Parliament stronghold of Colchester early in 1648.They grimly held on to it while th...

Food is just as entitled to a proper history as castles, wars, kings, queens, art, literature and the bubonic plague. But the book world is now so saturated by celebrity chefs trying to show the working man how to rub garlic on a ciabatta or break lime leaves over a piece of raw fish that we've lost sight of the really interesting stories behind the recipes we all know and love. And, whilst I don't ride around London on a scooter with my mates or swear at incompetent sous chefs for a livin...

The English language is perhaps the richest and most expressive in the world. One of the reasons for this is that we have so many weird and wonderful ways of describing exactly the same thing: we can be as colourful or as plain with our language as we choose. That is why it is so difficult to learn and how this book will help you so much.Living in a foreign country, as I do, it is obvious to me that even the most fluent of English speakers still have a lot to learn. As have the nat...

The offence on the face of it was a simple one, but the mystery surrounding its aftermath has passed into legend. On 24 November 1971, a man going by the name of D. ('Dan') B. Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 on a domestic flight and demanded $200,000 from its owners, Northwest Orient. Confident they would catch the hijacker, the company agreed to pay the cash in exchange for their passengers.But the hijacker had other plans. After the aircraft had taken off again, minus its passengers...