From the international bestselling author of Red Herrings and White Elephants--a curious guide to the hidden histories of classic nursery rhymes.Who was Mary Quite Contrary, or Georgie Porgie? How could Hey Diddle Diddle offer an essential astronomy lesson?Do Jack and Jill actually represent the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette? And if Ring Around the Rosie isn't about the plague, then what is it really about?This book is a quirky, curiou...

From the best selling author of Red Herrings & White Elephants, Pop Goes the Weasel, Ten Minute Mysteries and many more...Who Really Makes Crop Circles?Strange formations in fields of wheat and other crops have been appearing since the 1970s. Are they made by aliens parking their spaceships, or is the explanation rather more down to earth?Of all the subjects I’ve explored for this series, the one I was most looking forward to findin...

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 ...

Great short stories for children (7-11 age group) Examples;All Year RoundWinter saw spring coming along he groaned and moaned. 'When you arrive,' he said, 'everybody becomes more cheerful and want to leave me and run to you. All the children jump on their bicycles and go out to play games.The flowers all start to appear and the trees grow big green leaves. Everybody smiles when they see you coming and I feel like they cannot wait to see the back of me. Nobody worrie...

Albert Jack's Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep is a compulsively readable, highly enlightening look at the phrases we use all the time but rarely consider.The English language is crammed with colourful phrases and sayings that we use without thinking every day.It's only when we're asked who smart Alec or Holy Moly were, where feeling 'in the pink' or 'once in a blue moon' come from, or even what letting the cat out of the bag really means that we realize that th...

Mr Jack has been nimble and he’s been quick, searching through the history of nursery rhymes and he’s found out all kind of plum tales, just like little Jack Horner. He's unearthed the answers to some very curious questions...Who were Mary Quite Contrary and Georgie Porgie? How could Hey Diddle Diddle offer an essential astronomy lesson? And if Ring a Ring a Roses isn’t about catching the plague, then, what is it r...

From the best selling author of Red Herrings & White Elephants, Pop Goes the Weasel, Ten Minute Mysteries and many more...Committing the Perfect Crime: The D. B. Cooper Hijacking.What happened to famous hijacker who jumped off a plane and into thin air carrying a fortune in banknotes?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 t...

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 ...

How To Speak English Like a NativeThe 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 ...

From the internationally best selling author of Red Herrings and White Elephants, Pop Goes the Weasel and What Caesar Did for my Salad.Why do people put their "skeletons in a closet," "have a hunch," "get the cold shoulder," "get dressed up to the nines," or "call a spade a spade?"These phrases are used every day, yet most people have little or no idea where most of them come from. In Blue Moons and Black Markets, Albert Jack takes readers on a journey thro...

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...

From the best selling author of Red Herrings & White Elephants, Pop Goes the Weasel, Ten Minute Mysteries and many more...The Mysterious Death of God’s Own Banker - Did Roberto Calvi, head of a bank with close connections to the Vatican, take his own life or was there a more sinister reason why he was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge?Early in the morning of 18 June 1982, in a scene redolent of a real-life Da Vinci Code, the body of Ro...