Discovery History

Volume 3 of History of the United States of America: From the Discovery of the Continent by George Bancroft. A major US History Series in six volumes. “Author’s Last Revision” 1883 by D. Appleton and Company. Bancroft as US Secretary of the Navy established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. He was a senior American diplomat in Europe, leading diplomatic missions to Britain and Germany. His comprehensive study of the origins and development of the United States caused him to be referred to as the “Father of American history.”

True Raiders tells the untold true story of Monty Parker, a British rogue nobleman who, after being dared to do so by Ava Astor, the so-called “most beautiful woman in the world,” headed a secret 1909 expedition to find the fabled Ark of the Covenant. Like a real-life version of Raiders of the Lost Ark, this incredible story of adventure and mystery has almost been completely forgotten today. Using recently uncovered records from the original expedition and several newly translated sources, True Raiders is the first retelling of this group’s adventures.

A journey through the minds of some of the most creative people on the planet reveals that creativity is rarely a “lightbulb moment” and instead arrives through a process of making and self-understanding.

Two years ago, Graham Robb moved to a lonely house on the very edge of England, near the banks of a river that once marked the southern boundary of the legendary Debatable Land. The oldest detectable territorial division in Great Britain, the Debatable Land served as a buffer between Scotland and England. It was once the bloodiest region in the country, fought over by Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James V. After most of its population was slaughtered or deported, it became the last part of Great Britain to be brought under the control of the state.

In 1826, when the story begins, the region was claimed by both Mexico and the United States. Neither country knew much about the lands crossed by such rivers as the Guadalupe, Brazos, Nueces, Trinity, and Rio Grande. Jean Louis Berlandier, a French naturalist, was part of a team sent out by the Mexican Boundary Commission to explore the area. His role was to collect specimens of flora and fauna and to record detailed observations of the landscapes and peoples through which the exploring party traveled.

In this book, Lee McIntyre argues that what distinguishes science from its rivals is what he calls "the scientific attitude" - caring about evidence and being willing to change theories on the basis of new evidence. The history of science is littered with theories that were scientific but turned out to be wrong; the scientific attitude reveals why even a failed theory can help us to understand what is special about science.

Many of us dream of finding instant wealth. Just imagine if you were able to go to a place where you could simply gather from the ground gold worth many thousands of dollars. Now imagine that at a time when the average wage for an unskilled worker was barely ten dollars per month.

The Klondike gold rush, which occurred between 1896 and 1899, was one of the strangest outbreaks of "gold fever" ever to take place. With news of California's rush still fresh in their minds, thousands of men with get-rich-quick dreams hurried to stake out claims in the Yukon. But they did not count on the murderous weather...or the severe mountain passes that protected the gold.

In the spring of 1848, rumors began to spread that gold had been discovered in a remote spot in the Sacramento Valley. A year later, newspaper headlines declared "Gold Fever!" as hundreds of thousands of men and women borrowed money, quit their jobs, and allowed themselves - for the first time ever - to imagine a future of ease and splendor.

At the conclusion of World War I, a once promised unified Arab state, which was to include the modern Hejaz, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine/Israel, Jordan and Iraq, did not materialize. Instead, the territories were divided between the French and British, but the British did reward the Hashemites by putting local leaders on the thrones of Iraq and Jordan....

The families behind America’s astronaut heroes are just like yours...sort of. This is the hilarious true story of one of those families. While many children grow up wanting to become an astronaut, Patrick Mullane grew up the child of one. In his memoir, The Father, Son, and Holy Shuttle: Growing Up an Astronaut’s Kid in the Glorious 80s, Mullane shares his hilarious coming-of-age story. It’s a story about his quirky and death-defying father, a mother with a secret, and a cast of characters from his extended family who showed their love for him in often bizarre ways.

In Polish: A stunning story of the trailblazing expedition into the heart of the most dangerous jungle in the world, full of venomous snakes, jaguars, and sandflies which spread infections. This is were the legendary, cursed City of the Monkey God was supposed to be. Many years of expeditions didn't show any results, until Steve Elkins, a documentalist, discoverer, and laureate of the Emmy Award, managed to find the position of the mistery Pre-Columbian city thanks to the use of modern laser technology.

Explore as décadas mais intrigantes e pouco documentadas da história do Brasil, de 1500 a 1531, com Náufragos, Traficantes e Degredados , o segundo volume da aclamada coleção Brasilis. Narrado pela voz marcante de Mauro Ramos, o livro transporta os ouvintes por um período repleto de drama, ação e aventura, onde os primeiros passos da colonização foram moldados por figuras à margem da lei: náufragos que sobreviveram a mares traiçoeiros, traficantes envolvidos em negócios escuros e degredados enviados para cumprir penas no Novo Mundo.

When twenty-two-year-old aspiring geologist Charles Darwin boarded HMS Beagle in 1831 with his microscopes and specimen bottles—invited by ship’s captain Robert FitzRoy who wanted a travel companion at least as much as a ship’s naturalist—he hardly thought he was embarking on what would become perhaps the most important and epoch-changing voyage in scientific history.

On November 11, 1943, the Nazis invaded Cansano, forcing its two thousand inhabitants to make a tough decision—fight and be killed or sent to a POW camp, stay behind as servants to the Nazis, or move into the unforgiving mountains of Abruzzo while the Nazis used their village as a home base. Giovanni Ruscitti's family chose the latter and spent the next few months living in horrendous winter conditions in the rugged mountains. When the war ended, they returned to a village so ravaged by the Nazis that, today, the town has less than 200 citizens and remains in a dilapidated state.

Se cumplen cinco siglos de la Conquista de México, y a lo largo de este tiempo Hernán Cortés ha desempeñado un claro papel en el imaginario colectivo de la nación: el de villano. Sin embargo, para Christian Duverger esta apreciación no podría ser más injusta.

Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vastly off the mark. And what we believed to be the history of our own species consisted of fantastic myths and fairy tales; fossils, known for millennia, were seen as the bones of dragons and other imagined creatures. How did we learn so much so quickly? Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fancies with the even more remarkable real story of how our world evolved.

When I set out to write this book, my goal was simple: I wanted to tickle brains. As the ninth volume in my explorative 50-book series spanning science, philosophy and adventure, I knew this collection needed to delight and intrigue. I embarked on a journey of discovery, relying on AI chatbots to rapidly search the internet and unearth fascinating facts for me to transform into succinct essays. Peppered with my own perspectives stemming from a lifelong curiosity about the world, together we explored the everyday and the cosmic. From the nuts and bolts of sleep cycles to the existential ...

AD878—Anglo-Saxon Britain is ravaged by the terror of the Vikings. An innocuous deer, Lars, is banished from a superstitious community. In his travels, he makes the acquaintance of an obtuse, crippled raven. Both are outcasts of an unyielding society and therefore, vulnerable in the savage wilderness. Together they trek aimlessly, living from day to day, unsure of their destiny. Their travels are packed with unexpected adventures and perils, but it is not only the warriors and the wild they have to fear, but also the avaricious gods who play fast and loose with them. The twilight of the ...

In the feverish, money-making age of railroad barons, political machines, and gold rushes, corruption was the rule, not the exception. Yet the Republican mogul "Big Alex" McKenzie defied even the era's standard for avarice. Charismatic and shameless, he arrived in the new Alaskan territory intent on controlling gold mines and draining them of their ore. Miners who had rushed to the frozen tundra to strike gold were appalled at his unabashed deviousness. A Most Wicked Conspiracy recounts McKenzie's plot to rob the gold fields.