Thomas Stevens was the first person to circle the globe by bicycle, a large-wheeled Ordinary. His journey started in April 1884 in San Francisco from where he cycled to Boston to take a steamer to England. Crossing England, France, Central Europe and Asia Minor before he was turned back at the borders of Afghanistan. He returned part of the way to take a ship to Karachi, from where he crossed India. Another steam ship brought him from Calcutta to Hong Kong, and from Shanghai he set over to Japan, finally ending his journey after actually cycling 13...

"A book of this kind, though addressed to children, must necessarily reach them through an older person. The purpose is to suggest a few of the many aspects which music may have even to the mind of a child. If these chapters, or whatever may be logically suggested by them, be actually used as the basis of simple Talks with children, music may become to them more than drill and study. They should know it as an art, full of beauty and of dignity; full of pure thought and abounding in joy. Music with these characteristics is the true music of the heart...

Stories of King Arthur and His Knights. Retold from Malory’s “Morte dArthur”.

The original document is in Latin so this can only be a fairly rough approximation of the actual content. The text used is the first version in the Gutenberg collection. – Magna Carta is the most significant early influence on the long historical process that has led to the rule of constitutional law today. Magna Carta was originally created because of disagreements between the Pope, King John and his English barons over the rights of the King. Magna Carta required the king to renounce certain rights and respect certain legal procedures and to accept that the will of the king could be bound by law.

"This 1922 book by poet and sometime cultural critic Vachel Lindsay might have been the first to treat the then-new medium of moving pictures as an art form, one that was potentially as rich, complex, mysterious as far older ones, and whose physical and aesthetic properties were only starting to be understood. The highlight of the book might be “The Motion Picture of Fairy Splendor,” which examines the relationship between film storytelling, magic, myths, legends and bedtime stories. It’s discombobulating, in a good way, to read Lindsay’s attempts to grapple with what, precisely, cinema is...

This publication of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Society of the Black Hills presents the history and description of one of the most iconic colossal sculptures of the world. Originally conceived by Doane Robinson of South Dakota, the memorial was designed by renowned sculptor, Gutzon Borglum who also gave oversight of the construction along with his son Lincoln. It depicts four U.S. Presidents – Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt. - Summary by Larry Wilson

Published in 1911, Kandinsky's book compares the spiritual life of humanity to a pyramid -- the artist has a mission to lead others to the pinnacle with his work. The point of the pyramid is those few, great artists. It is a spiritual pyramid, advancing and ascending slowly even if it sometimes appears immobile. During decadent periods, the soul sinks to the bottom of the pyramid; humanity searches only for external success, ignoring spiritual forces.

Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White tells the story of two half-sisters, Laura Fairlie and Marian Halcombe who were embroiled in the sinister plot of Sir Percival Glyde and Count Fosco to take over their family’s wealth. It’s considered to be one of the first “sensation novels” to be published. Like most novels that fall into this category, the protagonists here are pushed to their limits by the villains before they finally got the justice they deserved. The story begins with Walter Hartright helping a woman dressed in white who turned out to have escaped from a mental asylum...

From the preface: "For thirty years I have devoted myself to the practical problems of the glove industry, and my connection with one of the substantial firms of master-merchant-glovers in the world has taught me how little gloves are known or appreciated by the millions of persons who buy them and wear them. The pursuit of glove lore--the historic romance of the glove--has long since been with me a selfish recreation. Now I desire to share it, as well as the practical knowledge, with all men and women who have missed seizing upon the real relation which gloves bear to life."

William Dean Howells is at his iconoclastic best in this exploration of bourgeois values, particularly in the clash between respectable society and the dubious bohemian world of Art and Poetry. Cornelia Saunders has everything going for her in her middle-class world: comfort, good looks, attentive young men. She seems willing to risk it all for the sake of what might be an artistic Gift, venturing with great trepidation to put her foot over the line into Bohemia to see if it might be the thing for her. Skewering the conventions of sentimental literature as usual, Howells keeps the reader guessing to the end as to the fate of Cornelia and her Gift.

A book reminiscent of the days when football was gaining popularity in America by MHAIJH85

In the 1880s William Morris, the artist and poet famously associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, left the Liberal Party and threw himself into the Socialist cause. He spoke all over the country, on street corners as well as in working men's clubs and lecture halls, and edited and wrote for the Socialist League's monthly newspaper. Signs of Change is a short collection of his talks and writings in this period, first published in 1888, covering such topics as what socialism and work should be, and how capitalism and waste developed.