A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future is a science fiction novel by John Jacob Astor IV, published in 1894. The book offers a fictional account of life in the year 2000. It contains abundant speculation about technological invention, including descriptions of a world-wide telephone network, solar power, air travel, space travel to the planets Saturn and Jupiter, and terraforming engineering projects — damming the Arctic Ocean, and adjusting the Earth’s axial tilt (by the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company)...

John Kenlon became a New York City firefighter in 1887, and was appointed Fire Chief in 1911. In 1913, he wrote this authoritative book surveying the history of fire-fighting from ancient Rome to 20th-century New York. The first part of the book explores the evolution of fire-fighting techniques in various countries and the development of equipment and organization, and describes several famous historical fires and how they were fought. The remainder of the book discusses in greater detail some particular types of fires confronting an urban fire department in 1913, such as hotel, theater, factory, hospital, and school fires, sea port fires, and skyscraper fires...

This U.S. National Park Service historical handbook from 1962 introduces the reader to the history, geography, and archaeology of the Aztec Ruins and surrounding area. It explores what has been learned about the early people who settled there and discusses what the ruins were like at the time of publication. - Summary by Verla Viera

Pre-European arrival history of Wisconsin's Native American tribes, with discussions of their way of life, crafts, clothing, shelter, hunting, fishing and farming. Their activity and battles during French, British and U.S. rule of the territory. Extermination and forced removal of tribes to agencies and reservations. Numbers of survivors from original tribes and plight of those remaining in the 20th century. Popular Science Handbook No. 6, published by the Milwaukee Public Museum in 1954. Summary by Verla Viera

“The only fire for the whole house was the kitchen stove, with a fire box about eighteen inches long and eight inches wide and deep,- scant space for three or four small sticks, around which in hard zero weather all the family of ten shivered, and beneath which in the morning we found our socks and coarse, soggy boots frozen solid.” Thus, with perceptive eye for detail, the American naturalist, John Muir, describes life on a pioneer Wisconsin farm in the 1850’s. Muir was only eleven years old when his father uprooted the family from a relatively comfortable life in Dunbar, Scotland, to settle in the backwoods of North America...

In 1879 John Muir went to Alaska for the first time. Its stupendous living glaciers aroused his unbounded interest, for they enabled him to verify his theories of glacial action. Again and again he returned to this continental laboratory of landscapes. The greatest of the tide-water glaciers appropriately commemorates his name. Upon this book of Alaska travels, all but finished before his unforeseen departure, John Muir expended the last months of his life.

In the book's preface, the author writes: "Let anyone stop to consider how he individually would be affected if all electrical service were suddenly to cease, and he cannot fail to appreciate the claims of electricity to attentive study."In these days when we take for granted all kinds of technology - communications, entertainment, medical, military, industrial and domestic - it is interesting to learn what progress had been made in the fields of electricity and technology by the beginning of the 20th century...

Sir John Murray, considered to be the father of modern oceanography, discusses the variations in the depths of oceans, and the methods and instruments used to measure such depths. He discusses many properties of oceanic waters including salinity, compressibility, pressure, colour, viscosity, and the presence of dissolved gases. The author addresses changes in density of water and its impact on the motion of water while describing ocean currents. He gives details of a variety of marine organisms based on the ocean depths at which they are found...

The seven follies of science; a popular account of the most famous scientific impossibilities and the attempts which have been made to solve them to which is added a small budget of interesting paradoxes, illusions, and marvels.

The Subjection of Women is the title of an essay written by John Stuart Mill in 1869, possibly jointly with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, stating an argument in favor of equality between the sexes. It offers both detailed argumentation and passionate eloquence in opposition to the social and legal inequalities commonly imposed upon women by a patriarchal culture. Just as in “On Liberty,” Mill defends the emancipation of women on utilitarian grounds, convinced that the moral and intellectual advancement of women would result in greater happiness for everybody.

Part 1 lays out the framework for Positivism as originated in France by Auguste Comte in his Cours de Philosophie Positive. Mill examines the tenets of Comte's movement and alerts us to defects. Part 2 concerns all Comte's writings except the Cours de Philosophie Positive. During Comte's later years he gave up reading newspapers and periodicals to keep his mind pure for higher study. He also became enamored of a certain woman who changed his view of life. Comte turned his philosophy into a religion, with morality the supreme guide. Mill finds that Comte learned to despise science and the intellect, instead substituting his frantic need for the regulation of change.

This is the first of two related Faraday projects. It is about Faraday and deals more with biographical references to Faraday, outlining the important junctures in his life. The second, On the Various Forces of Nature, consists of lectures by Faraday covering a non-mathematical survey of the fundamental forces of nature and some relationships among them. Future projects will feature the 19th century scientists upon whose shoulders Einstein stood while developing his Theory of Relativity, including Humboldt, Lorentz, Michelson, Morley, Curie and Eddington. Summary by William A Jones

The star Mira was unpredictably variable. Sometimes it was blazing, brilliant and hot. Other times it was oddly dim, cool, shedding little warmth on its many planets. Gresth Gkae, leader of the Mirans, was seeking a better star, one to which his "people" could migrate. That star had to be steady, reliable, with a good planetary system. And in his astronomical searching, he found Sol.With hundreds of ships, each larger than whole Terrestrial spaceports, and traveling faster than the speed of light, the Mirans set out to move in to Solar regions and take over...

John Wesley Powell was a pioneer American explorer, ethnologist, and geologist in the 19th Century. In 1869 he set out to explore the Colorado and the Grand Canyon. He gathered nine men, four boats and food for ten months and set out from Green River, Wyoming, on May 24. Passing through dangerous rapids, the group passed down the Green River to its confluence with the Colorado River (then also known as the Grand River upriver from the junction), near present-day Moab, Utah. The expedition’s route...

A sky pirate armed with superior weapons of his own invention... First contact with an alien race dangerous enough to threaten the safety of two planets... The arrival of an unseen dark sun whose attendant marauders aimed at the very end of civilization in this Solar System. These were the three challenges that tested the skill and minds of the brilliant team of scientist-astronauts Arcot, Wade, and Morey. Their initial adventures are a classic of science-fiction which first brought the name of their author, John W. Campbell, into prominence as a master of the inventive imagination.

As Earth's faster-than-light spaceship hung in the void between galaxies, Arcot, Wade, Morey and Fuller could see below them, like a vast shining horizon, the mass of stars that formed their own island universe. Morey worked a moment with his slide rule, then said, "We made good time! Twenty-nine light years in ten seconds! Yet you had it on at only half power...." Arcot pushed the control lever all the way to full power. The ship filled with the strain of flowing energy, and sparks snapped in the air of the control room as they raced at an inconceivable speed through the darkness of intergalactic space...

The famous scientific trio of Arcot, Wade and Morey, challenged by the most ruthless aliens in all the universes, blasted off on an intergalactic search for defenses against the invaders of Earth and all her allies. World after world was visited, secret after secret unleashed, and turned to mighty weapons of intense force--and still the Thessian enemy seemed to grow in power and ferocity. Mighty battles between huge space armadas were but skirmishes in the galactic war, as the invincible aliens savagely advanced and the Earth team hurled bolt after bolt of pure ravening energy--until it appeared that the universe itself might end in one final flare of furious torrential power....

John Woodhouse Audubon , son of the famous painter John James Audubon and an artist in his own right, joined Col. Henry Webb's California Company expedition in 1849. From New Orleans the expedition sailed to the Rio Grande; it headed west overland through northern Mexico and through Arizona to San Diego, California. Cholera and outlaws decimated the group. Many of them turned back, including the leader. Audubon assumed command of those remaining and they pushed on to California, although he was forced to abandon his paints and canvases in the desert…...

Puerto Rico was acquired by the United States in 1898 following the Spanish-American War. This volume was written in 1903 as Book XII in the series “The World and Its Peoples.” The series was intended for young people, but this work would be fun listening for those of any age interested in what Puerto Rico was like in the early 20th century. Intended to familiarize people in the U.S. with their new territory, topics include the island’s people, geography, climate, flora, fauna, and schools. There is also some coverage of Puerto Rican history and the new government established under U.S. rule.

In this Journal, Joseph Banks records almost daily observations of the journey of the ship the Endeavour on the first of James Cook’s voyages to the Pacific during the years 1768-1771. There are also more detailed accounts of the events, people, flora, fauna and geology of the places where they landed. They landed at Brazil, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Batavia, Cape Town and St. Helena. Joseph Banks was one of the naturalists on the Endeavour, appointed by the Royal Society. The joint Royal Society, Royal Navy journey of the Endeavour was overtly a scientific expedition with the stated purpose of observing the transit of Venus from Tahiti...

Originally published in the May, 1960 issue of Amazing Science Fiction Stories. Jack Odin has returned to the world of Opal, the world inside our own world, only to find it in ruins. Many of his friends are gone, the world is flooded, and the woman he swore to protect has been taken by Grim Hagen to the stars. Jack must save her, but the difficulties are great and his allies are few.

Joseph Lister was born near London in 1827. He studied medicine at the University of London and pursued a career as a surgeon in Scotland. He became professor of Surgery in Glasgow and later (1877) at Kings College Hospital, in London. Lister’s contribution to the advancement of surgery cannot be overestimated. Before his work on antisepsis, wounds were often left open to heal, leading to long recoveries, unsightly scarring, and not infrequently amputation or death due to infection. Lister’s work enabled more wounds to be closed primarily with sutures, drastically reducing healing time, scarring, amputations, and deaths due to infection...