An account by John Knox, the English sea captain in the service of the British East India Company. Knox and his father were driven ashore on Ceylon, now Sri Lanka in a storm in 1659 while on their way home from Fort St. George (now Madras). They were captured in the name of the King of Kandy near Mooduthora (Mutur), Trincomalee. Knox eventually escaped with one companion after nineteen years of captivity. This book is one of the earliest and most detailed European accounts of life on Ceylon.

Robert Knox was travelling with his father in 1659 on the latter's journey homeward from his post with the British East India Company at Fort St. George when a storm obliged their ship to put into Cottier Bay, Ceylon. The two were detained as prisoners along with 14 others, and carried into the interior of the island. Knox's father died in 1661, but Knox himself remained a prisoner at large for over 19 years, supporting himself by knitting caps, lending out corn and rice, and hawking goods about the country. Though the rajah pressed him to enter his service, Knox resisted, and finally escaped to the Dutch settlement at Arippu on the north-west of the island. Reaching England in 1680, he entrusted the manuscript of this account to Robert Hooke, and enlisted in the East India Company, for further adventures in an already adventuresome life. These engravings include depictions of agricultural techniques, two native primates, customs and costumes and an execution being carried out by an elephant.

Written in a detailed and fascinating manner, this book is ideal for general readers interested in the English language.

It was a battle that would change the course of World War II... New York Times bestselling author Lauren Tarshis commemorates the Normandy landings in this pulse-pounding story of the largest seaborne invasion in history. Eleven-year-old Paul’s French village has been under Nazi control for years. His Jewish best friend has disappeared. Food is scarce. And there doesn’t seem to be anything Paul can do to make things better. Then Paul finds an American paratrooper in a tree near his home. The soldier says the Allies have a plan to crush the Nazis once and for all. But the soldier needs Paul’s help. This is Paul’s chance to make a difference. Soon he finds himself in the midst of the largest invasion in history. Can he do his part to turn horror into hope? New York Times bestselling author Lauren Tarshis tells the story of the battle that became the foundation for the Allied victory in World War II. Includes a section of nonfiction backmatter with more facts about the real-life event.

"Time travel, UFOs, mysterious planets, stigmata, rock-throwing poltergeists, huge footprints, bizarre rains of fish and frogs-nearly a century after Charles Fort's Book of the Damned was originally published, the strange phenomenon presented in this book remains largely unexplained by modern science. Through painstaking research and a witty, sarcastic style, Fort captures the imagination while exposing the flaws of popular scientific explanations. Virtually all of his material was compiled and documented from reports published in reputable journals, newspapers and periodicals because he was an avid collector. Charles Fort was somewhat of a recluse who spent most of his spare time researching these strange events and collected these reports from publications sent to him from around the globe. This was the first of a series of books he created on unusual and unexplained events and to this day it remains the most popular. If you agree that truth is often stranger than fiction, then this book is for you"--Taken from Good Reads website.

The island of Mauritius lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean, about 550 miles east of Madagascar. Uninhabited until the arrival of colonists in the late sixteenth century, Mauritius was subsequently populated by many different peoples as successive waves of colonizers and slaves arrived at its shores. The French ruled the island from the early eighteenth century until the early nineteenth. Throughout the 1700s, ships brought men and women from France to build the colonial population and from Africa and India as slaves. In Creating the Creole Island, the distinguished historian Megan Vaughan traces the complex and contradictory social relations that developed on Mauritius under French colonial rule, paying particular attention to questions of subjectivity and agency. Combining archival research with an engaging literary style, Vaughan juxtaposes extensive analysis of court records with examinations of the logs of slave ships and of colonial correspondence and travel accounts. The result is a close reading of life on the island, power relations, colonialism, and the process of cultural creolization. Vaughan brings to light complexities of language, sexuality, and reproduction as well as the impact of the French Revolution. Illuminating a crucial period in the history of Mauritius, Creating the Creole Island is a major contribution to the historiography of slavery, colonialism, and creolization across the Indian Ocean.

The most comprehensive book to date about these two famously extinct birds.