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True Stories, Hidden Facts

4 books in this series

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  Each book in the series contains 10 exciting true stories that is based on factual events.
  

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  Turn the flap to reveal the end of the story and further 'hidden' information little known!
  

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  Beautiful artwork and photographs throughout encourage the most reluctant of readers to discover more!
  

Sample Spread From Series

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  Adventures in Space

  True Stories from out of the World!

  Contents:
  

  • Breaking the Sound Barrier with a broken rib - The story of Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier in the Bell X1. Further facts about the x-planes and the test pilots who flew them and who were to become the first astronauts.
  • Gagarin’s Spot of Trouble - The story of the first human in space and how it nearly ended in tragedy. Facts about the space race and the animals that were sent to space first. Plus the first woman in space.
  • Spam in a Can - The story of how Gordo Cooper handled a near disaster when the mercury capsule he was piloting lost all power. All Mercury capsules were designed for fully automatic control, a controversial engineering decision which in many ways reduced the role of an astronaut to that of a passenger and stirred Chuck Yeager to describe Mercury astronauts as spam in a can. Further facts on the first American astronauts.
  • The First Walk in Space - The story of Alexei Leonov who exited the airlock of the Voskhod 2 spacecraft to make the first space walk. However, getting back in again proved to be a big problem... Facts on other famous space walks including the first Chinese walk in Sept 2008.
  • Man on the Moon - The amazing story of how Neil Armstrong decided to manually land the Eagle after abort signals warned him of computer malfunctions. Facts contain other moon expeditions and lunar buggies.
  • “Houston We Have A Problem” - The heroic story of how Apollo 13 was crippled and brought back to Earth with limited supplies of oxygen. Facts on the details of what went wrong with diagrams and cutaways of the spaceship.
  • Fire in Space - The near fatal event that saw a blazing fire in the Mir space station through the eyes of the British astronaut on board. Facts about space stations and other close shaves.
  • Shuttle Disaster - The sad story of the first shuttle disaster. Facts on other launch disasters in USA and USSR and other shuttle disaster.
  • Spaceshipone - The story of the first private venture spacecraft to go into space. Problems during the flight almost made the pilot abort and bail out... Facts about the craft with photos and diagrams.
  • Space Tourist - A day in the life of Anousheh Ansari on board the ISS. Facts about the ISS.

  
  

  ISBN 978 0 7502 6072 5

  
  

  280x220mm - 24 pages

  
  

  £12.99 HB

  
  
   

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  Ancient Discoveries

  True Stories about the Ancient Past!

  Contents:
  

  • The Curse of Tutankhamen - The story of the discovery of the boy king’s tomb and the curse made up by the newspapers. The hidden facts reveal the treasures and the truth behind the legend.
  • Buried Alive, The Terracotta Army - The emperor Qin Shi Huangdi’s tomb was a massive construction that took hundreds of workers to construct. On his death in 210 BC they were all incarcerated in the tomb along with the emperor. When discovered in 1974, amongst the many artifacts revealed was a complete army of Terracotta soldiers.
  • Troy, fact or fiction? - Many stories have been written about the siage of Troy, the most famous being the epic poem The Illiad. The ancient Greeks believed it to be true but by the 19th century most scholars thought it was a myth. In 1873, Schliemann excavated a mound called Hissarlik and discovered several layers of ancient city along with some artifacts he called King Priam’s Treasure and declared it to be Troy. But was it?
  • An Copper-age Murder mystery - In 1991, two tourists found the dead body of a man in a glacier in the Alps. It was a mummified body of a man who had died in 3300BC. Extremely well preserved, Otzi the Icemann as he is called, supplied a great deal of information about copper-age Europeans. How he died was a mystery until someone discovered an arrow head embedded in his shoulder...
  • Pompeii, Death of a City - Along with Herculaneum, its sister city, Pompeii was destroyed, and completely buried, during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning two days in AD 79. It was lost for nearly 1700 years before its accidental discovery in 1748. Since then, its excavation has provided an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city at the height of the Roman Empire.
  • Swartkrans boy, a 2 million year old autopsy - In 1948, a limestone cave was excavated, throwing up finds of fossil bones of an early homonid. On a piece of skull there were two holes which puzzled anthropologists. How had the young apeboy died?
  • Lair of the Minotaur - The Greek myth of the minotaur is well known and the labyrinth in which he was kept was said to be at Knossos. Although no sign of it has been found, the excavation of the palace of Minos, with its labyrinth of rooms and water and sewer systems, has revealed a startling amount of information about the bull-jumping Minoan civilisation that built it.
  • The death of Pete Marsh - Lindow Man, also known as Lindow II and Pete Marsh, is the name given to the naturally-preserved bog body of an Iron Age man, discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss, Cheshire, on 1 August 1984 by commercial peat-cutters. Lindow Man was a healthy male in his mid-20s. He may have been someone of high status, such as a druid, as his body shows little evidence of heavy or rough work. The nature of his death was violent...
  • The Mystery of Sutton Hoo - An excavated ship grave reveals many artifacts that help us understand the Anglo-Saxons. But there was no body in the grave. What happened to it and who was it?
  • Lost city of the Jungle - The discovery of Copan and its treasures show the Mayan civilization at its height. But why was it deserted?

  
  

  ISBN 978 0 7502 6070 1

  
  

  280x220mm - 32 pages

  
  

  £12.99 HB

  
  
   

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  Famous Mysteries

  True Stories about the Unknown!

  Contents:
  

  • Bigfoot - The story of a sighting of the mysterious ape-like man. Facts relating to other sightings and other similar beasts such as the Yeti, Yerrin and Skunk ape. Hoaxes revealed.
  • El Dorado - The story of the search for the legendary city of gold. Facts suggest that it may not have been a city but a person. Other lost cities are mentioned such as Atlantis, Camelot, Xanadu, Technotitlan, Troy and others.
  • The Lochness Monster - The story of Lachlan Stuart who took a famous photo of “Nessie”. The facts behind the search for lake monsters around the world including Ogopogo, Lake Champlain Monster, South Bay Bessie and others. Hoaxes revealed.
  • Ball Lightning and other Strange Phenomena - The story of an eyewitnesses account of ball lightning. Facts suggest explanations for the phenomena along with other mysterious phenomena such as red sprites, blue jets, elves and sprite halos, as well as raining blood, toads, fish, and birds.
  • The Roswell UFO Incident - The true story of the supposed capture of an alien flying saucer and its extraterrestial crew. Facts behind the story reveal a military cover up. Other famous ufo and alien stories are mentioned.
  • Flight 19 and the Bermuda Triangle - The last flight of a training exercise ends in its disappearance in the area of the infamous Bermuda Triangle. The facts cannot explain the complete disappearance and other famous examples of the Bermuda Triangle are discussed.
  • The Mary Celeste - On Dec 5, 1872 the captain and mate of Dei Gratia clambered aboard the Mary Celeste and discovered a deserted ship. The details of the story reveal a mystery with several suggested reasons for the missing crew but nevertheless the answer remains a mystery to this day. Other factual events involving mysterious disappearances such as Emelia Earhardt, Flannan isles lighthouse keepers, Fossett and others.
  • The Tunguska Event - The Tunguska Event, or Tunguska explosion, was a powerful explosion that occurred near the Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia, at around 7:14 a.m. on June 30, 1908. The cause is still a mystery, but the explosion was most likely caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres above Earth's surface. Facts about other meteor impacts are discussed.
  • Spontaneous Human Combustion - A typical case story of SHC. Facts discuss the many theories and hypotheses how SHC might occur, but those which rely on current scientific understanding say that instances mistaken for spontaneous combustion actually required a source of ignition. It also appears in Dickens’ story Bleak House.
  • The Paranormal - The story of the man who foresaw the murder of a British Prime Minister. Facts discuss the Paranormal as an umbrella term used to describe unusual phenomena or experiences that lack an obvious scientific explanation such as telepathy, extra-sensory perception, psychokinesis, and precognition to name a few.

  
  

  ISBN 978 0 7502 6071 8

  
  

  280x220mm - 24 pages

  
  

  £12.99 HB

  
  
   

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  Shipwrecks

  True Stories from the High Seas!

  Contents:
  

  • Mary Rose - The pride of Henry VIII’s fleet that sunk on her maiden voyage. The reasons for the unexpected sinking were only revealed when the ship was raised from the sea bed.
  • Titanic - The famous of all shipwrecks. The ship that was meant to be unsinkable has since been visited by remote submersibles revealing a time capsule of Edwardian opulance.
  • Bismark - The pride of the German navy, this WW2 battleship was sunk after being crippled by a torpedo dropped by swordfish biplane. Was she sunk by the british fleet or scuttled by her captain?
  • Whydah galley - This was the flagship of the pirate “Black Sam” Bellamy that sank in a storm off Cape Cod 1717. Recent excavations have revealed the ship carried nearly four and a half tons of silver, gold, gold dust,and jewelry. Yaaargh!
  • Viking Longship - Ormen Lange (Long Serpent) was one of the most famous of the Viking longships. It was built for the Norwegian King Olav Tryggvason, and was one of the largest and most powerful longships of its day. The story of this ship is backed up by facts on longship wrecks discovered at burial sites and ancient viking settlements.
  • USS Monitor - The American Civil War “ironclad” warship famous for its battle against the Confederate “ironclad” CSS Virginia. It sank on December 31, 1862. In 1973, the wreck was located on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean about 16 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Much of the wreck has been raised and has been preserved and are on display at the Mariners' Museum of Newport News, Virginia.
  • Nanhai One - A huge Junk from the treasure fleet of the Song Dynasty sunk between 1127 and 1279 probably during a storm. In 2007, China began to raise the ship and its artifacts. It could prove the existance of the “Marine Silk Road”.
  • Our lady of Atocha - Spanish Treasure Galleon, she was the most famous of a fleet of Spanish ships that was driven by a severe hurricane onto a coral reef and sank in 1622 off the Florida Keys while carrying huge amounts of treasure. Lost beneath the sea for 363 years who would be the lucky one to find the treasure valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.
  • RMS Lusitania - The liner that met a disastrous end as a casualty of the First World War when she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-20 on 7 May 1915. The sinking of the Lusitania heightened tensions between the U.S. and Germany and helped sway American opinion in favour of joining the war. Exploration of the wreck has exposed hidden facts concerning controversies over the sinking.
  • U-110 - The WW2 German U-boat captured by British destroyers. On board were codes and an enigma machine which allowed the allies to listen in on all german communications. The submarine was sunk on purpose while being towed so that Germany would think the enigma machines and documents had gone down with the boat.

  
  

  ISBN 978 0 7502 6069 5

  
  

  280x220mm - 24 pages

  
  

  £12.99 HB