A Modern Tower of Babel (1903)

A contemporary account of one of the most bizarre buildings ever erected in England. The Tower of the Jezreelites is remembered today - when it is remembered at all - as the inspiration for a horror story called 'The Tower of Moab' by L.A. Lewis. The modern tourist will search for it in vain - the last remnants of it were demolished in 2008.

Mysterious Box Tricks (1900)

Ingenious contraptions from the golden age of stage illusions.

A Hole Through the Earth (1909)

Here is famed astronomer Camille Flammarion with the kind of Wellsian whimsy that seems to have vanished from modern science writing.