A Dime Museum (1902)

Let us step aside from the swarming sidewalks of old New York, and visit a veritable Aladdin's cave of wonders. And if some of the wonders seem a little shop-soiled - well, you can hardly complain at the price!

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.

Dragons of the Alps (1906)

Which country do you associate with dragons? China, probably, or perhaps Wales. Certainly not Switzerland, land of towering peaks and Toblerone. Yet this article from the Strand leaves us in no doubt that these reptilian brutes are rarely more than a yodel away in the Alpine fastnesses.

Dynamite and Dynamiters (1894)

Between 1881 and 1885 Irish Republicans based in the U.S.A. launched a bombing campaign against the British mainland.  Their explosive of choice was the newly invented Dynamite.

This article, unsurprisingly, stays clear of the political issues, and describes the construction of the 'infernal devices' - to an extent which would probably be avoided in a modern publication.

Jules Verne at Home (1895)

Marie Adelaide Belloc was the elder sister of Hilaire Belloc.  A year after the publication of this article she married: she became known to the reading public as Mrs Belloc-Lowndes, the author of the much-filmed thriller 'The Lodger', which was based around the 'Jack the Ripper' murders.