Characters Stories 1.The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown 2.The Painful Fall of a Great Reputation 3.The Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit 4.The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent 5.The Noticeable Conduct of Professor Chadd 6.The Eccentric Seclusion of the Old Lady The Club of Queer Trades is a collection of stories by G. K. Chesterton first published in 1905.Each story in the collection is centered on a person who is making his living by some novel and extraordinary means (a "queer trade", using the word "queer" in the sense of "peculiar"). To gain admittance one must have invented a unique means of earning a living and the subsequent trade being the main source of income.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG (29 May 1874 - 14 June 1936), better known as G. K. Chesterton, was an English writer, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, lay theologian, biographer, and literary and art critic. Chesterton is often referred to as the "prince of paradox". Time magazine has observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories-first carefully turning them inside out." Chesterton is well known for his fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and for his reasoned apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognised the wide appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man.Chesterton, as a political thinker, cast aspersions on both Progressivism and Conservatism, saying, "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. George Bernard Shaw, Chesterton's "friendly enemy" according to Time, said of him, "He was a man of colossal genius."Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, Cardinal John Henry Newman, and John Ruskin.. Charles John Huffam Dickens ( 7 February 1812 - 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms. Dickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication.The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features. His plots were carefully constructed, and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives.Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha'pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.
In 1976, NASA stated that the Mars Viking life detection experiments might be "perhaps the most important experiment in the history of science." Dr. Levin's Viking Labeled Release (LR) experiment, one of three included on Viking, was designed to detect biological activity on Mars (1-4). In the course of developing the Viking Labeled Release (LR) experiment, and prior to transport to Mars, thousands of laboratory and field tests were performed and the LR experiment proved capable of detecting a very wide range of microorganisms including bacteria, algae and fungi. The Viking LR experiment was elegant and straight-forward. It took a sample of Martian soil and added a nutrient containing radioactive carbon. The presence of radioactivity in the gasses released was evidence of active metabolism. A control experiment treated a second sample that had been heat-treated to kill microorganisms. In every experiment conducted, the control (heat treated) sample yielded negative results whereas positive results were obtained from the raw sample, including evidence of biological reproduction. Both Viking landing sites, some 4,000 miles apart, produced strong responses and met the pre-mission criteria for the detection of biological activity, and life on Mars (1-4). Dr. Levin's Mars Viking LR data are supported by evidence of (A) waxing and waning and increasing and decreasing concentrations of methane at a variety of localities both at ground level and in the atmosphere of Mars (5-9), the most logical source of which is biological activity; (B) biochemical analyses and detection of biological residue in "meteors" ejected from Mars (10-15); (C) simulation studies demonstrating various organisms can survive and flourish in a Mars-like environment (16-20); (D) Martian structures and specimens with features resembling stromatolites (21-24) --the likely remnants of cyanobacteria/blue-green algae; (E) visual observation of greenish substances which change in size and appear to be algae (23-25); and (F) the expert judgment of 40 experts in fungi, algae and lichens and 30 experts in geomorphology and mineralogy, who after closely examining photos of Martian specimens taken by NASA's Rover's Curiosity and Opportunity, formed a statistically significant consensus that these were living organisms resembling terrestrial mushrooms and other species of fungi (26-27). Indeed, many of these experts referred to the visual evidence as "obvious" (26).
The "Bab" Ballads are a collection of light verse by W. S. Gilbert, illustrated with his own comic drawings. They became famous on their own, as well as being a source for plot elements, characters and songs that Gilbert would recycle in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.
