But while he was speaking a very extraordinary thing happened.
— from The Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham

Some are very eager to have white cloth in connection with burial, and one old man at some distance north of us, who has a son in Bulawayo, desired us to write to the son, telling him to bring him a white shroud for burial.
— from South and South Central Africa A record of fifteen years' missionary labors among primitive peoples by Hannah Frances Davidson

I said: “A very extraordinary thing has struck me.”
— from The Diary of a Nobody by Weedon Grossmith

Cloridan who beholds the deed, at sight Of young Medoro's fall, springs forth to fight; XV And casts away his bow, and, 'mid the band Of foemen, whirls his falchion, in desire Rather of death, than hoping that his hand May snatch a vengeance equal to his ire.
— from Orlando Furioso by Lodovico Ariosto

Besides this, they are extremely wary, and always rise about thirty yards from the shooter; they fly quite straight, and so are very easy to hit; but though Esau knocked clouds of feathers out of them at every shot, and did bring one to the ground which, from the closeness of the underwood, could not be gathered, he was obliged to submit to disappointment for once.
— from Three in Norway, by Two of Them by Walter J. Clutterbuck

No one had ever been able to vanquish him in battle, for Mother Earth gave him new strength and vigor every time he lay down or touched the ground.
— from Herakles, the Hero of Thebes, and Other Heroes of the Myth Adapted from the Second Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece by Mary E. (Mary Elizabeth) Burt

Rossini was at this time thirty-seven years of age, strong and vigorous enough to have outlived, not only his earliest, but his latest compositions, had they not been the most remarkable dramatic works of this century.
— from History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time With Anecdotes of the Most Celebrated Composers and Vocalists of Europe by H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland) Edwards

They had first persuaded him to sell a valuable estate; they had then seized part of his money to pay their debts; and at last they drained his stores so dry that he had to sell them his watch, bureau, horse and saddle, to fly to France, and to leave his old mother to die of starvation in England.
— from A History of the Moravian Church by J. E. (Joseph Edmund) Hutton