John Ranking

John Ranking was an English merchant and amateur historian who proposed, among other things, that the Kublai Khan's naval fleet, sent to invade Japan, was carried across the Pacific and landed in South America, which they subsequently conquered and established as the Inca Empire under the rulership of the Kublai Khan's son, who became known as Manco Cápac, and that this same Mongol fleet had brought elephants with them into the New World.

Identity
The background of John Ranking is presently unknown to us, but we do find one lead by following a path through the Oxford periodical Notes and Queries: in the issue of 18 January 1896, a reader, E. I. Carlyle, asks after information on Ranking's life; this query received a response, some fourteen and a half years later, in the issue of 30 July 1910, the response from a George Ranking, Lieut.-Col., who offered to provide the information asked. Lt. Col. Ranking was George Spiers Alexander Ranking (1852-1934), surgical physician and educator who had been active in British India, the author of several books on the Urdu and Persian languages; George Ranking's grandfather was one John Jackson Ranking (1759-1830).