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Indeholder "Foreword | Stephen Fry", "Four words | Alan Davies", "Introduction | John Lloyd", "How many wives did Henry VIII have?", "How many nostrils have you got? ", "Where is the driest place on earth?", "Where is the highest mountain?", "What's the name of the tallest mountain in the world?",
???
This book will make you feel small and silly.
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"What's the largest living thing?", "What's the biggest thing a blue whale can swallow?", "Which bird lays the smallest egg for its size?", "How long can a chicken live without its head?", "What has a three-second memory?", "What's the most dangerous animal that has ever lived?", "Do marmots kill people?", "How do lemmings die?", "What do chameleons do?", "How do polar bears disguise themselves?", "How many galaxies are visible to the naked eye?", "What man-made artefacts can be seen from the moon?", "What did the Chinese invent?", "Where did Marco Polo come from?", "Who introduced tobacco and potatoes to England?", "Who invented the steam engine?", "Who invented the telephone?", "What's quite interesting about Scotland?", "Where does Chicken Tikka Masala come from?", "Is French toast from France?", "Who invented champagne?", "Where was the guillotine invented?", "Who was freed by the storming of the Bastille?", "Who said, 'Let them eat cake'?", "How well do you know the Swiss?", "What does a St Bernard carry round its neck?", "What goes hunk-hunk?", "What noise does the largest frog in the world make?", "Which owl says 'Tu-whit tu-whoo'?", "What did Darwin do to dead owls?", "When does 'ring-a-ring o' roses' date from? ", "What were Nelson's last words?", "Which eye did Nelson wear his eye-patch on?", "How many senses does a human being have?", "How many states of matter are there?", "What's the normal state of glass?", "Which metal is liquid at room temperature?", "Which metal is the best conductor?", "What's the densest element?", "Where do diamonds come from?", "How do we measure earthquakes?", "What's the commonest material in the world?", "What does the Moon smell like?", "Does the Earth go round the Moon?", "How many moons does the Earth have?", "How many planets are there in the solar system?", "How would you fly through an asteroid belt?", "What's in an atom?", "What's the main ingredient of air?", "Where would you go for a lungful of ozone?", "What speed does light at travel at ?", "How do moths feel about flames?", "How many legs does a centipede have?", "How many toes has a two-toed sloth?", "How many eyes does a no-eyed, big-eyed wolf spider have?", "How many penises does a European earwig have?", "Which animals are the best-endowed of all?", "What's a rhino's horn made from?", "Which African mammal kills more humans than any other?", "Where do most tigers live?", "What would you use to overpower a crocodile?", "What's three times as dangerous as war?", "What killed you in an eighteenth-century sea battle?", "Which war killed most British soldiers?", "What's the word for Napoleon's most humiliating defeat?", "Who blew the nose off the Sphinx?", "What's the name of the statue in Piccadilly Circus?", "What did Nero do while Rome burned?", "What's more likely: being killed by lightning or by an asteroid?", "How many people died in the Great Fire of London?", "How did Roman emperors order the death of a gladiator?", "What happened to most English witches?", "What's the Number of the Beast? ", "Which crime did Burke and Hare commit? ", "What are chastity belts for?", "What was Tutankhamun's curse?", "What did feminists do with their bras?", "What colour is the universe?", "What colour is Mars?", "What colour is water?", "What colour was the sky in ancient Greece?", "How much of the Earth is water?", "Which way does the bathwater go down the plughole?", "What do camels store in their humps?", "Where do camels come from?", "Who is America named after?", "How many states are there in the USA?", "Who was the first American President?", "What were George Washington's false teeth made from?", "What did Buffalo Bill do to buffaloes?", "Where was baseball invented?", "What was Billy the Kid's real name?", "What do we have Thomas Crapper to thank for?", "What was Mozart's middle name?", "How did Nome in Alaska get its name?", "What's the name of the capital city of Thailand?", "What's the world's largest city?", "What's the single largest man-made structure on Earth?", "Where's the coolest place in the universe?", "When did the most recent Ice Age end?", "Who lives in igloos?", "Would you call someone an Eskimo?", "How many words do Eskimos have for snow?", "What did human beings evolve from?", "Who coined the phrase 'the survival of the fittest'?", "Who invented the ball-point pen?", "What do we use to write on a blackboard?", "What's made of celluloid?", "Who invented rubber boots?", "What Edison invention do English speakers use every day?", "Was the first computer bug a real insect?", "What's the most likely survivor of a nuclear war?", "What's the best use for Marmite?", "Which is the hottest part of a chilli?", "Where do tulips come from?", "How many crocuses does it take to make a kilo of saffron?", "What was the first invention to break the sound barrier?", "What kind of music charms snakes most?", "What are violin strings made from?", "What's the best floor of a building to throw a cat from?", "Why did the dodo die out? ", "What buries its head in the sand?", "Where do gorillas sleep?", "What's the commonest bird in the world?", "What's the 'sport of kings'?", "What's Britain's smallest bird?", "What animal are the Canary Islands named after? ", "What's the smallest dog in the world?", "How do dogs mate?", "How did Catherine the Great die?", "What surprised John Ruskin on his wedding night?", "How long do your fingernails and hair grow after death?", "What did Atlas carry on his shoulders?", "How high is Cloud Nine?", "What makes champagne fizz?", "What shape is a raindrop?", "What produces most of the Earth's oxygen?", "What were First World War German uniforms made from?", "Who discovered penicillin?", "What causes stomach ulcers?", "What are guinea pigs used for?", "What was the first animal in space?", "Which has the most neck bones, a mouse or a giraffe?", "How long have the Celts lived in Britain?", "Who was the first man to circumnavigate the globe?", "Who was the first to claim that the Earth goes round the Sun?", "Who invented the Theory of Relativity?", "What shape did Columbus think the Earth was?", "What shape did medieval people think the Earth was?", "Who first discovered that the world was round?", "Why do bees buzz?", "What has the largest brain in comparison to its size?", "How much of our brains do we use?", "What colour is your brain? ", "What effect does alcohol have on brain cells?", "What do dolphins drink?", "What was James Bond's favourite drink?", "What shouldn't you drink if you're dehydrated?", "What contains the most caffeine: tea or coffee?", "What kind of fruit are Jaffa Cakes made from?", "What do digestive biscuits do?", "How was Teflon discovered?", "Which organisation invented Quaker Oats?", "What shouldn't you do twenty minutes after eating?", "How does television damage your health?", "How much sleep should you have every night?", "What will be the biggest killer in the world by 2030?", "What illness do British doctors treat most often?", "Is the answer to depression just to 'walk it off'?", "Which country has the world's highest suicide rate?", "Was Hitler a vegetarian?", "Which nation invented the concentration camp?", "Which aeroplane won the Battle of Britain?", "When did the last survivor of the Crimean War die?", "How many dog years equal one human year?", "How long is a day?", "What's the longest animal?", "What's the loudest thing in the ocean?", "Why are flamingos pink?", "What colour is a panther?", "What makes an animal see red?", "What colour were the original Oompa-Loompas?", "What colour were Robin Hood's tights?", "What colour are carrots?", "Do carrots help us see in the dark?", "What do bananas grow on?", "Which of the following are berries?", "Which of the following are nuts?", "Who goes gathering nuts in May?", "What's inside a coconut?", "What did Captain Cook give his men to cure scurvy?", "Who discovered Australia?", "What does 'kangaroo' mean in Aboriginal?", "What's 'pom' short for?", "What's the biggest rock in the world?", "What were boomerangs used for?", "What's wrong with this picture?", "Which religion curses people by sticking pins into dolls? ", "How many Wise Men visited Jesus?", "Where does Santa Claus come from?", "What are Bugs Bunny, Brer Rabbit and the Easter Bunny? ", "What were Cinderella's slippers made from?", "Where do loofahs come from?", "What's the strongest wood?", "What do you get if you suck your pencil?", "Where was the log cabin invented?", "Where did Stone Age people live?", "What was the first animal to be domesticated?", "What was odd about Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer?", "Where do turkeys come from?", "Who was born by Immaculate Conception?", "Was Jesus born in a stable?", "How many sheep were there on Noah's Ark?", "Where were the first modern Olympics held?", "Why is a marathon 26 miles and 385 yards long? ", "What does the Queen say to someone she's knighted?", "Who was the first King of England?", "Who fought at the battle of Culloden?", "Which was the last country invaded by Scotland? ", "Where do Panama hats come from?", "Can you name an Irish saint?", "What nationality was the Duke of Wellington?", "Who was Britain's first Prime Minister?", "Who invented the Penny Post?", "What do you get when you're 100 years old?", "What is quite interesting?".???
This book will make you feel small and silly.
Show Less
Publication
London : Faber, 2006.
Description
Reference. Nonfiction. Humor (Nonfiction.) HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER â?˘ Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the heave-ho in this humorous, downright humiliating book of reeducation based on the phenomenal British bestseller. Challenging what most of us assume to be verifiable truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature, and more,The Book of General Ignorance is a witty â??gotchaâ?ť compendium of how little we actually know about anything. Itâ??ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school. Think Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe, baseball was invented in America, Henry VIII had six wives, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain? Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. Youâ??ll be surprised at how much you donâ??t know! Check out The Book of General Ignorance for more fun entries and complete answers to the following: How long can… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Ella_Jill
This is a really interesting book. In my experience, there aren't many such general Q&A books that are fully accurate. I haven’t found this book to be so either, but it was the best of its kind that I've come across. Of course, I haven’t checked all the information in it, but I did try to check
Contrary to what I had assumed, not all of Antarctica is covered with snow and ice. There are areas there called the Dry Valleys which haven’t seen any precipitation whatsoever for 2 million years, due to winds reaching 200 mph which evaporate all moisture from the air. NASA tested their equipment for a Mars probe there.
All the plague epidemics that came to Europe from Asia started with a Mongolian species of marmots which is particularly susceptible to this bacteria. They give the disease to fleas which give it to rats which give it to humans. Actually, just a year ago there was a case of a Chinese road construction worker who shot, cooked and ate a marmot, soon felt ill and was rushed to the hospital where he died from plague – not being a local he didn’t know about the dangers of marmots. What most surprised me is that apparently nobody there is calling for the wholesale extermination of marmots. Here, in the US, the far more harmless wolves, coyotes and black bears are treated like public enemies, and in China and Mongolia apparently people are content just to try to be careful with the animals that can give them the plague!
The first steam engine in the world was invented by an Alexandrian called Heron or Hero in 62 CE. His contemporaries viewed it as an amusing, but useless novelty. (He also discovered the formulas to calculate the area of a triangle and other 2- and 3-dimensional figures).
The telephone was apparently invented by an Italian-American Antonio Meucci in 1860. He couldn’t afford to pay for a definitive patent and filed a one-year renewable notice of an impending patent, but later on, badly injured when a ferry’s boiler exploded and living on charity, he couldn’t afford even to renew that. He sent sketches and working models to the Western Union telegraph company, but didn’t get a response from them and was later told that they had been lost. When Bell, who had shared a laboratory with him, filed a patent for a telephone, Meucci sued, and fraud charges were initiated against Bell, but then Meucci died and the lawsuit was dropped. In 2002 a vote in the US House of Representatives declared Meucci the inventor of the telephone. (However, this book says that the vote took place in 2004, and implies that Bell worked in the Western Union lab where Meucci sent his documents and from where they “mysteriously disappeared.”)
Penicillin was first discovered by a French army doctor Ernest Duchesne in 1897. He saw Arab stable boys deliberately trying to cultivate mold on saddles, and they explained that it helps cure horses’ sores. Duchesne conducted research, identified the mold as Penicillum glaucum, and used it to cure typhoid in guinea pigs and kill colonies of E.coli. He wrote a report to Institut Pasteur which ignored it (Pasteur himself had died 2 years previously). Military duties prevented Duchesne from promoting his discoveries more vigorously, and then he died at 28 from tuberculosis – an illness later cured with antibiotics! When Alexander Fleming had rediscovered penicillin in 1928, his findings were also ignored till World War II started, and the pressing need for antibacterial drugs prompted Ernst Chain and Howard Florey to work to isolate the active compound within the mold (which Fleming had been unable to do). Production of penicillin began in 1942; in 1945 Fleming, Chain and Florey received the Nobel Prize. In 1949 Duchesne was honored posthumously, but remained in obscurity.
There are 3,000-4,700 tigers in India and 12,000 tigers kept as private pets in the USA, with 4,000 living in captivity in Texas alone (both in zoos and as pets), and 500 tigers, lions and other big cats “in private ownership” just in the Houston area. Apparently, the success of zoo and circus breeding programs has brought the price of tigers down to $1,000 per cub which has placed them within reach of an average American pet owner! Only 17 states don’t allow private ownership of tigers. But on the bright side of things, if tigers become extinct in the wild (as the authors expect they will), there’ll be enough stock in the US to restore them to the jungles once/if people wise up.
And speaking of humans’ impact on the planet, the single largest man-made structure is now a rubbish dump in Staten Island, NY, which trumps by volume the Great Wall of China and at its peak was higher than the Statue of Liberty by more than 80 feet. It was closed in 2001 and is “being flattened and landscaped into parkland and a wildlife facility.” (The dump’s area is 4.6 square miles, and it’s called Fresh Kills, after the Dutch word kil for “small river.”)
In ecological good news, it looks like cotton clothes may be replaced by nettle ones in the not-so-far future. Nettles don’t require the massive watering that cotton does and can grow in any climate and without pesticides. Apparently, nettles were widely used to make cloth in Europe before the 16th century, when they were eclipsed by cotton because cotton was easier to harvest and spin, but today’s technology has evolved enough to make fibers from nettles without too much trouble.
If some species of ribbon worms get fragmented into small pieces, each piece becomes a new worm, and a species of freshwater flatworm regenerates into two full-sized worms if split lengthwise or crosswise. And speaking of curious methods of reproduction, I knew that hens can lay eggs without roosters, albeit unfertilized eggs from which no chicks will emerge, but now I’ve learnt that there are turkeys which lay eggs and have chicks without males. Apparently, usually unfertilized eggs have only half the chromosomes (from the mother) and don’t develop into chicks, but in some turkeys the chromosomes in such a case sometimes double themselves, and then a chick does develop. Turkeys which have such a proclivity have been bred to the point that it has become their stable characteristic. The resulting chicks are only half-clones of their mothers, because they’ve only got a half of their mothers’ genes (multiplied by two). In fact, they are all (infertile) males, because in turkeys it’s the males who have the same gender chromosomes (ZZ).
The authors of this book also claim that the first modern Olympics took place in Much Wenlock, Shropshire, in 1850, under the initiative of a surgeon William Penny Brookes, and quickly attracted athletes from all over the country. In 1865, Brookes helped establish the National Olympian Association which held its first Olympic Games in 1866 at the Crystal Palace in London, but his attempts to organize an international Olympian Festival in Athens in 1881 failed. In 1889, he invited Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the organizer of an International Congress on Physical Education, to see the Games in Much Wenlock and thus inspired him to start a global Olympic movement. Much of this is confirmed in the 2010 edition of Britannica and elsewhere, although in 1859 the first international Olympic Games were held in Athens, while all the Games organized by Brookes were of national character. (The 1896 Athens Olympics was the first one organized by IOC, and thus the first official one.)
Lloyd and Mitchinson further maintain that America was really named after Richard Ameryck from Bristol who was the chief investor of John Cabot’s second transatlantic voyage because there’s a reference to the continent in the Bristol calendar of that year where the name America was first used; no copies of this calendar survived, but “there are a number of references to it in other contemporary documents.” However, there’s no bibliography in this book, and personally I couldn’t find any confirmation of this. So whether Martin Waldseemüller was mistaken in attributing the name to Vespucci on his map – the first one ever to use it – remains to be seen.
They also write that Aristarchus of Samos, born in 310 BCE, was the first person to embrace the heliocentric system, which he did, and that “he also calculated the relative sizes and distances of the earth, moon, and sun,” which he also did, except that his calculations were (very) incorrect, which they don’t mention.
There’s also a curious statement in this book that “the fumes from your car’s exhaust (when combined with sunlight) create far more ozone than anything on the beach.” I didn’t know what to make of this, since all the references to car exhaust and ozone I could find on the Internet implied the opposite relationship, as one would expect. They also claim that the Theory of Relativity was discovered by Galileo rather than Einstein, without offering any evidence, aside form the fact that Galileo was a proponent of heliocentric system. And they say that Henry VIII didn't really have 6 wives because he annulled his marriages with some of them instead of divorcing them, which means that from the legal point of view these marriages never happened, rather than that they were terminated, but that's just splitting hairs, in my opinion.
Still, inaccuracies in this book seem to be rare, and I did learn lots of interesting information from it which I wouldn’t have been likely to find out otherwise.
Show More
the most surprising answers. Here are some of the most interesting facts I’ve gleaned from this book:Contrary to what I had assumed, not all of Antarctica is covered with snow and ice. There are areas there called the Dry Valleys which haven’t seen any precipitation whatsoever for 2 million years, due to winds reaching 200 mph which evaporate all moisture from the air. NASA tested their equipment for a Mars probe there.
All the plague epidemics that came to Europe from Asia started with a Mongolian species of marmots which is particularly susceptible to this bacteria. They give the disease to fleas which give it to rats which give it to humans. Actually, just a year ago there was a case of a Chinese road construction worker who shot, cooked and ate a marmot, soon felt ill and was rushed to the hospital where he died from plague – not being a local he didn’t know about the dangers of marmots. What most surprised me is that apparently nobody there is calling for the wholesale extermination of marmots. Here, in the US, the far more harmless wolves, coyotes and black bears are treated like public enemies, and in China and Mongolia apparently people are content just to try to be careful with the animals that can give them the plague!
The first steam engine in the world was invented by an Alexandrian called Heron or Hero in 62 CE. His contemporaries viewed it as an amusing, but useless novelty. (He also discovered the formulas to calculate the area of a triangle and other 2- and 3-dimensional figures).
The telephone was apparently invented by an Italian-American Antonio Meucci in 1860. He couldn’t afford to pay for a definitive patent and filed a one-year renewable notice of an impending patent, but later on, badly injured when a ferry’s boiler exploded and living on charity, he couldn’t afford even to renew that. He sent sketches and working models to the Western Union telegraph company, but didn’t get a response from them and was later told that they had been lost. When Bell, who had shared a laboratory with him, filed a patent for a telephone, Meucci sued, and fraud charges were initiated against Bell, but then Meucci died and the lawsuit was dropped. In 2002 a vote in the US House of Representatives declared Meucci the inventor of the telephone. (However, this book says that the vote took place in 2004, and implies that Bell worked in the Western Union lab where Meucci sent his documents and from where they “mysteriously disappeared.”)
Penicillin was first discovered by a French army doctor Ernest Duchesne in 1897. He saw Arab stable boys deliberately trying to cultivate mold on saddles, and they explained that it helps cure horses’ sores. Duchesne conducted research, identified the mold as Penicillum glaucum, and used it to cure typhoid in guinea pigs and kill colonies of E.coli. He wrote a report to Institut Pasteur which ignored it (Pasteur himself had died 2 years previously). Military duties prevented Duchesne from promoting his discoveries more vigorously, and then he died at 28 from tuberculosis – an illness later cured with antibiotics! When Alexander Fleming had rediscovered penicillin in 1928, his findings were also ignored till World War II started, and the pressing need for antibacterial drugs prompted Ernst Chain and Howard Florey to work to isolate the active compound within the mold (which Fleming had been unable to do). Production of penicillin began in 1942; in 1945 Fleming, Chain and Florey received the Nobel Prize. In 1949 Duchesne was honored posthumously, but remained in obscurity.
There are 3,000-4,700 tigers in India and 12,000 tigers kept as private pets in the USA, with 4,000 living in captivity in Texas alone (both in zoos and as pets), and 500 tigers, lions and other big cats “in private ownership” just in the Houston area. Apparently, the success of zoo and circus breeding programs has brought the price of tigers down to $1,000 per cub which has placed them within reach of an average American pet owner! Only 17 states don’t allow private ownership of tigers. But on the bright side of things, if tigers become extinct in the wild (as the authors expect they will), there’ll be enough stock in the US to restore them to the jungles once/if people wise up.
And speaking of humans’ impact on the planet, the single largest man-made structure is now a rubbish dump in Staten Island, NY, which trumps by volume the Great Wall of China and at its peak was higher than the Statue of Liberty by more than 80 feet. It was closed in 2001 and is “being flattened and landscaped into parkland and a wildlife facility.” (The dump’s area is 4.6 square miles, and it’s called Fresh Kills, after the Dutch word kil for “small river.”)
In ecological good news, it looks like cotton clothes may be replaced by nettle ones in the not-so-far future. Nettles don’t require the massive watering that cotton does and can grow in any climate and without pesticides. Apparently, nettles were widely used to make cloth in Europe before the 16th century, when they were eclipsed by cotton because cotton was easier to harvest and spin, but today’s technology has evolved enough to make fibers from nettles without too much trouble.
If some species of ribbon worms get fragmented into small pieces, each piece becomes a new worm, and a species of freshwater flatworm regenerates into two full-sized worms if split lengthwise or crosswise. And speaking of curious methods of reproduction, I knew that hens can lay eggs without roosters, albeit unfertilized eggs from which no chicks will emerge, but now I’ve learnt that there are turkeys which lay eggs and have chicks without males. Apparently, usually unfertilized eggs have only half the chromosomes (from the mother) and don’t develop into chicks, but in some turkeys the chromosomes in such a case sometimes double themselves, and then a chick does develop. Turkeys which have such a proclivity have been bred to the point that it has become their stable characteristic. The resulting chicks are only half-clones of their mothers, because they’ve only got a half of their mothers’ genes (multiplied by two). In fact, they are all (infertile) males, because in turkeys it’s the males who have the same gender chromosomes (ZZ).
The authors of this book also claim that the first modern Olympics took place in Much Wenlock, Shropshire, in 1850, under the initiative of a surgeon William Penny Brookes, and quickly attracted athletes from all over the country. In 1865, Brookes helped establish the National Olympian Association which held its first Olympic Games in 1866 at the Crystal Palace in London, but his attempts to organize an international Olympian Festival in Athens in 1881 failed. In 1889, he invited Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the organizer of an International Congress on Physical Education, to see the Games in Much Wenlock and thus inspired him to start a global Olympic movement. Much of this is confirmed in the 2010 edition of Britannica and elsewhere, although in 1859 the first international Olympic Games were held in Athens, while all the Games organized by Brookes were of national character. (The 1896 Athens Olympics was the first one organized by IOC, and thus the first official one.)
Lloyd and Mitchinson further maintain that America was really named after Richard Ameryck from Bristol who was the chief investor of John Cabot’s second transatlantic voyage because there’s a reference to the continent in the Bristol calendar of that year where the name America was first used; no copies of this calendar survived, but “there are a number of references to it in other contemporary documents.” However, there’s no bibliography in this book, and personally I couldn’t find any confirmation of this. So whether Martin Waldseemüller was mistaken in attributing the name to Vespucci on his map – the first one ever to use it – remains to be seen.
They also write that Aristarchus of Samos, born in 310 BCE, was the first person to embrace the heliocentric system, which he did, and that “he also calculated the relative sizes and distances of the earth, moon, and sun,” which he also did, except that his calculations were (very) incorrect, which they don’t mention.
There’s also a curious statement in this book that “the fumes from your car’s exhaust (when combined with sunlight) create far more ozone than anything on the beach.” I didn’t know what to make of this, since all the references to car exhaust and ozone I could find on the Internet implied the opposite relationship, as one would expect. They also claim that the Theory of Relativity was discovered by Galileo rather than Einstein, without offering any evidence, aside form the fact that Galileo was a proponent of heliocentric system. And they say that Henry VIII didn't really have 6 wives because he annulled his marriages with some of them instead of divorcing them, which means that from the legal point of view these marriages never happened, rather than that they were terminated, but that's just splitting hairs, in my opinion.
Still, inaccuracies in this book seem to be rare, and I did learn lots of interesting information from it which I wouldn’t have been likely to find out otherwise.
Show Less
LibraryThing member psiloiordinary
One of the best typeset books I have ever seen.
Definitely the best typeset book I was ever given by the person who did the actual typesetting. Thanks Paula.
If you like the tv series you will probably like the book - they are pretty much identical.
The main advantage of the book over the tv series
Think you know how many nostrils you have? Think again.
A good laugh.
Definitely the best typeset book I was ever given by the person who did the actual typesetting. Thanks Paula.
If you like the tv series you will probably like the book - they are pretty much identical.
The main advantage of the book over the tv series
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is that you don't have to wait until late at night for your fix of the strange and interesting.Think you know how many nostrils you have? Think again.
A good laugh.
Show Less
LibraryThing member barpurple
Perfect book for bathroom reading as you can dip in and out. A dangerous book in the hands of a ten year old, who will delight at coming out with random snippets of information, much to the general confusion of those around them.
LibraryThing member fist
Enjoyable read. The myth debunking is generally very interesting. In some instances it is less than solid because it relies on a semantic slight of hand, but it is so well written than one forgives the authors gladly.
LibraryThing member callmejacx
I wasn't sure on what to expect from this book, but I couldn't wait to read it and find out.
It is a book of answers to questions we all think we know the answer to:
How invented the telephone?
Who invented champagne?
What does the moon smell like?
What is the number of the beast?
Who was the first
To most of these questions, I was so sure I knew the answer, but I was surprisingly so wrong.
It was an interesting read. I feel I shouldn't have read this book the way that I did. It would have been better if I read it in between reading other books. It makes for a great bathroom, and travel book, It is a light and quick read with all the questions and answers never being longer than two pages.
My husband wasn't all that impressed interrupting him all the time and asking "Did you know...?".
I didn't find it all that humorous, but it was "tee hee" funny in some places.
I was amazing on how wrong I was about most of the answers. The book has left me more confused. What am I suppose to believe now? There were no references to where most of the facts came from. Some things are so unbelievable.
I would have rated it higher if there was more documentation on where they got their facts.
I would still recommend this book if you like trivia, history, general knowledge and/or you think you know the answers to most things. :)
It is a book of answers to questions we all think we know the answer to:
How invented the telephone?
Who invented champagne?
What does the moon smell like?
What is the number of the beast?
Who was the first
Show More
American President?To most of these questions, I was so sure I knew the answer, but I was surprisingly so wrong.
It was an interesting read. I feel I shouldn't have read this book the way that I did. It would have been better if I read it in between reading other books. It makes for a great bathroom, and travel book, It is a light and quick read with all the questions and answers never being longer than two pages.
My husband wasn't all that impressed interrupting him all the time and asking "Did you know...?".
I didn't find it all that humorous, but it was "tee hee" funny in some places.
I was amazing on how wrong I was about most of the answers. The book has left me more confused. What am I suppose to believe now? There were no references to where most of the facts came from. Some things are so unbelievable.
I would have rated it higher if there was more documentation on where they got their facts.
I would still recommend this book if you like trivia, history, general knowledge and/or you think you know the answers to most things. :)
Show Less
LibraryThing member theboylatham
Five out of ten.
Reference book of urban myths and strange tales. Based on the TV series.
Reference book of urban myths and strange tales. Based on the TV series.
LibraryThing member subbobmail
Ah, The Book of General Ignorance, also known as the companion volume for the hysterical and informative British quiz show QI. A gold mine for trivia buffs, in which you can learn that everything you think you know is wrong.
For instance: chameleons do not change color to match their surroundings.
The book will explain why not, but really the best reason to read it is to discover the hilarious story of the time Napoleon ran in terror from a battallion of...bunnies. Oh yes, it's true.
For instance: chameleons do not change color to match their surroundings.
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Sea captains cannot perform weddings. You can't slide down a bannister. And the earth does not, by several rational measures, have one moon.The book will explain why not, but really the best reason to read it is to discover the hilarious story of the time Napoleon ran in terror from a battallion of...bunnies. Oh yes, it's true.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ValSmith
A wonderful collection of little known facts, or correcting "general ignorance" or just plain wrong information people have about a very wide range of subjects.
LibraryThing member kevinashley
Slightly better than some of these "isn't it curious"-type books but not a lot. Facts are often stretched to make an interesting story and it reads like something written by journalists. Amusing as a bedtime book in very small doses.
LibraryThing member JeffV
Fact-finding websites such as Snopes help us sort out heresay, folk lore, and plain fiction from the truth. The Book of General Ignorance weaves a path through myths, some well-known, others not, sometimes with tenuous segues. It's a short, but fun and interesting.
LibraryThing member fieldri1
John Lloyd, one of the co-authors of this book seems to specialise in slightly frothy, snippet based books which can be read in tiny bite sized pieces (I refer the reader to The Meaning of Liff with Douglas Adams). In this case the book is a series of questions, many of which you probably think you
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know the answer to, but which you are then disavowed of.For instance, what is the 'Ring a-ring a-Roses' about.I, like most people thought it was about the Black Death (Bubonic Plague). But it dates back much further than that and its genesis has been lost in the mists of time. Show Less
LibraryThing member fieldri1
John Lloyd, one of the co-authors of this book seems to specialise in slightly frothy, snippet based books which can be read in tiny bite sized pieces (I refer the reader to The Meaning of Liff with Douglas Adams). In this case the book is a series of questions, many of which you probably think you
Show More
know the answer to, but which you are then disavowed of.For instance, what is the 'Ring a-ring a-Roses' about.I, like most people thought it was about the Black Death (Bubonic Plague). But it dates back much further than that and its genesis has been lost in the mists of time. Show Less
LibraryThing member knitgeisha
Great light read. It really reminds you how much you don't know. I think it reads as if it were written by the narrator of the Hitchhiker's Guide movie.
LibraryThing member TiffanyAK
This book can blow your mind. There are a lot of questions that I felt completely sure I knew the answer to, only to be completely flummoxed to find out I was wrong. You may not be interested in all the facts in this book, but I do feel there's quite a bit here for just about anybody. Definitely a
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fun and entertaning read, that'll also make you feel that much smarter for having read it. Show Less
LibraryThing member phoebesmum
Not by Mr Stephen Fry at all (as advertised at the time of publication), although he does provide an introduction. If we kept books in the loo, this would be the book we kept in there. But we don't. So it isn't. (Maybe we should?)
LibraryThing member wearylibrarian
This is a great book for anyone who is interested in the truth. The book corrects many myths, some interesting, some not so much. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in history.
LibraryThing member dougcornelius
A cheeky collection of trivia presented in a gotcha manner.
For example, what's the tallest mountain in the world?
No, not Everest. It's Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It's only 13,799 feet above sea level, but 33,465 feet when measured from the seabed. "Highest" means measured from sea level to summit, but
Each entry goes on to discuss more trivia and information about the topic. As you might suspect, some are more amusing than others.
For example, what's the tallest mountain in the world?
No, not Everest. It's Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It's only 13,799 feet above sea level, but 33,465 feet when measured from the seabed. "Highest" means measured from sea level to summit, but
Show More
tallest means measured from the top to the bottom. Each entry goes on to discuss more trivia and information about the topic. As you might suspect, some are more amusing than others.
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LibraryThing member MiaCulpa
Lots of interesting factoids; I did know a lot of these while some surprised and others made me openly wonder what their source was for their statements. Which is a bit of a problem as they do not list their sources.
Still, any book where you can open to a random page and find out that European
Still, any book where you can open to a random page and find out that European
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earwigs carry around a spare penis in case of an emergency, cannot help but amuse. Show Less
LibraryThing member Cheryl_in_CC_NV
Ok, some of these anecdotes are actually set-ups, which only are wrong from a certain nit-picky angle. But mostly they're actually stuff we should better understand. The book isn't just quick facts to study for trivia games - it's an interesting and accessible 'reeducation' (as it says in the
Ok, done. Nothing to add, except, yes, I will be looking for more in the 'series.'
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description). So far I've not had too many big surprises, but then, I already like trivia games and non-fiction books. Ok, done. Nothing to add, except, yes, I will be looking for more in the 'series.'
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LibraryThing member Vinculus
Fun stuff for random idle moments.
LibraryThing member andycyca
Who invented champagne? What did Robert Bunsen invent? What color is a panther? If you think you know all these, think again.
Based on the amazing trivia show QI, this book has answers to these and many other oft cited trivia about science, history, technology and popular culture. Readable in easy
Based on the amazing trivia show QI, this book has answers to these and many other oft cited trivia about science, history, technology and popular culture. Readable in easy
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to digest chapters, it's a great companion for either a toilet visit, impressing your spouse and in laws of just getting a bit smarter than yesterday Show Less
LibraryThing member boo262
A book to dip in and out of for funny snippets, interesting stories and making yourself feel dumb.
LibraryThing member widdersyns
I think I'm going to have to make myself a "random trivia" shelf or something, because I've been quite enjoying this sort of book lately. This is the best of its type that I've read (or actually, listened to. I listened to the audiobook via Scribd). I'm a big QI fan, so I felt secure that this book
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was well-researched (unlike some trivia books where I occasionally doubt some of the facts that I read). Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2006
Physical description
xviii, 282 p.; 20.1 cm
ISBN
0571233686 / 9780571233687
Local notes
Omslag: Derek Warren at Faber
Omslagsillustrationer: Mr. Bingo
Omslaget viser en karikaturtegning, hvor Stephen Fry sidder i en lænestol mens Alan Davies flytter på bogstaverne i titlen. Desuden teksten: This book will make you feel small and silly.
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Omslagsillustrationer: Mr. Bingo
Omslaget viser en karikaturtegning, hvor Stephen Fry sidder i en lænestol mens Alan Davies flytter på bogstaverne i titlen. Desuden teksten: This book will make you feel small and silly.
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Similar in this library
Pages
xviii; 282
DDC/MDS
| 032.02 |