Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76272 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Synopsis
Why exactly is Paul Revere revered? Was the lightbulb really Thomas Edison's bright idea? If it would shock you to learn that Benjamin Franklin didn't discover electricity, you'll appreciate this take on hundreds of historical legends and debacles. Historians and humorists alike may be surprised to learn that: * Samuel Prescott made the famous horseback ride into Concord, not Paul Revere. * As a member of Parliament, Isaac Newton spoke only once. He asked for an open window. * On April 24, 1898, Spain declared war on the U.S., thus starting the Spanish-American War. The U.S. declared war the very next day, but not wanting to be outdone, had the date on the declaration changed from April 25 to April 21. With these and many other stories, leading humorist Leland Gregory once again highlights both the strange and the funny side of humankind.

Customer Reviews

Wonderful reading.
This a book full of wonderfully useless trivia. I like this type of book because of the fact that you can pick it up at any time and open it anywhere for serious mind boggling facts. 5 star plus.

Woeful
I've never particularly been a fan of 'stocking fillers', and coupled with the hindsight that this is a truely shocking example of the aforementioned, I have to question how this ever ended up in my shopping basket.
In short, the content is very poor, obviously there wasn't much stupid history to work with as large areas of the book include, well, just general facts. Buttermilk doesn't contain any butter apparently, and french poodles are originally from germany, its enthralling stuff.
The actual historical stories are pretty tepid aswell, and ironically the only high point of the book, we're talking about a low bar here, is the dreadful one liners that conclude most of the stories. Such witiscms, that are usually followed by tumbleweeds, or someone going 'bo-boom tsch' provide cringe entertainment for a short time, but thats about it.