Did you know that:- Squanto, the Indian who helped the Massachusetts Bay Colony survive, spoke English and had actually made 3 round-trip crossings to Europe before the Pilgrim's 1620 landing at Plymouth Rock ever took place?-The Continental Divide, the imaginary line that divides North America into rivers that flow west from those that flow east, itself divides, forming a large basin in Wyoming where water flows neither in nor out?- Abner Doubleday, the reputed "father of baseball," commanded the artillery at Fort Sumter and thus fired the first Union shot of the Civil War?-The Battle of Hastings was not fought at Hastings?- The ointment Bacitracin gets part of its name from an American girl, Margaret Tracy, who had a leg wound that led to the development of the antibiotic?- Both the largest and the brightest object that you can see with human eye are located in one easy-to-find constellation?This book is, at heart, a glorified trivia book, but describing it that way really sells it just a bit short. Trivia books all too often tend to deal with material that is inherently uninteresting - it's simply trivial. Once you've read some fact in a trivia book, you tend to forget it immediately. While it's clearly an opinion, who, after reading the number of dimples on a golf ball says to himself, "I think I'm going to remember that fact and maybe even tell all of my friends?" This book is a series of short stories, not just a long list of questions and answers with no context. And after reading the stories in this book, people often respond with the very title of the book, as in "Huh. I didn't know that." The stories are organized into sections relating to history, geography, sports, arts and literature, science and technology and the interesting origins of words and phrases."Written with a great deal of charm and wit." CreateSpace reviewer
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