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1,227 Quite Interesting Facts To Blow Your Socks Off (2013)

by John Lloyd(Favorite Author)

3.84 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0393241033 (ISBN13: 9780393241037)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: Quite interesting! Fascinating facts about practically everything are included in this very readable volume. Because it is QI-based, one can assume that everything within the covers is genuine but one would be forgiven for wondering whether some of the facts are spoofs (of course, they aren't). But one could always consider Mark twain's quote, 'Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.'For instance, did Sylvester Stallone really clean out lion cages before becoming an actor? Did Argentine scientists really test hamsters to discover that giving them Viagra helps them to recover from jet lag 50% faster? Does a snowflake that falls on a glacier in central Greenland take 200,000 years to reach the sea? I wonder how they checked this one?Are bab... moreoons in Chile more receptive to poetry than the average Chilean? Seven Chilean scientists thought so after they had held a reading in the baboon enclosure of Santiago Zoo! And would a marshmallow travelling at sea level not begin to melt from friction caused by air resistance until it reached Mach 1.6 (1,218mph)? Clever these scientists who work such things out.Ones that are more amusing (and more possibly true - they all are!) include the longest place name in the UK with no repeated letters (think about it, answer at the end), Alice, the third largest town in Australia's Northern Territory used to be called 'Stuart' (Neville Shute must have been delighted it changed its name because 'A Town Like Stuart' doesn't seem to have the same ring about it!), 'Mother-in-law' is an anagram of 'Hitler's woman' (that explains plenty and many gentlemen would perhaps already have known this!), Leo Tolstoy's wife wrote out the drafts of 'War and Peace' for him, in longhand, six times - brave Sophia, reading it once is enough!And when a medium in a trance offered to answer any question, Groucho Marx asked, 'What's the capital of North Dakota?' Well, I'm sure the medium found this far too easy for everyone knows it is Metternich ... oh, sorry Bismarck, well I knew it was the name of a German statesman. On the literary front, Charles Dickens considered Small Sam, Little Larry and Puny Pete before settling on our well-known and well-liked Tiny Tim and his alternatives for Chuzzlewit included Sweetledew, Chuzzletoe, Sweetleback and Sweetlewag; perhaps Martin Sweetlewag might have caught on as well as Martin Chuzzlewit has, who knows? John Steinbeck used 300 pencils writing 'East of Eden' (which leads me to wonder how many Sophia Tolstoy used in transcribing 'War and Peace') and Evelyn Waugh might never have written 'Decline and Fall', 'Scoop', 'Brideshead Revisited' and the rest if he had succeeded in drowning himself during his first teaching job in 1925; he went out to sea to commit the act but turned back after being stung by a jellyfish!Finally I'm sure we all know an ultracrepidarian, for that is someone who doesn't know what they are talking about and I have discovered that I am probably a great dringler, for to dringle is to waste time in a lazy manner!As I said at the beginning, it is indeed a quite interesting, and enjoyable, book with plenty of fascinating facts that they say, 'will blow your socks off' - I must confess mine are still on!Oh, by the way, the longest place name in the UK with no repeated letters is, of course (!), Bricklehampton, a village in Worcestershire.
review 2: This was another book I have dipped into, rather than read through - usually when I want something light to read before bed. Once you start,though, it's hard to stop as the facts are fascinating, bizarre, intriguing etc. The only thing I found a bit odd was you feel at times like there are tenuous links between the facts, but really I think there are very few, and that doesn't feel quite right to my brain, but that's me! A fun book if you like trivia. less

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