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The Book of General Ignorance | 
 enlarge | Authors: John Mitchinson, John Lloyd
Publisher: Harmony
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $11.24
You Save: $8.71 (44%)
New (38) Used (14) Collectible (1) from $8.19
Avg. Customer Rating:  54 reviews
Sales Rank: 1666
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 0307394913
Dewey Decimal Number: 031.02
EAN: 9780307394910
ASIN: 0307394913
Publication Date: August 7, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.
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 “gotcha” compendium of how little we actually know about anything. It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school.
Revealing the truth behind all the things we think we know but don’t, this book leaves you dumbfounded about all the misinformation you’ve managed to collect during your life, and sets you up to win big should you ever be a contestant on Jeopardy! or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Besides righting the record on common (but wrong) myths like Captain Cook discovering Australia or Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone, The Book of General Ignorance also gives us the skinny on silly slipups to trot out at dinner parties (Cinderella wore fur, not glass, slippers and chicken tikka masala was invented in Scotland, not India).
Thomas Edison said that we know less than one millionth of one percent about anything: this book makes us wonder if we know even that much.
You’ll be surprised at how much you don’t know! Check out THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE for more fun entries and complete answers to the following:
How long can a chicken live without its head?
About two years.
What do chameleons do?
They don’t change color to match the background. Never have; never will. Complete myth. Utter fabrication. Total Lie. They change color as a result of different emotional states.
Who invented champagne?
Not the French.
How many legs does a centipede have?
Not a hundred.
How many toes has a two-toed sloth?
It’s either six or eight.
How many penises does a European earwig have?
a)Fourteen
b)None at all
c)Two (one for special occasions)
d)Mind your own business
Which animals are the best-endowed of all?
Barnacles. These unassuming modest beasts have the longest penis relative to their size of any creature. They can be seven times longer than their body.
What is a rhino’s horn made from?
A rhinoceros horn is not, as some people think, made out of hair.
Who was the first American president?
Peyton Randolph.
What were George Washington’s false teeth made from?
Mostly hippopotamus.
What was James Bond’s favorite drink?
Not the vodka martini.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 49 more reviews...
 Quite Interesting, you know October 12, 2008
If you know and like the British Quiz Show 'Quite Interesting' then this book is a must. General Ignorance is a regular part of this hilarious panel quiz hosted by Stephen Fry and the book puts together all the suprising information that the panellists forfeit their hard-earned points supplying a common but wrong answer.
If you don't know QI (make your cable TV get it), then it's still a well-written, informative and amusing collection of facts that are quite contrary to those ones known as General Knowledge.
If you think that Edison invented the lightbulb, Henry the VIII had six wives and the tallest mountain in the world is Mount Everest you're in the wrong.
Quick, go and read this book before somebody spots you for the bloody ignorant you're really are.
FANTASTIC LITTLE KNOWN TRIVIA October 9, 2008
TURNED ME INTO MORE OF A KNOW IT ALL THAN I WAS BEFORE,
GREAT BATHROOM READING!!
Fun book, but it too shows some ignorance... August 24, 2008
This is a thoroughly interesting and fun read. However, awash as I am in my own ignorance, I have detected a few gaffs here and there...such as the authors' claims that a star named Lucy (which allegedly has the heart of a diamond) is precisely located some billions of miles OVER Australia! Anyone with a whit of background in cosmology would recognize that since our Earth is spinning at somewhere around 1,000 mph and is at the same time zipping around the sun at 18 miles a second (give or take a few mps), and that our sun is sailing along its own trajectory, carrying its retinue of orbiting planets, and that the star Lucy is on its own separate orbit through the galaxy, the chance of Lucy being situated over a particular spot on the globe for more than an instant is very, very slim. Factor in the time delay caused by the galactic distance of light years involved and it's obvious that wherever Lucy seems to to us today, it's no longer anywhere near that spot "over Australia" in actuality. So, creeping general ignorance, like entropy, always eventually triumphs...including "expert" books on ignorance, it would seem.
what a fun book! August 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
i loved this book!
it's a collection of short (like, 1 page) mini-essays about things we commonly believe to be true, but aren't. each is written as a question. then the correct answer is revealed, with a load of back up and ancillary information.
a few of the snippets weren't interesting. but overall, i kept finding myself thinking, "ok, i'll read just one more... just one more... ok, another... ok, just one more." i also regularly thought, "wow -- that's fascinating. i wonder if i can remember that!" but i have -- even since i finished reading the book -- found myself foisting my knew and robust knowledge onto my wife and other unsuspecting people, when a pertinent subject came up in conversation. i'm sure they now think i am substantially more brilliant. or annoying. maybe both?
like -- did you know that the tallest mountain in the world is NOT everest? everest is the highest, but the tallest (when including the part under water) is mauna kea, the high point on the island of hawaii.
or, that america is not named after amerigo vespucci (as i'd always understood), but richard ameryk, the wealthy bristol merchant who funded john cabot's voyage to what is now canada, in the late 1400s.
think you know who invented the telephone? you're probably wrong.
how many dog years equal one human year? not seven.
what a rhino's horn is made of? not hair.
how we measure earthquakes? not the richter scale.
what color is a panther? trick question: there's no such thing as a panther.
you get the idea. it's a factoid lover's candy story, a belly rub for the "did you know?" dog in you.
 Good for flipping through, but overrated August 10, 2008
Like a lot of other books that claim to contain "100 things we bet you didn't know" or the like, The Book of General Ignorance is only good for paging through. It's certainly not worthy of a thorough reading, since it spans across so many topics, including religion (and many of us aren't religious, deeming the true "facts" already myths), biological life, famous people, and lots of earth science. Not to mention, these topics are scattered throughout, with no sense of order. However unorganized the book was, I did find it interesting that it would be impossible for Rudolph the Reindeer to be a male, since male reindeer lose their antlers before late December.
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