2201 Fascinating Facts: 2 Vols. in One (Hardcover)

by David Louis (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Some people -- like me -- enjoy reading books containing lists of peculiar or droll facts. Such books are arguably the precursor of much of the net. But if you find yourself away from your WWW browser, and feel the need to snarf oddities even when offline, you'll be glad to know there's a book in which you can learn that:

• the average American's vocabulary contains 10,000 words
• there are more than 40,000 characters in Chinese script
• in downtown Lima, Peru, there is a brass statue of Winnie-the-Pooh

and, being a poet, my personal favorite from this book is that:

• one can see the stars during the day from the bottom of a well.

Fascinating!

Product Description
Did you know that:
—in 1740 a cow was found guilty of sorcery in France and publicly hanged?
—the principality of Monaco consists of only 370 acres?
—the Mona Lisa has no eyebrows?
—there are ten million bricks in the Empire State Building?
These intriguing facts and 2197 more like them are collected here to delight, entertain, educate and astonish trivia buffs, esoterica experts, information addicts and anyone else with a passion for collecting odd bits of knowledge.
Dip into 2201 Fascinating Facts and you'll be hooked instantly. You'll find provocative, curious and often humorous facts about everything from the body, smoking, sports, and geography to place names, human oddities, weather, royalty, government, fallacies, firsts, fashions and dozens of other topics.
2201 Fascinating Facts will help you settle bets, finish crossword puzzles, amaze your friends. It will supply you with an endless fund of conversation starters—and stoppers. And because you'll be the only one around who knows how many calories there are in the glue on a postage stamp, who invented the parking meter or how many ridges there are around the edge of a quarter, you'll soon find yourself the star of the office lunch group and the life of every party.
Whether you're merely an interested collector of trivia or a hardcore fact fiend, you'll find 2201 Fascinating Facts totally irresistible. It will be a book you'll go back to again and again.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Gramercy (December 12, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517395746
• ISBN-13: 978-0517395745
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #319,641 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Out of date book, January 31, 2002

By	Tomas MF - See all my reviews

While the book promised to be a "must have" for trivia fans, when you start looking at the facts and you compare them with more recent and updated books, you realize how out of date and ancient this book is.

An example? It mentions that there is a code for statues with horses. The author mentions about having four, three or two legs on ground and the different meanings (how did the person die). This is all a "myth" and a dark obscure legend. There is no such code and it has been verified (see Ed Zotti "Know it all")

If I were you, I'd buy Cecil Adams' books "The straight dope". They are funnier and updated...

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Many facts, but many factoids, too., July 18, 2004

By	MCSD for Microsoft .Net (Atlanta) - See all my reviews

When I read this book years ago, I found the information therein just as the title states: fascinating. But upon further perusing of this work, I began to notice incorrect information presented as fact. For example, the deer botfly does NOT fly at the stated high speed; that fanciful notion came from a quote by etymologist Charles H. T. Townsend. His absurd estimation was proven false by Irving Langmuir.

I've also found information in this book that contradicts "facts" elsewhere in the book. And the statistics cited from years ago are often out of date and inaccurate. I recommend this title only if you are willing to verify some of its information against other sources and have a keen ability to distinguish between fact and fascinating fiction -- however plausible it might seem.

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Grrr... Argh - Not all "facts" listed are true!, October 27, 1999

By A Customer

This would be a good book if it didn't make false claims. For example: You CANNOT "see stars during the day from the bottom of a well" - this is an urban legend.

I find it disturbing from other comments that people dig this book out as "proof" of certain things, which are NOT TRUE.

Don't except anything on faith - even if its written in a book.