WEIRD FACTS & TRIVIA

"From the creators of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Useless Information comes another enlightening, entertaining, and ultimately useless assortment of trivia.

If you find yourself transfixed by the most trivial of trivia, or mesmerized by the most minor of minutiae, The Useless Information Societys latest findings can satisfy your every need. This wide-ranging collection will fill every nook and cranny of your brain with information you'll surely never need, but will enjoy learning anyway!

Did you know...
- that penguins can jump six feet out of the water?
- that everyone is color-blind at birth?
Would you care to know...
- what the first meal eaten on the moon was?
- what country drinks the most Coca-Cola? (Hint: It's not the United States.)
In 1995, a secret society was formed comprising Britain's foremost thinkers, writers, and artists to trade and share in useless information (or, as founding member Keith Waterhouse, playwright and journalist, would have it, "totally bloody useless")."

Author: Noel Botham
Kindle Edition:  224 pages Kindle Book
Company: Perigee  (2007-12-18) (2007-12-18)
List Price: $12.95
Amazon Price: $9.99

Let's face it: Sometimes, even Noel Coward could fail. Take his 1961 musical Sail Away: Coward wrote the book, lyrics, and score--and sometimes you wish he had delegated a bit more. Set on the cruise ship S.S. Coronia, the show certainly has its moments, but overall it fails to make a lasting impression. While there are lovely tunes ("Sail Away," "Later than Spring") and a few peerless comic showcases ("Useless Useful Phrases," "Why Do the Wrong People Travel?"), Coward's trademark wit comes across as toothless now. And yet Sail Away remains cultish because it turned Elaine Stritch into a marquee name. The singer-actor was so good during the out-of-town tryouts that Coward expanded her part, and Stritch ran with it. She sells a ballad like "Something Very Strange" with all her heart, but what she really transcends are bravura pieces such as "Why Do the Wrong People Travel?" (which she reprised in her one-woman show At Liberty). If you want to listen to the birth of a stage star, this CD is it. --Elisabeth Vincentelli

Atists:  Noel Coward, Elaine Stritch
Audio CD: 
Company: Varese Sarabande  (2003-07-22)
List Price: $16.98
Amazon Price: $16.98
Used Price: $9.49

"All you never needed to know, and couldn't be bothered to ask...What you may so cavalierly call useless information could prove invaluable to someone else. Then again, maybe not. But to The Useless Information Society, any fact that passes its gasp-inducing, not-a-lot-of-people-know-that test merits inclusion in this fascinating but ultimately useless book... Did you know (or do you care)...

• That fish scales are used to make lipstick?
• Why organized crime accounts for ten percent of the United States' annual income?
• The name of the first CD pressed in the United States?
• The last year that can be written upside-down or right side-up and appear the same?
• The shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar?
• How much Elvis weighed at the time of his death?
• What the suits in a deck of cards represent?
• How many Quarter Pounders can be made from one cow?
• How interesting useless information can be?

The Book of Useless Information answers these teasers and is packed with facts and figures that will captivate you -- and anyone who shares your joy in the pursuit of pointless knowledge."

Author: Noel Botham
Kindle Edition:  304 pages Kindle Book
Company: Perigee  (2007-07-17) (2007-07-17)
List Price: $12.95
Amazon Price: $9.99

Bigger, better, and more useless than ever! In their groundbreakingly useless book, The Book of Useless Information, the members of the Useless Information Society proved that knowledge doesn't have to be useful to be entertaining. Now they present a new collection of their most fascinating, hilarious, and wholly trivial findings. The Ultimate Book of Useless Information includes such "did you knows" as: -- Peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite
-- The average person spends two weeks of their life kissing
-- And giraffes have no vocal cords"

Author: Noel Botham
Kindle Edition:  224 pages Kindle Book
Company: Perigee  (2007-07-17) (2007-07-17)
List Price: $12.95
Amazon Price: $9.99

The Useless Information Society's latest collection, The Amazing Book of Useless Information, will answer questions readers never even knew they had. From space travel to the history of jelly beans, this wideranging, brain-teasing, and altogether useless book will give readers information to out-trivialize even their cleverest of companions.Features such fascinating facts as:There is a town in West Virginia called Looneyville, Women can talk with less effort than men, Lemons have more sugar than orangesAnd answers to these life-changing questions:What was the Ancient Roman cure for astomachache?What is a "buckle bunny"? Where is the coldest place in the universe?

Author: Noel Botham
Kindle Edition:  240 pages Kindle Book
Company: Perigee  (2008-08-05) (2008-08-05)
List Price: $12.95
Amazon Price: $9.99

The Answers are easy, The Facts are obscure

Toy:  Ages 12 - Adult
Company: Wegman Enterprises 
List Price: 
Amazon Price: 

Toy:  Over 2000 Trivia Questions - just press the button for the question & press again for the answer, Repeat / skip button, Key chain clip
Company: Mattel 
List Price: 
Amazon Price: 

Bigger, better, and more useless than ever! In their groundbreakingly useless book, The Book of Useless Information, the members of the Useless Information Society proved that knowledge doesn't have to be useful to be entertaining. Now they present a new collection of their most fascinating, hilarious, and wholly trivial findings. The Ultimate Book of Useless Information includes such "did you knows" as: -- Peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite
-- The average person spends two weeks of their life kissing
-- And giraffes have no vocal cords"

Author: Noel Botham
Kindle Edition:  224 pages Kindle Book
Company: Perigee  (2007-07-17) (2007-07-17)
List Price: $12.95
Amazon Price: $9.99

From the creators of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Useless Information-a collection of even greater insignificance.

More useless than ever before! Impress know-it-all friends with this all-new hodgepodge of frivolous facts and silly statistics that no one really needs to know. But honestly, how cool is it to find out that...

* There is a place in Maryland called Monkey-s Eyebrow
* Giving yellow flowers is a sign of bad luck in Russia
* One brow wrinkle is the result of 200,000 frowns
* Paper can be made from asparagus

This is the book that will also tell you-

* The meaning of -mageirocophobia-
* Where it is illegal to kill a butterfly
* Huckleberry Finn-s remedy for warts
* What bodily fluid the Romans used as a hair treatment

And much, much more!

Author: Noel Botham
Kindle Edition:  208 pages Kindle Book
Company: Perigee Trade  (2009-05-14) (2009-07-07)
List Price: $12.95
Amazon Price: $9.99

This an unusual guide to a made up Seven Basic Food Groups, which includes "body building," "foundation foods," and also "margarine" as a food group! Food planning, something Mrs. Brown learns from reading, television, and the radio, is discussed as a way to keep the diet in balance. The film captures a typical day in the Brown household as they plan, make, and eat meals. This gem features some classically antiquated 50's "wisdom" about good, healthy eating.

DVD:  NTSCTitle: Foundation Foods, Year: 1951, Run Time: 11 Mintues, Audio/Visual: Sound, Color
Company: Quality Information Publishers, Inc.  (2008)
List Price: $7.99
Amazon Price: $4.99

This film takes an extensive and absorbing look at the history, growth, production, and distribution of California prunes. Starting with the immigration of Frenchman Louis Pellier, who brought the first cuttings of French prune trees to California, the film tells about how the prune industry was launched, using actors with narration instead of dialogue. Included in the film is an overview of growing and harvesting, processing, and packaging, with shots of Sunsweet workers wearing vintage uniforms while working in the plant. The prune growers then demonstrate how to turn the humble prune into many different dishes. Most interestingly prune cake and prune pie! A fun film that captures the history of prunes and California.

DVD:  Title: A Fortune in Two Trunks, Year: 1951, Run Time: 27:07, Audio/Visual: Sound, Color
Company: Quality Information Publishers, Inc. 
List Price: $8.99
Amazon Price: $4.99

So you think life is weird?

It would appear that our desire to show respect and honor the dead is an instinct deeply encoded in our nature as humans. Even Neanderthal man, who walked the Earth more than 60,000 years ago, buried his loved ones with carefully arranged animal bones and flowers. Some of us, alas, choose to ignore that instinct.

Take, for example, the case of Katherine Knight, a butcher who stabbed her boyfriend thirty-seven times, then invited his adult children to dinner and served them a nice stew of potatoes, vegetables, their father's boiled head, and his baked buttocks, filleted.

Or David Galvan, whose drunk uncle permanently cured him of the hiccups by accidentally shooting him in the head.

Or Jean-Louis Toubon, who choked to death on his girlfriend's edible panties.

Maybe all of death is happenstance. Or maybe it's just life, filtering out the gene pool. Thinning the Herd: Tales of the Weirdly Departed is a delightfully irreverent collection of real-life anecdotes, facts, and observations regarding Death. You know . . . that thing that only happens to other people.

Author: Cynthia Ceilan
Paperback:  320 pages
Company: The Lyons Press  (2007-11-01)
ISBN: 1599212196
List Price: $14.95
Amazon Price: $0.98
Used Price: $1.98

The electrifying holographic cover of Ripley's Believe It or Not! Prepare to be Shocked gives a tantalizing taste of the bizarre and amazing facts and pictures to be found throughout the latest book in Ripley's multi-million-selling series. Among the crazy stories featured is the Electric Man who can power light bulbs and fry fish in his bare hands, a jet-powered bar stool, a man with bright blue skin, and cats that glow in the dark!

Seventeen chapters--ranging from Epic Endeavors and Fun Festivals to Fantastic Food and Startling Art--cover an ever-widening group of subjects and stories around which the book is based. Intriguing interviews with astounding individuals spotlight their achievements and reveal more about what makes them tick. Informative `Ripley's Research' boxes give the scientific explanation behind some of the most incredible tales in the book, such as why cats are sometimes born with wings, how someone can swallow live snakes, and how snow donuts are actually formed. In addition, miscellaneous lists and other text features are scattered throughout, including a list of competitive eating achievements and a recipe for deep-fried scorpions. And double-page features, entitled `Enter the Vault,' showcase the best of the Ripley archive of black and white photographs of unbelievable people, places, and creatures of the past.

Every page will make you gasp with astonishment at the truly unbelievable tales that make up the wonderful world of Ripley's Believe It or Not!

Hardcover:  256 pages
Company: Ripley Publishing  (2008-08-05)
ISBN: 1893951316
List Price: $28.95
Amazon Price: $2.99
Used Price: $2.00

Author: K. R. Hobbie, Arkady Leokum, Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts, Robert Obojski, Michael J. Pellowski, Joseph Rosenbloom, Doug Storer, The Diagram Group, William Tichy
Paperback:  360 pages
Company: Sterling  (2007-08-01)
ISBN: 1402749872
List Price: $6.95
Amazon Price: $3.60
Used Price: $3.60