The Colossal Book of Incredible Facts for Curious Minds: 5,000 staggering facts on science, nature, history, movies, music, the universe and more!

by Chas Newkey-Burden, Ken Okona-Mensah, Nigel Henbest

5,000 facts - more than any other book on the market - that will astound, amuse and fascinate you!

A polish bear in World War II rose to the rank of colonel.

Penguins can't taste fish.

The ashes of the man who invented the pringles container are buried in one.

Houseflies buzz in the key of F.

'hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia' is the fear of long words.


These are just 0.02% of all the facts in this incredible tome! Written by seven authors and covering subjects as diverse as The Universe, Art and Literature, The Natural World and Movies,  The Colossal Book of Incredible Facts for Curious Minds  is the ultimate trivia book!

Why not amaze family and friends with the reasons pandas do handstands, the sinister source of the term 'rule of thumb', or that the patent for the fire hydrant was destroyed... in a fire. Every entry is weird, wonderful, inspiring and quite brilliantly, true!

Genres: Nonfiction

464 pages, Paperback

Published March 5, 2024

About the author

Chas Newkey-Burden is a British journalist and author. His books include The Reduced History of Britain, Great Email Disasters and Not In My Name: A Compendium Of Modern Hypocrisy (co-written with Julie Burchill). He has also written unauthorised biographies of Simon Cowell, Paris Hilton, Amy Winehouse, Alexandra Burke and six official publications for Arsenal football club.

He has written for publications including The Guardian, Four Four Two, Total Football, Time Out, Attitude and The Big Issue; and internet sites including Ynetnews, The First Post and Guardian Blogs. A former Contributing Editor to Loaded magazine and former editor of the football website icons.com, where he was also Dennis Bergkamp's official biographer. Interviewees include David Beckham, Ricky Gervais, Frank Lampard, Rachel Stevens and James Bourne.

Newkey-Burden has discussed his books, football news and the Middle East on TV and radio shows including Sky News, CNN, BBC Breakfast News, The Today Programme on Radio 4, Five Live Breakfast, TalkSport, Capital Gold and BBC Radio London. He was featured on the BBC 2 documentary Cold War Kids, the Sky One show Celebrities On Heat and The Biography Channel and Fuse Television's documentaries on Amy Winehouse.

Newkey-Burden has a blog, entitled OyVaGoy, in which he describes himself as 'philosemitic' and posts opinions firmly in support of the state of Israel, and critical of those he perceives as being against Israel.
In July 2008, the British satirical magazine Private Eye reported that Newkey-Burden had posted positive reviews of his own books on the Amazon.co.uk online bookstore.

Reviews

[Stephanie]

A fun book for casually exploring random facts from a variety of categories, including animals, space, technology and more.

This book could be amusing for teenagers or maybe if you’re sitting at the airport or waiting for a doctor’s appointment and want to check out for a while.

[Ink]

The Colossal Book of Incredible Facts for Curious Minds by Nigel Henbest; Simon Brew; Sarah Tomley; Ken Okona-Mensah; Tom Parfitt; Trevor Davies; Chas Newkey-Burden is so much fun I cannot even. So my review will simply be;

You had me at "Wombat poo cubes"

Glorious

Thank you to Netgalley, Octopus Publishing US, Cassell and the authors for this hilarious ARC! My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

[Theediscerning]

Phew. It takes a fair few evenings to read this book – it really is destined for the smallest room and those chance browses, but be prepared for that to take years. This has a lot – and I mean A LOT – of trivia. Here is a chunk on black holes, which you probably can't get out of, especially when seeing online debates about the factoid provided about the rudeness of "trou noir" in French, which doesn't seem to be an issue after all. But who knew Poe worked as a cosmologist? Here is stuff about animals, there the athletes – and this suitably takes us from the pole vault to the wine called Pinot Evil, which is the best name for plonk since a certain nun was found to be a bit blue.

Reading it cover to cover it does vary – it seems a bit stilted and dry with the science, physics and space matter, but perhaps too light with the Hollywood sections just rehashing the better trivia found on imdb. At one extreme is audible rhubarb, at the other the fact cats' miaows are never directed at other cats, only at humans. "Itai-itai" if you have to hold the physical copy of this until the end, but checking it out digitally was certainly educational, and for a lot longer than your average trivia book. I'd like to say it was all roses, but there were a helluva lot of lapses in the proof-reading; hopefully what you buy is spotless. That way it is worth four stars without a shadow of a doubt.

Mind you, it doesn't try and tell us what one of those looks like. It was too busy telling us so much else.

[Charlene Keller]

Although based on the cover this book promised a captivating journey through incredible facts for young minds, the experience fell short of my expectations.

While the content itself was extensive and somewhat intriguing, the lack of visual aids and repetitive writing made it difficult to stay engaged for extended periods.
It’s a commendable compilation of interesting information, but the presentation could use more variety to hold the reader’s attention.

Thankyou to Octopus Publishing imprint Cassell and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.
Charlene 📚🌸🤗 @lastnownext

[Lakshmi AnAnd]

This is an absolute gem for curious minds. This book is a treasure trove of incredible and fun facts that will leave readers in awe. From the bizarre to the mind-boggling, each page offers something new and fascinating to discover. Whether you're a trivia enthusiast or just someone looking to expand your knowledge in an entertaining way, this book is sure to delight. With its engaging writing style and diverse range of topics, This book is a must-have for anyone who loves to learn while having a great time.

[Steve]

I enjoyed this book. The facts are well-written and concise and cover a vast array of topics. My favourite topics were in the first part of the book, including nature, science, and the human body. But to me, the real test was how fascinating the facts were in topics I was generally not as interested in such as the arts and sports. And indeed these facts were also quite interesting. The only facts that didn’t catch my attention were those for sports where I had no background such as cricket and rugby. Thank you to Netgalley and Cassell for the advance reader copy.

[Anjali Bhandari]

The colossal book of incredible facts for curious minds - the title truly divulges the nature of the book. Filled with hundreds of facts across diverse categories ranging from organisms occurring in nature to human body, from history to literature and from arts to sports, it has it all and more.

This is the kind of the book that belongs in everyone’s library, a fun read you can pick every now and then and learn something amazing. The kind of book that you want to keep going back to.

Rating - 4.7/5

[Denice Langley]

In an after school program of 4th, 5th and 6th graders, this is ALWAYS the first book checked out and the most shared. Anytime you can get a child to voluntarily read, it's a good day. This group of authors should be commended but all I can give them is 5 stars. Please write another book.

[Lisa Davidson]

It's easy to collect a bunch of random facts, but this book collects many interesting facts. Everything here is worth knowing, and there is such a variety. This book is so much fun for anyone curious; grownups can enjoy it too. Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this.

[Katie Craig]

This book is a great book of facts for those of us who like random facts. This book is a lot of fun.