The Book of Useless Information by Botham, Noel (2006) Paperback

The Amazing Book of Useless Information

by Noel Botham

brand new

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, Trivia, Humor, Comedy, Own, Ebooks

Paperback

First published June 26, 2006

About the author

In 1995, a secret society was formed comprising Britain's foremost thinkers, writers, and artists to explore the world's most bizarre nooks and crannies and to trade and share useless information (or, as founding member Keith Waterhouse, playwright and journalist, would have it, "totally bloody useless")-usually over a pint or two at a local pub. Now, The Useless Information Society shares its findings with Americ an readers in this first of what they threaten will be several volumes.

Noel Botham is charman and founding member of The Useless Information Society. Botham and the rest of his team lurk mostly around London

Reviews

[Madeline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fantastic bathroom reading. Here, have some random facts:

Every time Beethoven sat down to compose music, he poured ice water over his head.

Eosophobia is the fear of dawn.

Coca-Cola was originally green.

Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

The average woman consumes six pounds of lipstick in her lifetime.

Charles de Gaulle's final words were "It hurts."

The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses.

If a statue of a person on a horse depicts the horse with both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

The Taj Mahal was scheduled to be torn down in the 1830s.

Sister Boom-Boom was a transvestite nun who ran for mayor of San Francisco in 1982. He/she received more than twenty thousand votes.

The youngest pope was eleven years old.

The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast it breaks the sound barrier; the crack of the whip is actually a tiny sonic boom.

A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

A donkey will sink in quicksand, but a mule won't.

[Steve Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

This should be titled "The Useless Book Of Often Inaccurate Information". If you do a quick Google search of some of the "facts" stated herein you'll find some of them anything but factual.

Squirrels can't get rabies? Nope. Any mammal can, according to the CDC. Squirrels don't often contract it, but they could.

Mozart wrote "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" when he was five? Nope. When he was 25 he composed a number of variations on the already existing and very popular tune.

Attila the Hun was a dwarf? Nope. He was short, as many steppe horseman of his age were…but not a dwarf.

There are no records of non-rabid wolf attacks on humans? Nope! There is a fairly large list of attacks on humans throughout history.

Kamuela Searle was killed on the set by an elephant during the filming of "Tarzan"? Nope. He had an accident, finished the film, went on to make one more film with Cecio B. DeMille, and then retired from acting. He died of cancer three years later.

A can of Diet Coke will float and a can of regular Coke will sink? Let me go to the fridge and try that in the sink. Nope!

The origin of the word "news" comes from newspapers stories taking stories from everywhere, North, East, West and South…and using the first letter of each direction to derive "news"? Nope. It's a totally false and bogus etymology. "News" is plural of "new". It was derived from the Middle English "newes", and parallels the German "neues" and the French "nouvelle". This is probably the silliest thing I found in this book.

There is no such thing as a blue food, and even blueberries are purple? Nope. Arguably there is blue corn. True or not he stole that line from comedian George Carlin.

There are true facts in the book (and facts can be either true or false), but without taking the time a person can't know what is fact and what is bogus. I think it's safe to say that a significant percentage of the facts presented are bogus. I get the impression the author just cruised the net for whatever he could find that was interesting and stuck into this book. He didn't check for accuracy at all.

The problem I have with books like this is that people often cite such stuff…no matter how silly. I read books like this because I want to be entertained and illumined with truth…not B.S.

I almost hate to put it on my non-fiction shelf. It can't be trusted. The only reason I finished it was I wanted to blast it apart.

[Greg · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love trivia but I simply couldn't keep reading this book only 89 pages in.

At first I found the book enjoyable, and used the trivia as a jumping off point for further research. But the research usually revealed a whole other side to the story. For example, the book says David Rice Atchison was President of the US for one day. Some of the circumstances around that day are extraordinary, but he was never sworn in or officially assigned President.

I got upset when I read the infamous "Nova in Mexico" myth. This is a popular urban legend, but completely a legend nonetheless. (http://www.snopes.com/business/misxla...) I was very cynical at this point, and found another urban legend just a few pages later: http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/green.asp.

This book is poorly researched, which sadly takes all the fun out of it for me.

[Michael Meyerhofer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I usually love this kind of "odd fact" book, but "The Ultimate Book of Useless Information" is nothing short of a train wreck. I noticed right away that even for a book of random facts, the sections are poorly written with almost no continuity or interesting detail. More importantly, though, it takes only a few minutes to spot errors that are so glaringly obvious, one wonders just what kind of rock this alleged author crawled out from.

For example, the author states that if the ice caps melted, the oceans would not rise! Why? According to the author, because water takes up the same amount of space whether it's frozen or not--never mind that the ice caps are ABOVE the ocean, not inside it!! Apparently, Noel has never dropped too many ice cubes into a full glass before! This kind of idiocy is unforgivable--not just for a professional author, but for an editor and publishing house as well.

[Nicole · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was excited to get my hands on this book. However, I was disappointed because the facts are poorly researched. I thought this book would inspire many unique essay topics for my college classes, but upon some simple research I found that most "facts" I wanted to find more information on turned out to be false.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is full of random, silly, cute, odd, useless, interesting and funny little facts.

I'll spare you all from summing up a few but I do recommend reading it. It's one of those ideal 'I have a few moments to kill' books.

Cute!

[Conor Warren · Rating 1 out of 5]

A lot of the stuff in this book wasn't true upon further checking. I could tolerate a couple of mistakes. . .but this book just makes a lot of mistakes; it can also be very misleading.

Not trustworthy. What is the point of trivia if the shit you are saying isn't true?

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's terrible. The useless information is just made up. A cubic mile of fog does not contain "less than 1 gallon of water". It contains ~56,000 gallons.

The fun of reading useless facts is sharing them as conversation starters. But if you use these, the conversation will end when the other person calls you a gullible idiot.

[Sir Readalot · Rating 1 out of 5]

Doesn't live up to it's name, because I find it more useful than the most self help trash I've ever read.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a connoisseur of useless fact books, this one is unimpressive. Some facts within the book contradict other facts within the same book, for instance, on page 249, it states "the penguin is the only bird that can swim, but not fly." However, on page 244, it is stated that "the emu...can't fly, but it can swim."
Compared to the ultimate (my choice of descriptor - not referring to the specific book) Uncle John's Bathroom Readers, Mental Floss and the newer Armchair Readers,the Useless Information book doesn't fly.

I was relieved to read this review from Amazon, recently:
5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely hilarious!!, December 21, 2008
By Drew the Nerd "You don't know me. Just keep ... (Somewhere near Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Book of Useless Information (Paperback)
First of all, do not trust any reviews by anyone who states they did not read the whole book. This is basically a 286 page long April Fools joke and those who gave it a bad rating without reading the whole thing are just the suckers who fell for it.

DO NOT buy this if you are looking for a serious book of facts. DO buy it if you want to prank a friend.

The very last fact in this book sheds some light on the whole book. I will not ruin the ending by telling you what it is, though.....
April Fools!

[Cathie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny, interesting book full of, well, useless information! Some of the facts are really interesting, some not so, some of it I already knew (yeah, I already had my own reservoir of usless knowledge) and some left me shaking my head going "no way", "you can't be serious?!", or some other like statement. I shared tidbits of this book with whoever would listen and it started some really interesting and a few bizarre conversations. Useless information is good for conversation fodder.

I don't know if all the information is true but it certainly makes you wonder and think.

If you approach this book expecting serious things that will help make you sound intelligent or appear smart you will probably be very disappointed. On the other hand if you love to laugh while you read and don't take anything too seriously then this book is probably right up your alley.

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book, but let's be honest, I love all things random. Fill 300 pages with useless information, and you have one very happy reader. The reason this book is not five stars is that Botham spent too long on the animal kingdom. I much rather would learn that Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore were freshman roommates at Harvard or Louisa May Alcott hated children. She only wrote Little Women because her publisher asked her to. On that note, I better go get out Trivial Pursuit because at least one of the useless facts I just put in my brain has to be an answer to a question... Happy reading!

[Sam]

Noel Botham's The Book of Useless Information, mesmerized my mind but giving me facts I found out and I didn't need to find out. Did you know that 2 out of 5 guys admit that they don't say I love you to their wife. You get filled with wonderful knowledge about facts from U.S. Presidents to Egyptians from 500 B.C. You may know some facts and yet you may be dumbfounded about learing a new fact. I recommend this book for the fact of you will become a more knowledgeable person full of useless information by reading this book

[Niki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essentially just random facts about random things. Totally insane and amazing stuff in here, I read snippets all the time and bore people with my new facts. I have bought this book for a few people already and I'm always getting emails from them with great facts they found.

Example: In Saskatchewan, it is illegal to frown at a cow.

Waynes World was shot in 2 weeks.

And I'm forgetting all my facts already. Time for another re-read!

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first saw this book I thought "Oh this is just a joke." But, ohh, was I wrong. This book was utterly useless... funny, but useless. My favorite useless facts are "The U.S government spent $277,000 on pickle research," "In Texas, it is illegal to put graffiti on someone else's cow." and " It is against the law to stare at the mayor of Paris."

Yeah, these facts are funny, but they also make you think about the story behind the facts.

[John Spiller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gift from my spouse. As others have observed, there are some startling inaccuracies. Off the top of my head, folks from Manchester are not known as Manchurians; they are known as Mancunians. What's the use of a trivia book if you question the accuracy of the trivia itself.

[Bill Bennett · Rating 3 out of 5]

a fun read, but probably not all that accurate. The author said it all with his last entry "97% of all statistics are made up". Keep it in the bathroom to fill the time, it'll humor you.

[Brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I cannot count the number of entries in here that were blatantly plagiarized (I mean, like word for word) from 'Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts' (1979). Many other entries are old stories that really aren't true (Donald Duck was not banned in Finland; there is no evidence that Hitler had only one testicle). And some are just plain wrong (Aristotle thought the brain cooled the blood, not vice versa; there are no mention of redheaded villains in the Bible). This information is not only useless, it's wrong (or stolen).

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun and entertaining book to bring on a long car drive and read aloud to your family members. I read so many of these “useless facts” out loud to my mom and kids, who are big trivia fans, and therefore very entertained by this info! 4 instead of 5 stars because not all the facts were appropriate for young ears, so I sometimes found myself stopping mid-sentence so as to not scar my kids’ innocent ears, haha!

I could see this making a good “bathroom reader” book to keep in a basket for guests.

[Kat Main · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book plainly states what it aims to achieve. All of the info that you’ll get from the book is not 100% accurate, so if you get curious about a particular tidbit, search the web for yourself. I found both factual errors as well as grammatical errors in the book, however I took it with a grain of salt. If you read the last factoid in the book, you will also understand why it should be taken with a grain of salt.
A fun fact I took from this book: soap operas are so called because their original purpose was to advertise soap powder.

[CindySR · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been reading this in dribs and drabs for about 4 months. Interesting in parts.
Best useless fact: Lorne Green had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while
hosting an episode of Lorne Green's Wild Kingdom.

[Destiny Sanderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such fun!!!

[Hayley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Turn to the last page and read the last sentence before reading the book. You will understand most people's disappointment and why it is a waste of time to read this book.

[Al · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 Society's 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").

About the Author

Noel Botham is chairman and founding member of the Useless Information Society. Botham and the rest of his team lurk mostly around London.

[Emily Aguilar · Rating 2 out of 5]

So... I totally get some of the reviews. Some of these facts are not only useless, but boring as well. I mean, you can pick a topic and start talking about every uncommon fact about it, and bam! There you have it, a full book of useless facts about something in particular... It's not that interesting to read ten facts in a row about something you literally have no interest in. Useless, but then again... Useless information will remain useless. Although it was slightly boring to get through, some of these facts were actually very fucking interesting and hilarious.
Did you know that in a Las Vegas hospital several workers were fired because they were betting on when the patients were gonna die? Yes, it's messed up. But so funny.
George Washington was so afraid of being buried alive that he ordered his secretary to wait 2 days after his death to make sure he was really dead.
I learned a lot of useless, cute facts thanks to this book. It was funny and cute.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a lot of fun...and probably useless...facts from "The Book of Useless Information."

While it might not be appropriate for all ages, there are a few facts involving sex and death, it's a cool way to learn obscure facts.

For example, there's a US city where it's illegal to scrub a sink, no matter how dirty it is.

And did you know the average amount of money Americans as a whole spend on pets each year numbers in the billions?

Want to know which city has legally dirty sinks and just how many billions we spend on pets in a year? Read the book (or look at the bottom of this review).

The Book of Useless Information isn't a work of deep and engaging artistry. It's a good book to read as a passenger on a plane, bus or train, or just in the bathroom.

Sometimes a book that's easy to pick up and put down is just the ticket.


(Baltimore, MD and $5.4 billion)

[Ramon Duterte · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really a book, so much as it is a list of facts. I mean, it literally just lists facts. "Nutmeg is poisonous if injected intravenously." Done. Next fact. "Penguins are the only bird that can swim but can't fly." Bam. Next fact. Repeat.

So it's actually great for bathroom reading or for those quick, couple minute waits. I actually moved this book from my tablet to my phone for that reason.

But as a book it's pretty lame, and I also have a problem with some of the facts, since I know some of them to be either urban legends or just generally misleading without proper context (no, the Chevy Nova did not confuse Mexican consumers who that "no va" meant "no go").

[Andreina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is really interesting. This book is all about facts -useless information of course, but information nonetheless- that won't appear on any school quiz or anything like that, which is a shame because this book has really interesting facts and kept my attention all the way through the end.

I'm lucky to have a thrift shop nearby, and they have all these kind of books in stock. I picked this one up on a whim, thinking "maybe I can use this information one day, and impress people with all this useless knowledge.

Needless to say I enjoyed this book and thanks God I stumbled upon it and bought it.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This sort of book was created thinking of someone exactly like me, from the adorable squirrel on the cover - 'Squirrel! There's a squirrel on the cover! I must get it!' - to the oodles and oodles of self-admittedly useless information contained therein which i absolutely loved to absorb. Not really a 'to be read in one sitting' book, I found it to be the best book to dip into right before going to sleep. Nothing relaxes me more than learning about the favorite food of the Basques, or some other inanity. Recommended to all those who love to know silly factoids :o)

[Jarrett Shapiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is interesting, and my only complaint so far is of its randomness, but the author(s) make up for that by organizing much of their information into sections. This book doesn't necessarily draw you in at all, but is a great read for a time killer if you just want to know useless information. I definitely think this is worth a read if you like to learn things, but I will mention that this is not a story, there is no plot, no characters, and no climax. If you can get past that, it is worth it and I would definitely recommend it.