The Things That Nobody Knows: 501 Mysteries of Life, the Universe and Everything

by William Hartston

A playful and diverting, yet always scientifically rigorous look at those simple mysteries that are yet to be solved Why are so many giraffes gay? Has human evolution stopped? Where did our alphabet come from? Can robots become self-aware? Can lobsters recognize other lobsters by sight? What goes on inside a black hole? Are cell phones bad for us? Why can't we remember anything from our earliest years? Full of the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything, this is a fascinating and unputdownable exploration of the limits of human knowledge of our planet, its history and culture, and the universe beyond.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Popular Science, Science Nature, Reference

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Full name: William Roland Hartston.

Reviews

[Kylie🐾 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this book 4 🌟 because I found that some topics that I read had completely gone in one ear and out of the other. I also found that some topics were just dragging on and there were no real answer to it, the topic was being talked about but not in a way that you’d think that topic was being talked about (if you know what I mean). However considering that my area of study is animals, and I have a huge interest in science based things i found those topics to be enjoyable. It filled me with joy that I already knew most of the things I read, I liked that most of the topics actually had an actual answer and I felt that the one’s that weren’t answered could have been if more research went into it. I know for a fact that some couldn’t possibly have had an answer to it... which is interesting but at the same time different topics could have been talked about instead.

[Bharath · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a nice book which has a long list of unknowns. However, it does not delve into an of those in detail - each of the topics gets about 1/2 to 3/4 of a page. There are many mysteries I doubt any one will care about such as people's hair, colour etc. It seems that the list is pushed to get to 501. It would have been better had there been about 201 mysteries.....

[Rex Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is just delightful. You know how “they” always say the more you know, the more you know that you don’t know? And you have actually felt that way yourself as you lived and studied and did whatever through life. Well, to explore how abysmally, unqualifiedly, irredeemably ignorant we really are take a jaunt through this book. It’s not something you’ll labor with. You just sample it a few mysteries at a time and be thoroughly entertained.

We do NOT know:

What animal is the closest living relative of the ancestor of all mammals. Current best guess: the aardvark.

Who the first people to arrive in North America were. Could be the Clovis people. Maybe the Denisovans. Possibly the Polynesians.

We’re not even sure who can rightfully claim to have “discovered” America in relatively modern times. Recently, Chinese maps suggest they came to America in 1421, or possibly visited here in 2200 BC.

While we’re on the subject of North American migration, guess who came in such waves that they still understand each other, even without contact for hundreds of years. Believe it or not, the Athabasca Indians of Alaska and the Navajo of the Southwest can converse in their own languages with each other.

Between about 1200 and 1150 BC the greatest civilizations in the West – Egypt, Greece, and the Hittites – all collapsed. We don’t know why.

We don’t know when we discovered the Earth is round. Pretty much from the time of Eratosthenes in 240 BC, no respectable Greek thinker ever suggested the Earth was anything by round. Better than that, we can’t say.

What the hell are the hundreds of huge jars for in the Plain of Jars?

We know there is a huge lake, Lake Vostok, two and a half miles below the surface of Antarctica. We have no idea what if any creatures live there.

We don’t know if there is any biological reality to the idea of different human races.

We don’t know why Native Americans have grooves on the backs of their teeth.

When did humans first reach Australia? No clue.

You may have heard this one. How do bumblebees manage to fly? We don’t know.

Here is my personal favorite: what is life? We can’t say.

Here is the second place favorite: what caused sex? Originally, there wasn’t any. Cells just divided. We can’t explain why the more complex process of sex won in evolution.

This is something you keep handy to pester your significant other with. Happy wondering!

[David Stewart · Rating 1 out of 5]

Full of sloppy factual and scientific errors, not to be taken seriously...

[Ashok Krishna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, we all read books to learn and know something. Imagine reading a book to know what we don't know! That's exactly what this book is for. An admirable collection of things that we know nothing about, this book at once outlines our ignorance and fills us with the curiosity to know more. It also debunks the myth of us humans being the most intelligent of species. But it also highlights the curiosity and enthusiasm with which we look around ourselves with wonder and continue our quest for wisdom. A slow, but interesting read. 3.5 stars!

[Dan Stern · Rating 2 out of 5]

You can't really complain that this book doesn't give you answers when the title is "Things Nobody Knows." With that in mind, it's a fun read. I may not know why lesbian albatrosses are common but I'm glad to know that they are.

[Gary Stringer · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely fascinating read, full of things I didn't know, and things I didn't know we didn't know. Plus the odd thing that we've learned more about in recent years. So, perhaps we now don't know a little less than when this was published, or maybe through knowing those things, we've now discovered even more that we didn't know we didn't know.

Some of the topics I found more interesting than others, but that's inevitable in a book like this. In fact, it's a good thing, because it means there's plenty in here for everyone, no matter your range of personal interests.

[Brenda Daun · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book to read in short bursts. None of the questions had very in depth answers, but they did prompt me to want to learn more about a few different topics.

[Fons · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's fun to read about life's mysteries, it is even better when those mysteries are ridiculously mundane.

The Things That Nobody Knows is packed with these kind of mysteries and a fun and compact read because of it.

The only downside is that it feels slightly outdated already!

3 Stars, fun as a side-read

[MR B P HUGHES · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stil don’t know.

This book whilst giving interesting details of each and every subject ends up almost always with a blank. If your looking for answers rather than details, avoid.

[Eloise Vanbrabant · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was quite good but the beginning was a bit boring.

[Allie Shen · Rating 3 out of 5]

“What you don’t know would make a great book.” - Rev. Sydney Smith (1771-1845)

The book started by defining known unknowns and unknown unknowns, where acknowledgement of the latter humbles us. And if that didn’t help, the rest of the book went on to show that there are many things we don’t even know we don’t know. It is essentially a book of questions without any concrete answers.

Only a small section is dedicated to each topic, which makes it a light and pleasant read. However, I found many topics to be unsatisfactory because 1) I already know about it, 2) the book failed to go more in depth into the topic, or 3) I have no interest in it. There are a few parts that I couldn’t understand because I am not familiar with the context. For example, “how did XXX die?”. It’s not a topic that would interest you unless you know who XXX is. Prior knowledge is probably still needed to better appreciate parts of the book.

However, to be fair, I was also intrigued by some of the questions that were raised. I went through those topics with Google by side so I could find out more because the write-ups were really brief.

I’ll give this a 3.5/5. Even though it managed to make me better appreciate the mysteries life, the universe, and everything have to offer, the overall experience was only borderline satisfying.

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

As it is mentioned in the very last couple of questions, this book is definitely good as a starting point for further curiosity and discovery. It presents a diverse range of topics, and even though "like" and "dislike" are subjective conceptions, I think quite a few subjects are of little interest and didn't fit exactly well the general tone of the book.

For a book written in 2011, it needed a better research effort because several things in the human evolution chapter are outdated, even for that early in the 2010s. Also, and knowing that the goal of this book was to present as many questions as possible, lots of subjects were poorly explained, often with arguments left unexplained. By this I mean, that ideas were left hanging without further explanation to what they entitled. I don’t mean I was expecting him to explain everything because there are obviously questions to which we have no definite answers, but whatever hypotheses have been put out there, people have explained their meaning and reasoning, making it easier to understand why they were proposed, even if we don’t agree with them or if they are not valid.

[Chelsea Duncan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a book with high and lofty goals and yet a complete inability to provide what is promised! It is like reading a scientific book written by a politician, where all it does is ask interesting questions but then skirt all the way around the answer with bits of obvious information that it hopes will satisfy but are really boring, and then not answer the original question at all! If this happened once or twice maybe I could get with it, but it happens on pretty much every single question! A real disappointment, I had to DNF due to the groundhog day of frustration and futility.

[Kirsty Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't normally read compendium type books like this but I needed something I could pick up and put down over the course of a few weeks without losing track of what I'd already read and this book was perfect for that. If you've got a curious mind then there's plenty of topics to pique your interest here from Ancient Rome to deep space and each of the 500 topics covered is pulled together in very snackable sections. This book was written a few years ago now so perhaps some of the questions posed have an answer to them now. But I enjoyed delving into each section.

[Sophie_The_Jedi_Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I have reread before and will likely reread in the future. There are many, many things in it I still do not understand (like all the physics stuff) but I still love this book and will definitely keep picking it up until I understand everything in it.

[Fred Bloggs · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dull.

Just spectacularly dull. I'd rather the enigma variations remained an enigma than the boring explanation given here be true. Not that I'm vaguely interested anyway. Nothing of any interest her at all

[Toby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't get into this at all. The summaries of each question were dry and short, and the writing lacked much needed character. Normally a book with random trivia in like this I would devour enthusiastically, but I couldn't make myself read it all.

[Zaid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my god i enjoyed this. And just as the author said somewhere, "It’s very irritating, whatever it is." He also made tiny jokes here and there which I really enjoyed i dont see why some people are downgrading this book by giving it a low rating. Someone said, why only give little details to these mysteries? Well dude this book is not focused on giving these details. I ended up reading all of it in one sitting.

[toi thich doc sach · Rating 3 out of 5]

•Một cuốn sách khá thú vị về những điều chưa ai biết. Vậy thôi! À cách dùng từ của sách hơi chán nên dễ làm hụt hẫng khi đọc cũng như là tốn kha khá thời gian để gặm nhấm xong nó.🥲
3/5⭐
[Những điều chưa ai biết_ William Hartston]

[Jed Mountain · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book and it’s an interesting read for sure, you can be pretty selective over bits and some things crossover. Read it mostly whilst travelling between work and home!

It definitely gets you thinking and wanting to research more!

[Richard Howard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great fun to dip in and out of but with a lot of dross. It is interesting to note that, since the book's publication, one of the unknowns - The Higgs Boson - is now a known.

[Bunny Cavanagh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Looks a bigger read than it is. Half the book is taken up with the gubbins in the back. also the mysteries of life are a very white male selection IMHO most of it we already knew we didn't know.

[Vũ Thị · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my type ._.

[Benjamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think some of these were probably included to fill out that "501"... But the ones that were intriguing were very intriguing.

[Jody Nicholson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't normally finish a book knowing less than when I started!

[Shaun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting topics, a nice book to chip away at here and there

[Daniela Lupsanu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Amateur hour

[Sarah Dyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many fun facts, mind blown. I did however, skip over topics that were of less interest to me

[Tom McCluskey · Rating 1 out of 5]

501 things that no one cares about. Only read it when it was too late at night to start a chapter of a good book.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to Lucy.