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Now I Know #1

Now I Know: The Revealing Stories Behind the World's Most Interesting Facts

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Did you know that there are actually 27 letters in the alphabet, or that the U.S. had a plan to invade Canada? And what actually happened to the flags left on the moon?

Even if you think you have a handle on all things trivia, you're guaranteed a big surprise with Now I Know. From uncovering what happens to lost luggage to New York City's plan to crack down on crime by banning pinball, this book will challenge your knowledge of the fascinating stories behind the world's greatest facts.

Covering 100 outrageous topics, Now I Know is the ultimate challenge for any know-it-all who thinks they have nothing left to learn.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 18, 2013

1345 people are currently reading
2160 people want to read

About the author

Dan Lewis

99 books13 followers

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5 stars
416 (23%)
4 stars
654 (37%)
3 stars
543 (31%)
2 stars
117 (6%)
1 star
16 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 142 reviews
5 reviews
February 12, 2017
Read this as part of the Kindle Unlimited collection. The facts contained in the book were really fascinating and gave me sub research to do to find out more on so many topics. Very light reading and easy read. Loved it and hope there are more like it.
Profile Image for Jenna.
330 reviews6 followers
March 8, 2017
I chose NIK in order to have something both interesting and "bite-sized" to read during the snippets of free time I have during the course of an average day. This book fit the bill perfectly! A delightful, informative read that kept my interest and made me read passages aloud more than once.
Profile Image for Hannes Strydom.
39 reviews2 followers
November 12, 2024
Mildly interesting at best. I have a gripe with the author's writing style. That gripe? Using questions like this in almost every single chapter. It's very annoying.
Profile Image for Tim Jin.
843 reviews4 followers
February 11, 2017
"Now I Know" is more like a coffee table book where you you just pick up and read to entertain your guests. You wouldn't want to read this book straight through like a novel because there is really no point. It's more like a trivia book with facts. Maybe keep it on your nightstand and read a page or two before going to bed and reading it out loud to your spouse to just to annoy them. Like fan death in Korea.
Profile Image for Emi Yoshida.
1,670 reviews100 followers
October 1, 2018
I've been a loyal NowIKnow.com subscriber for years, and bought this book to support author/blogger Dan Lewis. This isn't just a blah blah blah list of facts or trivia, it's a smartly written compendium of one hundred interesting stories that each delivers a memorable and often hilarious lesson of sorts, plus the format also includes one Bonus Fact per piece.

When we used to be on a Geeks Who Drink Trivia team (shout out - Magnolia Village Pub, woot!) being a NowIKnow reader gave me an edge. I like having these in actual book form, it's one of only a handful of titles that both me and my husband enjoy reading.
Profile Image for Jillian.
1,220 reviews18 followers
December 28, 2016
Really engaging, entertaining, and educational. It was especially enjoyable on audio, since it feels well-suited to a podcast format. I have to dock at least one star for the cited source quality though; Wikipedia is a great starting point for this type of project, but not as your only citation for a few of the facts...you need to up your research game, Lewis (but your concepts and writing are right on).
372 reviews2 followers
January 23, 2017
Interesting

I enjoyed reading this book. The stories it tells are ones I've never heard. They were also very interesting
Happy Reading.
Profile Image for Devesh Das.
10 reviews
July 10, 2017
Fun read

Interesting book with lots of real life examples. Fun and leisurely read...
recommend to use the Amazon field version to keep the cost down.
Profile Image for Scott.
305 reviews6 followers
May 30, 2017
“Now I Know: The Revealing Stories Behind the World's Most Interesting Facts” written by Dan Lewis and narrated by Jeremy Arthur is a great book for people who like little snippets of trivia including a “bonus fact” or two after each segment. I will say that it appears the author has greatly expanded on this idea by creating a series of “Now you know” books or clips concentrating on specific topics (e.g. animals, space, etc.). There are also a few audio clips (< 1minute) that address a single subject on Audible doing a quick search. I like to learn and be educated, however I felt that this book was written toward a generation who wants all of their information feed to them in bite-sized commercial length (30-45 second) chunks. If this sounds like something you would be interested in, I recommend you pick up the book and hopefully learn something new.

The book set a level of high expectations when it claims it can cover one hundred outrageous topics in just over 258 pages or six hours of audio. For the audio edition, that equates to 6.6 hours (366 minutes) to cover 100 topics equating to 3.66 minutes devoted to a topic including a bonus fact (or two). Some of the topics I’m sure are ones you have already known about if you are a news reader or interested in bits of trivia, while others I’m sure you will find new and somewhat informative. I liked that the author grouped the topics in a way that made sense when listening and for those topics you may be more interested in. For example, if there were a few topics that revolved around space, these were found in succession in the book. What I did not like was that the book lacked any level of depth. It was more like picking up one of those bathroom trivia books (you washed your hands, right?) where the information is all given in a minute or two at most. I would have preferred to have half the number of topics covered if there was twice as much depth given to each of them.

I thought Jeremy Arthur did an exceptional job with the book’s narration and at times even helped make a given topic more interesting due to his use of inflection. His voice is pleasant to listen to and the audio was professionally recorded. I do not recall any audio artifacts while listening to the book, nor were there any areas of audio inconsistency in the book. With over one hundred and seventeen books currently narrated (at the time of this review) on Audible, Mr. Arthur did not disappoint with this book.

So, did I like this book? Well that is a difficult question to answer. In some ways, I enjoyed the subjects covered, but felt that there just was not enough time devoted to each given topic making it seem like I learned anything new or interesting. I thought some of the cited material was a bit weak or from sources that would not be considered always trustworthy or reliable. For me, it is more about that I like quality (depth) over quantity (the number of topics covered) and this book seemed to be the opposite. I often found myself asking additional questions which the book did not cover requiring me to go and research them myself; maybe this was the author’s intentions. I’m not sure. For general trivia people, I would say this was an OK book, but go into it knowing it lacks any level of depth on the topics covered and you will be prepared.
Profile Image for Eva.
486 reviews1 follower
December 20, 2013
A fun, quick read -- a bunch of unexpected historical anecdotes. There are a lot of good bits I couldn't highlight on my kindle because they are little stories, not isolated sentences or paragraphs. That said, some kindle quotes:

Romans would occasionally combine the letters “E” and “T” into a similar symbol, representing the word “et” meaning “and.” - location 133


Except that it was not yet called an ampersand. The & sign was, rather, referred to simply as “and”—which made reciting the alphabet awkward. As Dictionary.com states, it was (and is) odd to say “X Y Z and.” So, people didn’t. Instead, our lexicon developed another saying: “X, Y, and Z, and by itself, ‘and’ ”—but instead of saying “by itself,” the Latin phrase per se came into favor. The result? “And per se, and,” or, muttered quickly by a disinterested student, “ampersand.” - location 137


Cryos can be selective. It no longer accepts donations from redheads, citing a lack of demand. - location 657


MLK’s birthday became a holiday in 1986, but some states were slow to adopt it. It would not be celebrated in all fifty states until 2000, and Mississippi celebrates it in conjunction with the birthday of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, - location 959


Sheats himself was jailed by Confederates for his support of the North, and at one point the county considered a resolution to, themselves, secede from Alabama—if the state could secede from the Union, they argued, the county could secede from the state. - location 1316


To mark the town’s uniquely divided culture during the war, the war memorial is a statue of a young soldier, clad half in Union grays and half in Confederate garb. - location 1328


According to Bloomberg, Japan’s largest diaper maker (a company called Unicharm) sold more adult diapers than baby diapers in 2011—for the first time, ever. - location 1648


By the time the early 1960s rolled around, according to the Tampa Bay Times, Vernon, Florida, was responsible for roughly two-thirds of all loss-of-limb-related insurance claims in the United States. - location 1718


By the time the crew realized these errors, they simply did not have enough food and water to bring all 442 slaves to Jamaica alive. So they started to throw them overboard. For the insurance money. - location 1742


The story of the Zong massacre would be told repeatedly by abolitionists, - location 1757


Playing cards had a role in the Vietnam War as well. The Viet Cong were apparently superstitious and fearful of the Ace of Spades, which was previously used by French fortune-tellers in the area to signify death. American commanders requested decks full of only the Ace of Spades, and Bicycle, of course, provided them (for free). American troops left the cards in strategic places, and some Viet Cong would flee upon seeing what they believed was a bad omen. - location 1858


And in 1959, the U.S. Postal Service managed to deliver 3,000 pieces of mail from the Norfolk area to Jacksonville in twenty-two minutes. How? It put them on a nuclear missile. - location 1866


Worden was in orbit above the moon, alone, and at one point was 2,235 miles away from the two men on the surface below. - location 1921


Although the “occupation” was only going to last a day, the Victory Loan Organization pulled few punches. Churches were barred from holding services. Armed soldiers searched buses. One of the principals of a local elementary was “arrested” and replaced by a Nazi propagandist. There was even a book burning in front of the city library. (The books used were scheduled to be destroyed anyway; they had fallen into disrepair.) The event, called “If Day” in the press, was a fundraising success. The Victory Bonds effort raised C$3.2 million from Winnipeg that day alone—in today’s dollars, that’s about $40 million (U.S. dollars) from a city of about 250,000 at the time. - location 2049


For the storekeepers, this request proved difficult. Limonana, it turned out, didn’t exist. The ad agency had made it up. Public buses have been a staple method of transportation in Israel for most of its history, but skepticism about using them to advertise products was very high. - location 2098


Limonana is now found throughout Israel and its neighboring countries—and, - location 2109


koala and human fingerprints are so similar that even experts have trouble telling them apart. - location 2348


Water can be used to check patients for brain damage, using something called the caloric reflex test. Typically, when cold water is inserted into a person’s ear canal, his or her eyes will reflexively “look” toward the opposite ear. But when warm water is put in the person’s ear, he or she will “look” toward the ear with the water in it. People with significant damage to the brain stem do not have the same reaction. - location 2370


All Cavendish bananas are clones and therefore genetically identical to every other Cavendish out there. (It’s not uncommon for fruits to be cloned. Navel oranges are also clones, for example.) - location 2527


When the bull wins, the muleta’s color masks the matador’s blood. With well over 500 matadors dying in bullfights since Romero reinvented bullfighting, that’s probably a good thing. - location 2589


According to the Earth Policy Institute, China consumed only 8 million tons of meat in 1978—that’s about one-third of what Americans consumed in the same year. But by 2010, China consumed 71 million tons, double the United States’s amount. - location 2732


August 1955, a fifty-pound bag of onions in Chicago cost about $2.75. By March 1956 (when onion season ended), due to Seigel and Kosuga’s market manipulation, the going rate in Chicago for the same amount of onions was a mere 10 cents. - location 2817


The onion producers were going out of business, and they turned to Congress. Gerald Ford, then a Congressman from Michigan, sponsored a bill outlawing the trade of onion futures—a very specific bill aimed at preventing this type of endeavor. The commodities trading lobby, of course, opposed the bill, threatening litigation if it were signed into law. President Eisenhower called their bluff, signing the Onion Futures Act in the summer of 1958. The Mercantile Exchange sued and lost. The trading of onion futures is banned in the United States to this day. - location 2820
Profile Image for Chad Schultz.
441 reviews9 followers
July 19, 2021
I like learning interesting and unusual tidbits of information. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts. Which is why I recognized a number of the factual morsels given in this book. It's as if the author himself listened to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts, picked out random factoids, and crammed them together into a book.

There isn't much rhyme or reason to the book. Sometimes a tenuous connection is formed from one fact to the next - a common topic, perhaps, or perhaps something more along the line of an old man saying "...and that reminds me of another story..."

I'm also concerned that the author sometimes cites websites and podcasts directly, making me suspect he skimped on the fact-checking and bypassed checking with original sources. As far as I know, everything in here is true, but I'm not certain of his credibility.

Still, they are interesting facts.
Profile Image for Dan Stern.
952 reviews11 followers
March 8, 2018
This book contains 100 stories outlining a great variety of facts. The topics vary tremendously: from history and geography to politics to science and health. Each story is on average about two and a half pages long – just a nice length to sufficiently get into the subject without short-changing the reader or belaboring the topic. At the end of each story is a “bonus fact” which is a spinoff fact varyingly related to the main fact just discussed. The stories can be read in any particular order since they are not interdependent.

I found this book very difficult to put down. The writing style is friendly, lively, often witty, accessible and immensely captivating. I believe that this book can be enjoyed by absolutely anyone, particularly trivia enthusiasts.
Profile Image for Lucy.
331 reviews3 followers
January 7, 2021
The best way I can describe this book is "eh."

The writing wasn't impressive, but it also wasn't terrible. It was eh.

The stories ranged a little bit in quality, one being great and a handful of others being boring, but the majority were eh.

The length of the articles was the one thing I have somewhat of an opinion on, but my opinion is muddy and self-contradictory so I guess it averages to an "eh," too. Some of the articles felt way too short. Some of them were just right, but I'd hazard an average of 25-30% of the articles were just too short.

Overall, not great. If you want to read a book of interesting facts, I highly recommend the Book of Bizarre Truths. It's longer, better written, and has more interesting articles.

3/5 stars
Profile Image for Carmen.
62 reviews
January 21, 2017
I had the ebook and the audio book with Whispersync which worked out well. I read the ebook when standing in line or just waiting in general. I listened to the audio book as I went back and forth to work.

Al the miscellaneous facts were interesting. I like that at the end of each chapter there was a special bonus fact. It felt like opening a Kracker Jack box and getting a treat at the end of each chapter.

The book was well written and quite engaging.

I highly recommend it if you want to learn a thing or two.
Profile Image for YHC.
851 reviews5 followers
September 14, 2018
Many interesting facts that we probably never get to know, or might ignore them existing.
It's like side knowledge that were not written in the books.
ex. Chicago is from American Indian Shikaakwa.

你要是到了芝加哥,一定要尝尝大蒜和洋葱。“芝加哥”(Chicago)这个词来源于美洲土著词shikaakwa(不妨大声念一下)。时间长了,它就变成我们今天用的这个词。Shikaakwa意思是野生大蒜或野生洋葱。在欧洲移民到来前,该区域拥有大量洋葱和大蒜。


世界上有1%~2%的人口是红头发。他们大多数是欧洲血统,人们认为其中大约包括12%的苏格兰人和10%的爱尔兰人,这个比例要远高于其他国家。红发人通常是白皮肤,脸上有雀斑。不过,红发也可能伴随其他症状——对麻醉药的抗药性。
Profile Image for Emre Erkan.
68 reviews5 followers
March 22, 2020
Başlarken çok büyük bir beklenti ile başlamadığım iyi olmuş. Vakit geçirmek, hafif okuma yapmak için ideal. Arada bir boş bilgiler ile günü çeşnilendirmek için kullanılabilir. Yine de hikayeler arası geçiş güzel kurgulanmış. Bir ana bilgi ve ona bağlı ek bilgi ile her hikaye arasında güzelce bağlantı kurulmuş. Arada gerçekten şaşırdığım olaylar/konular olmadı değil ama okumadığınızda da bir şey kaybetmeyeceğiniz bir kitap.
Profile Image for Ardhi Listyar.
110 reviews3 followers
August 20, 2020
Meh. The cover says "the world's most interesting facts" but it really is a bit subjective and misleading since the book mostly covers trivial facts from the US, UK, or Canada. No coverage of African facts and only a very small portion of the book covers Asian facts or Mediterranean facts or Latin American facts. Not an interesting book overall, although some of the facts presented are interesting enough to read.
Profile Image for Brandy.
75 reviews16 followers
February 15, 2017
Well-written and engaging. Chapters are short stories, maybe 2 or 3 pages a piece. It's info that's all readily available on other internet sources, and it frequently references some of them, like Wikipedia or Gawker. Not entirely original, but still a satisfying read.

I wish they'd gotten someone a bit more animated for the audio book, however.
17 reviews
May 9, 2017
Interesting

This was a very interesting read. Although I had no idea what the contents would be I downloaded it anyways. The book flowed smoothly from one topic to another and I found myself looking forward to the next chapter. I definitely learned quite a bit.
Profile Image for Erdogan Cesmeli.
15 reviews
August 9, 2017
Great book to read during any breaks about interesting facts

Best book to learn random interesting facts and even during episodic times to read.
Recommend him to revisit the chapter about Turkey.
1 review
October 30, 2017
Good, quick and fun to read.

Right now, I'm reading this book from a kindle app on my phone. This book offers brief snd entertaining tidbits of information to be gathered at your leasure when you have literally just a spare moment in your day. A fun read.
Profile Image for Zhelana.
895 reviews2 followers
June 19, 2018
This book really didn't keep my attention. Maybe I would have done better reading them one at a time each night like the 100 objects book, but I read it in the car while driving 7 hours, and it all sort of ran together. I should probably get fiction books to read in the car.
Profile Image for Mal Kelly.
61 reviews
September 8, 2018
A very interesting read. It appealed to my curious nature. This book is filled with lesser known facts about so much that we thought we knew already. Each mini story only comprises 2-3 pages, so you can pick it up and put it down whenever you wish.
Profile Image for Destiny.
26 reviews3 followers
January 15, 2020
Great Book!

Really well written. It doesn't just list a bunch of random single sentence facts but it's actually more like short stories. I even read the sections focused on things I already knew about. I hope he writes more like this.
Profile Image for Sherry.
121 reviews6 followers
May 8, 2021
WHO KNEW

This is a great book to pick up, read a bit, and go on with your activities, go right off to sleep.
It certainly won't tax your brain, or keep you awake.
I found it very interesting with most stories. I recommend.
9 reviews
April 17, 2022
I reference this book at the bar, at the dinner table, anywhere really, all the time. It has so many interesting short stories, a few of which I will remember for the rest of my life. I often mention a few of the “fun facts” I read in this book when I have conversations with friends.
33 reviews
March 1, 2024
I listen to this when I can't fall asleep. Not trying to be insulting. It's a book of nuggets of fun/useless factoids that gets your attention away from the worries of life, but also not engaging/interesting enough to keep me hooked.
13 reviews
May 7, 2017
Interesting trivia

It's a good read for a lazy rainy day. Worth the time and learned some interesting facts. Like the YouTube series as well
Displaying 1 - 30 of 142 reviews

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