Strange History

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

From the 20th century to the Old West, from the Age of Enlightenment to the Dark Ages, from ancient cultures all the way back to the dawn of time, Strange History is overflowing with mysterious artifacts, macabre legends, kooky inventions, reality-challenged rulers, boneheaded blunders, and mind-blowing facts. Read about…

*The curse of Macbeth
*Stupid history: Hollywood style
*The secret LSD experiments of the 1960s
*In search of the lost “Cloud People” of Peru
*The Swedish queen who declared war on fleas
*Unearthing the past with the Outhouse Detectives
*The Apollo astronaut who swears he saw a UFO
*How to brew a batch of 5,000-year-old beer
*The brutal bloodbaths at Rome’s Coliseum
*Ghostly soup from ancient China
*The bathroom of the 1970s

And much, much more!

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Humor, Historical

417 pages, Paperback

First published June 14, 2016

About the author

The Bathroom Reader's Institute UJBR boasts more than 12 million books in print and a membership base topping 40,000 loyal readers . . .

Reviews

[Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Strange History” is a fun history book filled with facts and stories that will have you either laughing, horrified, or thankful you don’t know what crazy stuff is going on right now behind-the-scenes. All of the stories are short and can be read quickly. It definitely makes history fun and accessible. In fact, I recommend it for teachers or parents to get interesting anecdotes they can throw into relevant lessons to keep students engaged.

This review is based upon a complimentary copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting stories best read bit by bit. But, finally, I finished it. The authors give us "mind-blowing facts," legends and ghost stories, mysteries, and "boneheaded blunders."
As I like animals, I was particularly interested in stories involving them. I did not know that Josephine, Napoleon's wife, had a pet orangutan whom she dressed up and taught to use utensils. I also didn't know about Miracle Mike, the headless rooster of Colorado. After his head was cut off, he lived for 18 more months. I did know that in the Middle Ages people killed cats as they were thought to be tools of witches. During the Black Death in Europe in the 14th Century, thousands of cats were slaughtered. Now we know that the plague was transmitted by fleas that lived on rats. If all those cats had not been killed, they might have been alive to kill those rats, reducing the death toll of about 30 million people. I knew the Romans slaughtered a lot of animals (and people) in their arenas. Due to their slaughters in the arena, the North African elephant became extinct, as well as the Mesopotamian lion, Nubian hippo, and Hyrkanian tiger.
I thought there were some interesting stories about great disasters. I knew about the Great Halifax Explosion which occurred in Halifax, Nova Scotia, during World War I. This happened when a cargo ship carrying 5,000 tons of explosives blew up in the harbor, killing 1,600 people instantly. It was the largest man-made blast until the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. A far worse disaster was that of the eruption of the Toba volcano in Sumatra. When it erupted 75,000 years ago, an incredible amount of ash was spewed into the atmosphere. Much of Southeast Asia was buried in ash, but much worse was the volcanic winter that was caused. This winter possibly lasted as long as ten years, killing off 80-90% of the humans on the planet. Only a few thousand humans survived to become our ancestors. Let's hope something like that does not happen again...?

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange history, indeed! I can express with certainty that a few of my students would absolutely delight in all the peculiar historical tidbits that are mentioned in this book. Especially the farting and Homer Simpson remarks. I must confess that I really felt that the historical tidbits regarding cats was probably my favorite parts.


Thanks to NetGalley for a digital galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the weirdest books I ever had the chance to read. I got it for free from Netgalley, but this isn't the whole point. The fact of the matter is that I didn't know what review I should have written about Strange History, in the end. It was a strange and sometimes disgusting collection of stories and anecdotes about certain famous characters who might have existed or not. At times, I wasn't sure whether or not I was reading something inspired by real events or if the stories were snippets of the imagination of the person who had put them together.
Continue reading: http://www.booksforwhat.com/2016/12/s...

[Christopher Hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fun read full of interesting tidbits throughout history! I love these kind of books

[Connie Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are into hilarious (flatulence), scary sick (priests eating babies boiled then baked), or plainly bizarre (an assassin shot Lincoln's stove-pipe hat then took off), this book is for you. It is supposed to be for bathroom reading, which is great if you like being in there, but it makes for a great coffee table book to share with your friends and family. There is a lot of wacky stuff. Three areas talk about farts that will leave you in stitches. What do outhouse treasure seekers find.....in several areas. Whatever you like, you will find it somewhere within these pages. It is kind of like being in " Raiders of the Lost Ark"!

Thank you to the Bathroom Readers Institute and NetGalley for giving me an e-ARC of this book to read and give my honest review.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This fun romp is something akin to a Where's Waldo? where everyone can just have it available to flip through when they have a bit of time, except this gives the reader a bit more brain powers. Most of the pieces of history are one to three pages in length and sometimes bulleted, written as a story, or detail an account making it easy to read and thoroughly enjoyable.

[Sandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was just a fun, interesting read. I liked that each story was no more than a page pretty much.

[Zippergirl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some people read everywhere and anywhere. "Strange History" is the perfect volume for reading in fits and starts as it will illuminate and entertain equally in small portions or large gulps. "The Aliens Inside Mt. Shasta" and "How to Speak Hobo" are only a few of the many delights found within the more than four hundred illustrated pages. Watch for "Botched History" in which speakers and writers who are expected to know better send clunkers out into the world, as when Vice President Joe Biden, while discussing the 1929 stock market crash, placed Franklin D. Roosevelt on television, ten years before broadcast TV was available. It's fun to feel superior.

Trivia fans, those Cliff Clavins who can't resist dropping factoids into a conversation, will find an arsenal of strange historical tidbits with which to fact-bomb their friends and neighbors and secure their reputation as a know-it-all. You know who you are. You want this book.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Ionia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a mish-mash of a little of everything history related. I absolutely loved it. This is told from a hysterically funny perspective with little anecdotes to follow the historical event. I loved the way the book was organised and couldn't wait to share passages from it with friends and family.

This would be a great book to share with school aged children if you wanted to introduce them to a particular event or time period in history without them finding it boring. Although the book is humorous, the facts are still correct.

I giggled my way through this book in a single evening, and happily recommend it to others interested in history or simply looking for a good laugh.

This review is based on a complementary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

[Jes Caruss · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, I grew up reading Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers. In fact, I’m pretty good with random facts because of it.
I had just asked reciently if they still published the books, and I came across “Strange History“. Full of wonderful, strange, sometimes scary, sometimes funny wired factoids and quotes from the not so distant and prehistoric times. If you love random facts, love history, or just need something to help your constitutional, this is the book for you!

[Jeanine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quirky, fun book filled with strange historical facts and information. An engaging read with snippets of information that allows for short bursts of reading much like the Uncle John books.

[Angel Hatfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is like a weird kind of history book. There was a thing about farting and Homer Simpson is brought up. But then it mentions a priest who boils and bakes babies and then eats them a big YULK and nasty. There is also a story about aliens and then a story about speaking Hobo. There is also a story about where forty thousand people show up at Crash. Texas too watch two trains collide. Then a story about King Henry had mint workers castrated if they mader bad coins. Then a Ghost Bus in Hadbroke Grove in England. Then Bigfoot and Frankenstein are talked about. There are antidotes that follow after the historical events. These going over many hundreds of ere are also ads and quizzes. Also Historic figures mistelling history. These are from around the world and going over many hundreds of years.
If you enjoy random facts and then you will enjoy this book. It is a quick and easy to read with stories running from half a page up to a couple of pages at the longest. But I am not so sure I believed all the “ facts” told here as well as stories. But this still deserved a strong three for entertainment.

[Lynn Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worth Reading in Any Room

This was a delightful romp into the weird, the silly and the really interesting. I ended up reading about half of them out loud to a friend just to share how interesting their individual facts were. I found out the origins of at least a dozen things I'd never known before from other places. For example, when I saw the musical, "Cats," on verse of a song mentioned Duck Whittington. Not being British, I had no clue who he was. Now I know he was the mayor of London who was thought to have a magic cat who was responsible for using magic to get Whittington his job. What a cool story from history! Or how about learning that the first Thanksgiving actually happened in Texas in May of 1541, not November 1692 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It's terrific to know I'd be the same kind of problem parent my father was, telling my kid facts that contradict the teachers right and left! (LOL)
This is a very handy book to keep around.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 3.5 of 5

I love trivia. My head is full of useless knowledge but I'm always looking to add a little more. In that vein, I love this sort of book (you might not want to play trivia games against me).

This book is appealing because of the vast amount of trivia packed into it. Most stories are only a page long, none that I recall are more than two pages long, thus making this trivial in just about all meanings of the word.

It can be a quick, easy read, and it's the sort of book that is perfect for reading in a bathroom (hence the author/publisher).

There were a number of pages I bookmarked, finding the tidbit so fascinating (for instance: when 40,000 people showed up in Crush, Texas to watch two trains collide in 1896; or why we say "In a nutshell").

But as much as I love this sort of trivial nostalgia, I can't help but wonder what sort of research or authenticity goes in to these books. On a page titled "Three Random Origins" is a paragraph for 'strawberry lemonade'. First ... is this supposed to be the origin for 'strawberry' lemonade or for 'pink' lemonade? Now... I've told this story to my own kids. I first read it back in the 1970's in a Ripley's Believe It or Not book. I'd researched it back then and the publishers of Ripley publicly noted that they never claimed everything was true ... only that you could 'believe it or not.' More recently, Smithsonian.com published an article on the history of pink lemonade. The Pete Conklin story that Strange History reports is mentioned, but the article, according to Smithsonian (whom I probably trust a little more for their research than The Bathroom Reader's Institute) refers to the story of one of two that is most plausible for the drinks' origin. It's a fun, if slightly disgusting, origin, which makes it fun to tell (and which is why I have retold it), but it's not the 100% guaranteed origin. This book gets around the 'truth' with this little caveat in the introduction: "The editors at Portable Press have collected thousands of bizarre facts and mind-blowing stories..." They have clearly separated fact from 'fiction' (stories).

Bear this all in mind ... not everything you read is fact, even if it works to promote itself as such ... and then sit back and enjoy this trivia.

Looking for a good book? Strange History is a tremendously fun collection of trivia of a historical nature. It will entertain you either sitting in an easy chair in the living-room, or on the porcelain throne in your more private room.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

[James Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an enjoyable book and covers a wide variety of topics including the fad of swallowing live goldfish (yuck!) and a toy that allows you to learn how to shrink a head.

I thought the meowing nuns was something different. The discussion of the famous Bigfoot film was decent (whether or not it was a real Bigfoot is still a highly debated topic.) False prophecies is covered and something I didn't expect but I already knew about was some Japanese soldiers eating American soldiers during World War II.

It also discusses the Piri Reis map which is also controversial. some saying it does show the coastline of a pre-ice Antarctica and others saying the map is majorly wrong.

It all makes for interesting reading.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange History is perfect for your bathroom reading. It is entertaining, is full of trivia, and anecdotes. It also has myths and more. You will laugh at certain things told. The writings are short from a paragraph to a page, occasionally two pages. It reminds me of "Guinness Book of World Facts." If you want tirivia to start conversations or laughing in the bathroom, this is the book for you!

Disclaimer: I received an arc of this book free from the author/publisher from Net-galley. I was not obliged to write a favorable review, or even any review at all. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the cover suggests, very strange… and entertaining!

I love the BRI books. For a particular theme, they find entertaining, knowledgeable, funny tidbits to share. This is the first in the Strange series that I’ve read and it was exactly as expected and hoped for. The oddest of things – from the earliest days of recorded civilization to the present, no strange stone was unturned to provide an enlightening and fun read. Packaged in bite-sized morsels, the perfect read for a lazy afternoon or just a few minutes of de-stressing.

*I happily reviewed this book
**Thank you to NetGalley

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of this was really entertaining, and some of it was nearly mind-numbing. As a result, by the time I was about three quarters of the way through the book, I started just flipping though and reading the sections that were of interest to me. Overall I like the idea, and it was a nice escape from the fiction I've been mostly reading lately, but I wouldn't be quick to recommend it and it isn't something I'd want to read again.

[Isaac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange History examines history in an interesting way. The book talks about personal stories in strange historical events. My favorite story was about Mike the Headless Chicken. He was chicken who had survived an ax to the neck and survived for 6 months after. This book looks at historical events that no other book would think about mentioning. I would recommend this book for anyone looking for a new interesting read and a book you can keep picking back up.

[Kathy Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

My husband likes to read out loud, while I play a sudoku puzzle and listen every evening when we retire for the evening. This has been a fun read because we actually took notes and looked up more in depth info on some of the topics. We love learning and this book kept our attention. We have read a couple other books from this series (well, tried), but we did not find them interesting enough to finish. This book - we finished and hated that we were done.

[Bob Cantrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I laughed and shuddered, but seriously this book was a treat. It is written by the BRI so that should tell you that it is going to be interesting reading. About The shuddering it isn't scary or gross it is just what were they thinking. So if you like your history with a twist then this is the book to read.

[Caitlin ~WordsAreMyForte~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been reading this as a nightstand book for the past couple years and finally finished it. Can definitively say it gave me LOTS of odd dreams leading to much inspiration for my writing 😂
There were so many cool tidbits of historical information in here of just about every topic imaginable. So many of these anecdotes remind you of how ridiculous, hilarious, and tragic life is. Also 10/10 cover

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of fun. Some of the facts are somewhat freaky/scary/gross, so if you dislike that this may not be the book for you. The parts I found most interesting were those about unsolved historical mysteries, some of which are pretty mind-blowing.

[Lynda W · Rating 4 out of 5]

A trip through so much

Fun read. Learned a lot I would recommend it to a mature reader. Humanity has done some gruesome things. It’s part of history along with great things. All among the stories included in this book.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book of trivia.

[Branden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very funny book. i learned a lot of silly things from it!

[Kristal Renee Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good and interesting read

I really enjoyed reading this book. The "5 Freaky Facts About..." feature was my favorite parts. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did.

[Amy C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun book abundant with pages of fantastic historical fun facts!!

[Karen Cowgill · Rating 4 out of 5]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!