Dubious Knowledge: Doubtful Facts, Twisted History and Other Humorosities::

by Dan Van Oss

If you like learning with a lively dose of laughter, you'll love this hilarious book full of fishy facts, twisted history and general “Dubious Knowledge” from award-winning humor columnist Dan Van Oss.Collected from more of his weekly “Dubious Knowledge Institute” humor column, these 34 side-splitting features will keep you laughing while you learn “In Japan, coffee shops are called Kissaten, which means, 'Place to continually work on my first novel.'”St. Patrick's “According to Irish lore, Saint Patrick is credited with driving all of the snakes out of Ireland, although the International Snake Society insists they just simply don’t like Irishmen.”Smokey “Smokey celebrated his 70th birthday in 2014 although, due to an ill-advised use of birthday candles, he smashed his cake flat with his shovel.”Valentine’s “In Wales, people celebrate Valentine’s Day as 'Dydd Santes Dwynwen Day', commemorating St. Dwynwen, the patron saint of consonants.”Niagara "The Niagara River is not a 'river,' it is a 'strait,' according to the same people that correct you when you say 'good' instead of 'well.'”Melding the laugh-out-loud wit of classic humor columnist Dave Barry with the British quirkiness of Douglas Adams and Monty Python, Dan expertly melds fact and fiction into a zany mixture of learning and laughter.

132 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2015

About the author

Dan Van Oss (danvanoss.com) grew up reading just about everything he could borrow from the town library, although admittedly sometimes just to get the sticker segments to paste onto the Reading Centipede for each book he finished. Raised on a diet of Dave Barry columns, Douglas Adams radio serials and M*A*S*H reruns, Dan’s writing balances the line between laugh-out-loud hilarious and cleverly absurd.

“Humor is hard to do and Dan does it extremely well.”
“I am a fan of the late, great Douglas Adams, and in my opinion, Dan is the closest America has to him.”
“Van Oss's style reminds me somewhat of Douglas Adams. Very witty phrases full of Pythonesque non-sequitors.”
“Dan's style is like The Best of Dave Barry meets The Best of Dennis Miller.”

Dan’s had pieces published on humorwriters.org, won 2nd place in the Mona Schreiber Prize for Humorous Fiction and Nonfiction, was a semi-finalist in the humorpress.com writing contest, and was mentioned honorably in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition for Humor. He started writing during college, where he enjoyed getting red lines mercilessly drawn through his Creative Writing projects by his professor, and where he also penned a weekly column in the school paper under the pseudonym “Fletcher Ford”. You can catch his weekly humor column, the “Dubious Knowledge Institute,” at dubiousknowledge.institute.

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