Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong

From Powell.com:

Book_5 Already a hit in England (according to the jacket blurb, anyway), The Book of General Ignorance is now available in the US. It is ostensibly a book of factoids, but with a twist: these are facts many people have a mistaken knowledge of. Famously, George Washington didn’t have wooden teeth (they were mostly made from hippopotamus teeth). The factoid format makes this a perfect bathroom or coffee table book.

Some interesting tidbits at random: most tigers in the world live in the US (in zoos and as pets); Napoleon’s troops didn’t shoot the Sphinx’s nose off (it came off long ago and has never been found); there was no curse on King Tut’s tomb; Thomas Crapper invented the manhole cover but not the flush toilet; Thomas Edison may have invented the word hello (before Edison it was halloo or hullo); and Columbus thought the world was pear-shaped and much smaller than it is. Some “it didn’t originate where you think” bits: haggis is from Greece; kilts are Irish; chicken tikka masala comes from Glasgow; champagne is an English invention (as is baseball); Panama hats are from Ecuador; and, the guillotine was invented in Yorkshire.

More here.