Uncle John's Portable Genius Author:Bathroom Readers' Institute Those info-obsessed researchers at the BRI have done it again! They?ve dug through magazines, journals, newspapers, almanacs, encyclopedias, and (Ah-choo!) musty historical archives. They?ve even ventured into the vastness of cyberspace. Why? To make it easy for you to gain genius-level historical knowledge without having to dig through the dull... more » stuff yourself.
Every page of Uncle John?s Portable Genius is filled with things you never knew you needed to know such as—
*When told that General Ulysses S. Grant drank too much whiskey, President Abraham Lincoln reportedly replied, “Find out the name of the brand so I can give it to my other generals.?
*Think the streets of Medieval England were riddled with human waste? Think again! According to historian Tim O?Neill: “The idea that people emptied chamber pots out windows into the street…has been taught to generations of schoolchildren…Medieval towns and cities actually had a lot of ordinances and laws to do with waste disposal, latrines, and toilets.?
*Thomas Edison did not invent the first incandescent light bulb; he simply improved the carbon filaments that produced light so they would burn longer. Edison did, however, invent a device for electrocuting cockroaches.
*Penicillin, which had only entered medical trial stages in the« less