Read Trevor Homer's posts on the Penguin Blog.
Everything—from the mundane (the pencil) to the catastrophic (the atom bomb)—has an origin, but often it’s not what we expect. A few things you may not have known:
• Gandhi was married at age thirteen!
• Chinese fortune cookies are an American invention and were not eaten in China until the 1990s when they were advertised as “Genuine American Fortune Cookies.”
• Bayer lost the trademark for aspirin (which they had held since 1897) as part of the reparations Germany was forced to pay after World War I.
• The original idea for the electric chair came from an American dentist.
For aspiring mindblowers and wanna-be know-it-alls, The Book of Origins is a treasure trove of trivia and fascinating facts guaranteed to entertain and enlighten.
Homer courageously adds his book to the abundance of publications available on the topic of miscellanea. A former champion amateur golfer, he admits to a "lifelong obsession with obscure facts," of which this slim debut seems to be a culmination. As he notes in his introduction, the book is meant for "people who want to know how and when things began." Nineteen topical chapters (e.g., "Inventions" and "Crime") are arranged alphabetically and subdivided (e.g., the "Famous People" chapter contains an "Actors and Other Show Business People" section). Otherwise, the entries within the chapters do not appear to follow a chronological or other typical arrangement. Though Homer doesn't cite entry sources in the proof, he states in both the acknowledgments and epilog that he's used the Encyclopaedia Britannica(edition unspecified) and has "googled" the web to research facts. A table of contents guides readers to specific topics. As is usually the case with miscellanea, it is difficult to know just what information one can count on finding upon consultation. The book lists just ten British "famous people" (not one of them a Beatle). And the "Judaism" entry in the "Religion" chapter takes up five brief paragraphs, while the entry on Christianity is twice as long-surely there are more obscure facts about Judaism?
—Katherine Mossman
Overview
Read Trevor Homer's posts on the Penguin Blog.
Everything—from the mundane (the pencil) to the catastrophic (the atom bomb)—has an origin, but often it’s not what we expect. A few things you may not have known:
• Gandhi was married at age thirteen!
• Chinese fortune cookies are an American invention and were not eaten in China until the 1990s when they were advertised as ...