THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong By John Lloyd & John Mitchinson

Non Fiction can be fun!

Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the heave-ho in this humorous, downright humiliating book of "reeducation". Challenging what most of us assume to be rock solid truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature and more, The Book of General Ignorance is a "gotcha" of how little we actually know about anything. It'll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school.

Here are the whats of some things you thought you knew, but probably don't. Check out the book to find out the whys.

What does the moon smell like? Gunpowder, apparently. What came back on the space suits got many tests, including the sniff test.

How did Roman emperors order the death of a gladiator? Thumbs down? Nope. Thumbs up, like a drawn sword. To spare a life, the thumb was tucked inside the fist-as with a sheathed weapon.

What was Tutankhamun's curse? There wasn't one. It was made up by the papers. The story of the "pharaoh's curse" striking down all those who entered the tomb, was the work of the Cairo correspondent of the Daily Express.

Was Billy the Kid's real name William H. Bonney? Nope. That was just the alias he was using when he was sentenced to death. His real name was Henry McCarty.

What were World War II German uniforms made from? Nettles! Both Germany and Austria ran short of cotton supplies, so a small amount of cotton was mixed with the hardy strands of the nettle plant.

Revealing the truth behind all the things we think we know, but don't, this book will leave you dumbfounded about all the misinformation you've managed to collect over the years.

Thomas Edison said that we know less than one millionth of one percent about anything: this book makes us wonder if we even know that much.

With that in mind, we do know that the human brain is the most complex single object in the cosmos. It can make more connections than there are positively charged particles in the visible universe. No one knows why it is so complicated, or what we are supposed to do with all that astonishing computing power. Perhaps the answer is – to ask more questions.