Did you know:

• The Pony Express went bankrupt after little more than a year of business?
• One private citizen’s vote in 1842 made the difference between peace and war for the United States?
• The kilt is really English in origin, not Scottish?

These are only three of the greatest stories never told! This book is a smorgasbord for the trivia buff who is interested in history. However, it is a feast of appetizers only. With only two pages per topic, Beyer presents just enough to stimulate the appetite—but he does this very well!

The book is in chronological order, starting with the ancient Romans who messed with the calendar in 46 BC, and ending with the true story of who created the World Wide Web (not Al Gore) in 1990. In these pages, according to the subtitle, you’ll find one hundred tales from history to astonish, bewilder, and stupefy. I would add that you’ll find the bizarre and frankly unbelievable. Beyer does claim to have "painstakingly researched" each story and had it reviewed by a historian, and he does append a list of sources for each assertion he makes. Truth is stranger than fiction!

A few more examples of the strange and wonderful facts I learned while reading this book: In 1793, important messages in France were sent at a speed of more than one hundred miles per hour – using towers with mechanical arms!

• 1816 – the stethoscope is invented because one physician feels it is improper to put his ear to a woman’s chest and finds another way to hear her heart!
• 1863 – a primitive fax machine works by sending an electrical current through an image. The machine stands six feet tall.
• 1879 – Ivory, the soap that floats, is created when a Procter & Gamble worker leaves his machine running while he goes to lunch, adding too much air to the mixture!

If you’re like me, and you like stories about what I call "the fringes" of history, and other rare tidbits of information, you’ll enjoy this quick read. Others you might want to try include:

What are the Seven Wonders of the World? and 100 Other Great Cultural Lists—Fully Explicated by Peter D’Epiro and Mary Pinkowish

Know It All! The Fun Stuff You Never Learned in School by Ed Zotti

Don’t Know Much About History (more about mainstream history) by Kenneth C. Davis, and for kids, Ripley’s Believe It or Not Blasts from the Past by Mary Packard.

Rick Beyer is executive producer of the Smash Entertainment Group, which has produced numerous documentary projects for The History Channel. He lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children.