The Totally Awesome Book of Crazy Stories: Crazy But True Stories That Actually Happened!

Author Bill O’Neill has authored many books on Trivia and stands as somewhat of an expert in this field! His topics include movies, football, baseball, wars, rock music, simply random trivia facts and US States. Now with a nod to providing interesting reading material while passing the time at home, Bill offers a plethora of stories that provide not only entertaining but also so educational topics – tidbits of unbelievable but true crazy nonsense that result in a wakeup jolt – followed by a guffaw! Providing an overview of the topics of interest in this book, Bill outlines his content in the Introduction – ‘When you learn about topics like history, Shakespeare, science, and politics in high school, the problem is that quite often some of the weirdest and most interesting stories are left out of textbooks and exam papers. So you end up analyzing sonnets and monologues, instead of finding out that Shakespeare’s father was the official beer taster of Stratford upon Avon. You end up learning about the early diplomatic policies of the fledgling United States, rather than learning the story of how President John Quincy Adams once almost drowned while trying to swim across the Potomac River naked during a thunderstorm. Plus, you end up studying the Ancient Egyptians, without ever being told that Ramses III had to deal with the first labor strike in recorded history, or that pharaohs had to run around the grounds of the palaces every three yeas to prove how youthful and fit to rule they still were…What follows are some of the craziest, weirdest, funniest, wackiest, and most awesome stories that you’ll hopefully never hear before…! Bill accompanies his crazy wild tales with near academic standards, a factor that makes the punch line of each chapter all the more pungent! Interspersed in these various subjects are Crazy Facts, such as ‘The planet Mercury is shrinking, October 20 is International Sloth Day, A group of pandas is called an embarrassment, On the average, plastic shopping bags take 1.000 years to biodegrade, The Argentine tango was traditionally danced by tow men, The Leaning Tower of Pisa started to lean while it was still being built, etc’ Not only is the book entertaining – it is also very instructive. For those familiar with Bill O’Neill’s talent for tickling the brain, this book is a must read – one of his best. For those who are simply looking for solid entertaining reading to while away the hours, welcome to the field expert! Highly recommended – especially during these times… Grady Harp, December 20

I really enjoyed reading this book. The stories enclosed were fun and informative to read. Great for history buffs and trivia enthusiasts.

fun, interesting & quick reading.

This is another great book by Bill O'Neill. I liked this book because I learned some new facts that I did not know before reading this book. I read this book for my personal pleasure and personal knowledge. Some of the interesting facts that the author of the book mentions in this book is as follows: Despite the fact that some people feel that Alfred Hitchcock was the best director, Alfred Hitchcock never won a Best Director Oscar in his entire career. According to a 2018 study by Google, people in Maine used Google to check the spelling of the state of CT more than any other word. The first email sent by a U.S. President was sent by Bill Clinton to an astronaut in space. President Clinton only sent one more email during his entire presidency. There are no trees and no rivers on the entire island of Malta. The saxophone was invented by a Belgian man named Adolphe Sax. Scotland's Loch Ness contains more water than all of the other lakes in the rest of Great Britain combined.

I did enjoy reading the stories and so did my youngest brother David. After he read a few, he wasn't interested. So after he left to go home, he left them here, at home.

This is such an interesting book it is hard to put down. What I like is that it seems that we should have heard a lot of these stories elsewhere. How were they missed? I like the diversity of the time periods in history are referred to making it a fun read for any historian or trivia lover. Well written and nicely divided into chapters

I bought this book for my nephew's 18th birthday. Hopefully he will like it.

Another great trivia book giving the facts that leave questions for neighborly discussions. There is Roman Pee which was used as a chemical for tanning hide. The next not so trivial need presented were public toilets in Paris. Today theyed be called "Port-a-Potties" trucked all over the place. Then the Woodpecker trivia having a tongue long enough to wrap around its neck. The question for discussion why does a woodpecker have such a long tongue? well maybe to be able to reach into the pecked hole for food. Maybe sip the syrup from a tapped maple tree, or to sip out of a Birch tree a birchbeer soda?

Good content. A bit of trivia and quirky short stories that they say are true.

An hilarious and informative book of crazy facts. Read the whole thing in one go. Enjoyed thoroughly. A great time pass.

I don't do book reviews like you keep seeing, as I find that some give too much of the plot away and I personally hate that, as it makes the book not worth reading. I much prefer to take the authors back cover write up as a review as it can either intrigue you enough to read the book of provide you enough information to make you decide that the book is not for you. My review rules are: The more stars, the more I liked it. If there are too many typos or errors the less stars I give If the storyline or plot is poor or contains too many errors, the characters are too weak, the ending lacking something, then the less stars I give. Simple, uncomplicated and to the point without giving anything away. Some of the books I read have been given to me by the author as a pre-release copy and this does not bias my reviews in any way

Bought as a gift. The recipient has read quite a bit already and is delighted. Good choice if it’s your thing.

This was a fun book. To give you an idea, it's 200ish pages and 64 chapters and each of those chapters is a story, so they are each only a few pages long. This made it ideal for me to read when I only had a bit of time or wasn't sure what (fictional) book I wanted to start next as I could get a few stories read without having to stop in the middle. I especially liked the ones that were word/phrase based or history based, but that's just because of my interests. There was a wide enough variety that I'm sure most people would find something they found particularly interesting. The quality of the writing was good and the stories overall had almost a chatty tone to them, which made it easy to read and not a dry retelling of facts. O'Neill's books are available on Kindle Unlimited and are all fact/trivia based. Some of them are too niche for me, but I would read another book by him since I enjoyed this one.