A Book in Review: The Book of General Ignorance

The Book of General Ignorance By: John Lloyd & John Mitchinson
Non-fiction: trivia 252 pages
Book Count: 52

This book was written by a writer for the British show QI and a friend of his that is a producer of other hit British shows. It is written much like QI, which for those that don't know it is a show in which a panel of 4 celebrities answer trivia questions where everyone thinks they know the answer but are wrong. Questions like "who was the first person to circumnavigate the globe?" Most people would say Magellan, but he was killed before finishing the trip. As it is about unusual answers that goes against popular ideas, when one thing is wrong then I question everything else, as they are things one cannot easily look up, how can I say other things aren't wrong. And this book had multiple times when I knew for a fact they were wrong. For example, they stated that since 1887 the groundhog that predicts the weather on Groundhog Day, Punxsutawney Phil, has never been wrong. Although, the official site for Phil says that, outside sources list his accuracy as low as 40%. Also, it says that Henry VIII had either 2 or 4 wives depending on if your following Henry's or the Pope's count. They said this as both annulled a different number of the marriages and "Legally, it (an annulment) means the marriage never took place." However, a religious annulment, which the ones from the Pope would be, and the ones from Henry also mostly seem to be, do not mean that. If you get a religious annulment you still were legally married, just not sacramental married. You can't tell the IRS that you need to refile your taxes as you weren't really married, and it doesn't soddenly make your kids bastards. One of the marriages would qualify for a civil annulment, which I can understand legally meaning it didn't happen, as Anne of Cleves apparently never consummated the marriage and legally wasn't free to marry at the time. Also, on a side bar it doesn't point out the stupidity of Henry's reason for annulling his 1st marriage, which was that a man couldn't marry his brother's widow, due to the Old Testament law. There is a Old Testament Law on marring your ex-sister-in-law, Deuteronomy 25:5 states that if a man dies before leaving an heir it's his brothers duty to marry her and try to have a child together to be considered an heir for the deceased. So, in effect the exact opposite as what he was saying the law was.