Significa

The authors of the best-selling The People's Almanac and The Book of Lists are back with their most entertaining popular reference book yet. This lively and informative collection is filled with significant offbeat facts that have eluded standard histories and biographies throughout the ages. With more than 400 entries that will surprise, amuse, and inform, Significa will provide you with hours of pleasurable reading. From natural disasters to health fads, from military history to great love affairs, it's all fascinating—and it's all true!

Here's a sampling of some of the amazing-but-true facts to be found inside Significa. Did you know:

Helen Keller was a political radical who worked the vaudeville circuit?

The Declaration of Independence was first published in German?

Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel?

At one time, the Bayer Company sold heroin as an ingredient in cough medicine?

Congress once voted on a bill to send an expedition to the center of the Earth?

In 1816 there was no summer?

The Liberty Bell was almost hocked for scrap metal?

Two insane men served on the United States Supreme Court?

The Uruguayan Navy once used old cheese balls instead of cannonballs in a battle and won?

It is the intention of the authors to present little-known facts and fascinating curiosities that comment upon our lives, our backgrounds, and the human condition. Certainly every reader will agree that the information uncovered here is too significant to be called mere trivia.