#133 in Humor & entertainment books
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Reddit mentions of The Book of General Ignorance

Sentiment score: 4
Reddit mentions: 9

We found 9 Reddit mentions of The Book of General Ignorance. Here are the top ones.

The Book of General Ignorance
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Specs:
ColorCream
Height8.5 Inches
Length5.9 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateAugust 2007
Weight0.89 Pounds
Width0.96 Inches

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Found 9 comments on The Book of General Ignorance:

u/biteableniles · 3 pointsr/WTF

From a book I own, The Book Of General Ignorance, Under section What are violin strings made from? page 140:

>Violin strings are not made of catgut, and never have been.

>This is a myth started by medieval Italian violin makers who had discovered that sheep intestines made good strings for their instruments. Killing a cat brought terribly bad luck, so they protected their invention by telling everyone else their strings were made from the intestines of cats.

>The legend was that a saddle maker called Erasmo, in the Abruzzi mountain village of Salle, near Pescara, heard the wiund blowing through the strands of drying sheeps' guts one day and throught that they might make a good string for the early violin known as the renaissance fiddle.

Yeah, that's just "legend," but it sounds plausible enough. Unexpected outcome for a product. I mean, it seems like the fibrous tissue comes out pretty stringy in the first place. It's not a far leap from fibrous tissue to string to stringed instrument.

u/Attunement · 3 pointsr/todayilearned

So it's just a typed up version of this book?

u/fearthecrossbronx · 2 pointsr/funny

I read in this book that cats can survive falls from more than 7 stories because they need that amount of falling time to relax their body. IIRC the claim was backed up by cat hospitalization data, but I don't have the book on hand to check.
Anyway I thought it added sort-of an interesting twist to all the falling arguments.

u/PunctualGeek · 1 pointr/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon

The Book of General Ignorance is the one I would like if I win.
Book is available in hardcover, paperback, new and used. :)

31 is my number.

I really don't have a favorite book. I read lots of biographies and history books.

EDIT:Formatting

u/Hajile_S · 1 pointr/AskReddit

Relevant, and an excellent bathroom companion.

Also, it seems like the counter-intuitive stuff is the kind of ignorance that really sticks. For instance, someone -- a reasonably intelligent someone -- once tried at length to convince me that blood is blue until it meets air, something I hadn't heard since elementary school.

Hint: that is false.

u/R3bel · 1 pointr/AskReddit

Read The General Book of Ignorance
and The Second Book of General Ignorance. They have perhaps the most awesome list of random facts you could imagine. They were written by the buys who work on QI and they are freaking hilarious.