Uncle John's Portable Genius
Those info-obsessed researchers at the BRI have done it again! They’ve dug through magazines, journals, newspapers, almanacs, encyclopedias, and (Ah-choo!) musty historical archives. They’ve even ventured into the vastness of cyberspace. Why? To make it easy for you to gain genius-level historical knowledge without having to dig through the dull stuff yourself.
Every page of Uncle John’s Portable Genius is filled with things you never knew you needed to know such as—
*When told that General Ulysses S. Grant drank too much whiskey, President Abraham Lincoln reportedly replied, “Find out the name of the brand so I can give it to my other generals.”
*Think the streets of Medieval England were riddled with human waste? Think again! According to historian Tim O’Neill: “The idea that people emptied chamber pots out windows into the street…has been taught to generations of schoolchildren…Medieval towns and cities actually had a lot of ordinances and laws to do with waste disposal, latrines, and toilets.”
*Thomas Edison did not invent the first incandescent light bulb; he simply improved the carbon filaments that produced light so they would burn longer. Edison did, however, invent a device for electrocuting cockroaches.
*Penicillin, which had only entered medical trial stages in the