In 1959, White American Journalist, John Howard Griffin used a combination of sun lamps and drugs for treating Vitiligo, to darken his skin and travel through the segregated South. He detailed his travels in his Book “Black Like Me”.
books
Medieval scribes would frequently…
Medieval scribes would frequently scribble complaints in the margins of books as they copied them, as their work was so tedious. Recorded complaints range from “As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe.”, to “Oh, my hand.” and, “A curse on thee, O pen!”
In 1789, George Washington borrowed…
In 1789, George Washington borrowed a book from the New York Society Library and never returned it. In 2010, Mount Vernon staff returned the book 221 years late, by which time the overdue fine had reached $300,000, adjusted for inflation. (The fine was waived.)
The first American novel was “The Power of Sympathy”, a tragic love story promoting rational thought that was written by William Hill Brown and published in Boston in 1791.
H G Wells was inspired to write…
H G Wells was inspired to write War of the Worlds by the plight of the Tasmanian Aborigines.
By the time Wells wrote that book there were no Tasmanian Aboriginals left to have a plight.
The native of Tasmania were victims of one of the most complete genocides in modern history. The last male Tasmanian Aboriginals had his scrotum turned into a tobacco pouch after death and the last female died in 1876. The remains of some of the last to die were put in museums back in England whole or in parts.
More recently the population of Tasmanian Aboriginals has been revived by people who believe themselves to have some aboriginal ancestry who learned or recreated some of the old culture and languages and lobbied to have the definition of aboriginals widened to include them and anyone who self-identifies as such.
The book called “The Secret (treasure hunt)”…
The book called “The Secret (treasure hunt)” contains 12 cryptic paintings associated with 12 cryptic riddles you must decipher in order to dig up a key to the loot buried around the U.S. and Canada. Through the end of 2019, only three of the 12 loot boxes have been found.
Trish Vickers, a blind author, wrote 26 pages…
Trish Vickers, a blind author, wrote 26 pages of her first novel without realising her pen had run out of ink. The local police force used their forensic lab to find the missing words, and the book was published on the day of her death.
The unofficial Russian book….
The unofficial Russian book “The Last Ringbearer” describes The Lord of the Rings trilogy from Sauron’s point of view and portrays Mordor as the good guys.
“The Great Leveler” is a book that argues…
“The Great Leveler” is a book that argues that the greatest redistributions of wealth in history are during times of war, plague, and catastrophe, citing the Black Death and WWI as “actually suppressing inequality, by raising the price of labor.”
In 1981 Dean Koontz wrote a book…
In 1981 Dean Koontz wrote a book “The Eyes of Darkness”. The chapter 39 it mentions a Chinese military lab outside of the city of Wuhan, where a deadly virus is invented as part of the country’s biological weapons warfare programme. Owing to the lab’s location, the virus is named ‘Wuhan-400’.
If you publish a book in Norway…
If you publish a book in Norway, the government will buy 1000 copies (1,500 if a children’s book) and distribute them to libraries throughout the country.
The first crime in Antartica in…
The first crime in Antartica in almost 20 years occurred when a 54-year old engineer stabbed his co-worker over spoiling the endings of books he was reading.