None of This Is Made Up: 1,010 Strange and Documented Facts About the World You Live In

A shrimp that briefly creates a point hotter than the Sun's surface. A man who survived both atomic bombs. A liver that regrows from a quarter of its mass. The world is stranger than anyone could invent, and this book proves it 1,010 times.

Across 41 chapters and eleven broad themes, None of This Is Made Up gathers the most extraordinary and well-documented things humanity has discovered about the universe, the planet, the body, the mind, and itself. Inside you will find:

• A whale alive today, swimming with a harpoon point from the 19th century lodged in its blubber
• Roman concrete that has actually grown stronger over the past 2,000 years
• A fungus in Oregon spread across 2,385 acres and up to 8,650 years old, the largest organism on Earth
• In 1518, as many as 400 people in Strasbourg dancing uncontrollably in the streets for weeks
• A teaspoon of neutron-star matter that would weigh about a billion tonnes on Earth

Every fact has been checked, polished, and arranged so you can read it straight through or open to any page at random. Some are unsettling. Some are beautiful. Most are both. None are filler. None are made up.

The kind of book you read for thirty seconds, look up from, and immediately tell someone about. Perfect for curious readers, gift-buyers, and anyone who finds the actual world more interesting than anything someone could make up.