Several years ago, a New York high school teacher began using the Internet to post strange-but-true history and science factoids for his students to read. What began as an interesting Web site for students at Chatham High School soon became an internationally recognized page that garnered numerous awards, including Yahoo’s Site of the Week. In 2001, some of the stories were assembled into Einstein’s Refrigerator, which has been translated into Korean and Chinese. Now comes silliness squared with Lindbergh’s Artificial Heart, author Steve Silverman’s second collection of offbeat and often hilarious stories that offer a fascinating side of history that’s not usually taught in school. Lindbergh’s artificial heart:

Few people know it, but the famous aviator spent considerable time working on an artificial heart.

Exploding whale: What did the Oregon Department of Transportation do with a dead whale that washed up on one of its beaches? Suffice it to say their decision to blow it up was quite the blubber blunder.

Nose picking: Delve into the humorous findings of a study of this bad habit conducted by one of our institutions of higher learning.

The fastest charcoal lighter ever: Using liquid oxygen at your family barbecue may speed up the cooking, but it does have it’s drawbacks . . . such as the fact that it vaporizes your grill.

Carefully researched and frequently laugh-out-loud funny, the entertaining and educational stories within this book’s 192 pages-many never before shared on-line or otherwise-will delight students and teachers alike.