Stuff your brain with conversation starters, cultural tidbits, and important and not so important knowledge about the world. Armchair The Mammoth Reader entertains and enlightens with little-known anecdotes, fascinating trivia, off-the-wall facts, offbeat lists, and smarty-pants humor. Find nuggets of information about a wide array of topics, including science, celebrities, art, animals, food, history, sports, and just plain old weird stuff. Learn what it takes to become a butler, what chili pepper and morphine have in common, and what color underwear Major League Baseball umpires have to wear. Armchair The Mammoth Reader provides 576 pages of information on topics as varied as the marvels of science and pop culture trivia. Here is a sampling of what s inside President Andrew Jackson s inauguration was so completely out of hand that a mob of partiers trashed the White House. Some famous folks were serious hypochondriacs, including Charles Darwin and Tennessee Williams. In baseball s early days, umpires sat in rocking chairs behind home plate. Famed nurse Florence Nightingale carried a pet owl in her pocket. When Marvel Comics published a comic book featuring the rock band KISS in 1977, a sample of blood from each band member was mixed into the ink at the printing plant.