Here's an interesting piece by Bill Bryson about stuff. It's an excerpt from his new book At Home which seems to be Bryson wanders around his house and writes about the stuff he finds there. I'm assuming the book goes into some actual detail about, say, why forks have four tines. As opposed to just saying "oh well, no one knows... hey, look at that cruet." I'm kind of a sucker for books and articles like this -- history of the pencil or salt or whatever. It occured to me at some point that Schott's Miscellany was sort of the real life version of Strange Facts Known By Few.