Napoleon's Hemorrhoids

Hilarious, fascinating, and a roller coaster of dizzying, historical what-ifs, Napoleons Hemorrhoids is a potpourri for serious historians and casual history buffs. In one of Phil Masons many revelations, youll learn that Communist jets were two minutes away from opening fire on American planes during the Cuban missile crisis, when they had to turn back as they were running out of fuel. Youll discover that before the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleons painful hemorrhoids prevented him from mounting his horse to survey the battlefield. Youll learn that an irate blacksmith threw his hammer at a fox and missed, hitting a rock and revealing the largest vein of silver ever discovered, thus changing the finances of Canada forever. Interestingly, Charlton Heston was cast as Moses in The Ten Commandments because his broken nose made him look like Michelangelos famous sculpture of Moses. Finally, no one knows Einsteins last words. They were in German, a language his nurse did not speak. A treasure trove filled with fascinating anecdotes about the tiny ripples that created big waves in history, Napoleons Hemorrhoids is much more than just a trivial fact book; it is an astonishing historical-fate book revealing how our most famous incidents, best-loved works of art, and most accepted historical outcomes are simply twists of fate.