Honorary Unsubscribe v1: The Unknown, Forgotten, and Obscure People who Had an Impact on Our Lives

These are the people you wish you had known. Start with the inventors: the same guy invented the computer hard drive and the video cassette, another guy vinyl — and bubble gum. And how about the brains behind the contact lens, the hovercraft, the Hawaiian shirt, even the guy who thought of putting a peanut inside an M&M?

And then there's the artists — the creators of music and TV shows you love. Doctors who made radical breakthroughs to improve human life. Even a rocket scientist here and there, who helped humanity reach toward the stars. And, yes, an entertainer or two — the ones who spent their entire lives bringing us joy, only to die mostly forgotten.

The mainstream media tend to worship celebrities and sports figures, but the real heroes in life are often anonymous to the public. You've likely never heard of the doctor known as "the fastest man on Earth" — but you've probably seen his photo, working as his own test dummy, risking his life to learn how to make cars (and spacecraft) safer.

All those stories are in this book, plus more than a hundred more. The stories are fascinating: you won't believe the cool people you have missed in your life. These are the people you wish you had known.

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The Honorary Unsubscribe is a recurring feature in "This is True" — one of the first Internet-based newsletters, created by Randy Cassingham in early 1994. TRUE's mission is to provoke thought through social commentary. But if readers aren't entertained by the stories, they won't read very many. Thus its vehicle, weird-but-true news from legitimate news sources from around the world. The result spans the gamut of the crazy things we humans think we can get away with: jaw-dropping examples of the human thought process, and the realization that we can do better — a LOT better!

The Honorary Unsubscribe is the "balance" to those weird stories of people doing dumb things. The H.U. is, in fact, the opposite: stories of the absolutely coolest people you've ever heard about; the ones who DO live a lot better. This is the first volume collecting those write-ups into book form for the first time.