You know the presidents. Do you know their back-up plans? Choose which person served as VP under each commander in chief.

Take the Quiz: Who Was His VP?

The ’40s Were a Wild Time

In honor of National Bike Month, the good people at LIFE.com dug up these photos of variations on the bicycle from the 1940s.

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There’s A Giant 860-Mile Wide Sphere of Water Sitting on Top of the Midwestern United States
In this picture – which illustrates what all of the Earth’s water looks like in one place.

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It’s About (EXPLETIVE DELETED) Time Someone Defended My (EXPLETIVE DELETED) Cursing
You should know that this impassioned defense of swearing does, in fact, contain a few NSFW verbal bombs itself.

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Or Just Tell Your Opponent to Look at the TV, Then Peek at Their Board
Apparently there’s an honest way to win at Battleship, too. For those of you with board game ethics.

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Ze Frank has been making awesome internet videos since before that was a thing. Today, I have the honor to appear briefly* in his show Chase That Happy, which is concerned with how we get happy when we aren’t. While the goal of life isn’t to be happy all the time, perhaps it is to watch Ze Frank and hope that maybe, someday, he will blink.

Representative quote: “For example I discovered Happy Typing, where you type like a Crazy Secretary in a silent film. [Frank types crazily]“ Content note: there’s some NSFW language in this video, but it’s fleeting. There’s also a mildly NSFW view of my unkempt back yard: horticulturists beware!

Frank mentions the Everything Thing, a previous video dealing with cognitive looping and anxiety, among other topics. Worth a look. Also, if you have no idea who this guy is, get educated. He basically invented the quick-cutting video blog, in 2006.

* = Shameless self-promotion alert (albeit belated to this footnote). This is what I got for tossing a hundred bucks at dude’s Kickstarter.

The internet has embraced the story of Brendon Grimshaw over the past couple of weeks. Grimshaw did what so many dream of doing: he bought an island. He purchased Moyenne Island in the Indian Ocean in 1964 for $20,000, quit his job in 1973 to move there, and spent the past 40 years developing it into a paradise, cultivating and protecting flora and fauna native to the Seychelles. Now 86, Grimshaw’s island is worth millions to developers, but he is determined that it remain a nature preserve after his death.

There are still many abandoned and uninhabited islands around the world. Why isn’t there anyone living on them? After all, 270 people live on Tristan de Cunha, which is 2430 kilometers from the next inhabited island! The reasons islands remain uninhabited are financial, political, environmental, or religious -or a combination of those reasons.

1. Ōkunoshima Island

Three kilometers off the coast of Japan, Ōkunoshima Island is overrun with rabbits, which are not a native species. But there are no human residents on Okunoshima Island. It was once the site of a chemical weapons plant, turning out poison gas for the Japanese Imperial Army from 1929 to 1945. The Allied Occupation Forces dismantled the plant and let laboratory animals go free (hence the rabbits). Japan did not speak of Okunoshima for many years. Then in 1988, the Ōkunoshima Poison Gas Museum was opened on the site. Tourists take the ferry to the island to interact with the friendly rabbits more than to see the museum. Photograph by Flickr user GetHiroshima.

2. Antipodes Islands

The Antipodes are a group of volcanic islands south of New Zealand. The cold climate and harsh winds make the islands too harsh a place to live. It is known for numerous shipwrecks and deaths, some from trying to survive on the islands, despite supplies being left there in castaway huts, as seen in the photograph. Two people died by shipwreck there as recently as 1999.
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Continuing our occasional series on classic Nickelodeon cartoons, we present The Ren & Stimpy Show. The adventures of the manic chihuahua and the stupid cat were sometimes more blue than traditional Nick fare, but they remain classics in the cartoon world. Get more than 10 right and we won’t call you an “eediot.”

Take the Quiz: Ren & Stimpy

We all know Black Friday, the discount-fueled shopping frenzy that follows Thanksgiving. But there are “Black” days for Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, too. You probably wouldn’t want to wake up early to wait in line for any of these.

1. Black Sunday

On Sunday, April 14, 1935, a massive dust storm swept through the Great Plains, the largest of the decade. The day came to be known as “Black Sunday” because the huge cloud of topsoil, over 300,000 tons of it, was coal-black.

Dirt from the storm reached all the way to Washington, D.C. Witnesses said “The impact [was] like a shovelful of fine sand flung against the face.” The so-called “black blizzard” even resulted in the press giving the area its famous nickname: The Dust Bowl.

Other Black Sundays: A large series of wildfires in Australia on Valentine’s Day, 1926 (and another in 1955); the disastrous opening day of Disneyland on July 17, 1955; and the death of Dale Earnhardt on February 18, 2001.

2. Black Monday

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Each week Miss Kathleen provides links to a variety of stories about libraries, authors, and books. If there’s something noteworthy going on in your local library, leave us a comment!

Don’t you wish you could live near a pop-up library?
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Maurice Sendak had a huge impact on children’s literature and art, and will be missed. Here are some lovely tributes from other illustrators.
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If you couldn’t or wouldn’t sell your old textbooks, well, here’s a better use for them: make art! (Image at left) Better than their taking up precious space on the bookshelves, right?
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If you need more inspiration, how about these landscape sculptures? (Image at right) Looks like a piece of cake, right?
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What kind of novel do you have to write to win a literary prize? Tough question, but don’t worry, there’s an infograph for that!
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Today’s mentalfloss.com Brain Game Think Thursday challenge needs but a number for its “solvation.” Good luck!

Identify the missing number in this sequence:

2, 2, 4, 12, 16, ?, 86, 602, …

Hey, porcupine! Names in the questions of Thursday’s 5 Questions quiz celebrate: The Three Stooges

A “ring of fire” solar eclipse will be visible Sunday on the west coast of North America and most of Asia on Monday morning. The moon will not cover the whole solar disc, leaving a ring that’s so awesome we shouldn’t look at it.
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Elementary is the new modern-day Sherlock Holmes TV series coming to CBS this fall. Take a look at some behind-the-scenes footage and a clip of the show.
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You might think that Adele has little in common with ’80s one-hit-wonder Baltimora, but their songs “Set Fire to the Rain” and “Tarzan Boy” mix surprisingly well. How do people come up with these odd combinations?
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The Science of the NBA. Getting a ball through a basket involves physics, math, and for some reason, a sumo wrestler.
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11 Things You Need To Know Before Entering The Real World. And somewhat related-
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The 5 Stages of Graduation Grief. Be prepared to mourn those sweet years of education. NSFW text.
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The origin and proliferation of the taco. More adaptable than traditional, the tasty treat is not as old as you’d think.
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How Texas Executed an Innocent Man. Police knew Carlos DeLuna was guilty, so they ignored the other Carlos with a violent history who looked just like DeLuna.
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Inside Fremantle: The Horrors of Australia’s Creepy Historic Prison. The inmates were moved out, but some say the ghosts of 44 executed prisoners remain.
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The FDA is taking steps toward approving an at-home HIV test kit. The accuracy rate isn’t perfect, but it’s better than no test at all.
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3 Bald encounters on the set of Star Trek. On the Enterprise, hair -or lack of hair- was a matter best not left to chance.