20 Things You Didn’t Know About Living In Space. Like it may be a cure for snoring.

Why they called it the Manhattan Project. At least 5,000 people worked in Manhattan secretly building the bomb.

How would life on earth be different if we had no moon? Well, for one thing, we’d have to come up with another term for the act of showing one’s backside.

The 16 Greatest Moments in Web History. Curiously, Numa Numa is not on this list.

So bad they’re good: the worst music videos ever. No, you don’t have to watch to the end.

PS: Happy Halloween!

THE BOOKSTORE: Skylight Books, Los Angeles
THE DICTIONARY: American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition, 2000
THE WORD: “loopy”

c.1390, probably of Celtic origin (cf. Gael. lub “bend,” Ir. lubiam), influenced by O.N. hlaup “a leap, run.” In ref. to magnetic recording tape or film, first recorded 1931. Computer programming sense first attested 1947. The verb meaning “to form a loop” is first recorded 1856. Looped “drunk” is from 1934; loopy “crazy” is from 1925. To loop the loop (1902) originally was a stunt of bicycle-riding. (thank you, Online Etymology Dictionary)

Ok. So, “loopy”–I used to know a girl nicknamed this. I never found out why, or if I was hearing it incorrectly–because even if it had been something else (like Lupe), in the Midwest we draw those vowels right out, giving the umlaut treatment whenever possible. But perhaps nicknames aren’t meant to be exactly inviolable. If you’re famous, infamous, or just plain unpopular enough, chances are you’ve been the recipient of a nickname. And nicknames, being the intrinsic property of others, seem to beg derivations: Hoss becomes Jefe becomes General Excelsior (perhaps a ridiculous route).

In eighth grade a band of Heathers adopted me as an extremely ancillary member, and christened me Tabük. The etymology of this is foggy to me now, though most certainly it involved some meme leftover from a group science project. It died off by high school, but I have to say I kind of missed it, even if was supposed to mark me as, um, loopy. (If you have Stockholm Syndrome at all, you cling to crumbs!)

So first of all a) am I psychic and was your day especially loopy? and b) did you ever have a nickname and was it ever butchered by others?

This article was written by Jay M. Pasachoff, Professor of Astronomy at Williams College, and originally appeared in mental_floss magazine.

Galileo may have been threatened with the rack during the Inquisition almost 400 years ago, but—relatively speaking—that was hardly terrifying. Whether the Earth went around the Sun (as Copernicus, Galileo and Newton thought) or vice versa (in the old model of Ptolemy or Aristotle), Galileo’s Universe was still a placid place. But these days, astronomers are facing threats so bone chilling, they make the rack look like a simple walk on the moon. Here are some of the things astronomers worry about, and some things you may want to start worrying about, too.

I. Asteroid Extinction
II. Here Comes The Sun … Seriously This Time
III. Exploding Stars
IV. Accelerating Universe (more…)

You remember Q—the lab-coated scientist who’s always giving James Bond new gadgets like a bulletproof Aston Martin or explosive fountain pen.

The U.S. military’s version of Q is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. The unmanned Predator aircraft now being used in Iraq and Afghanistan is just one of the many remarkable—and sometimes kooky—innovations dreamt up by DARPA engineers.

The next installment of Quiz Week!! tests your ability to distinguish the actual DARPA projects. Take the quiz: Crazy Uncle DARPA. And be sure to check back tomorrow for more Quiz Week!! fun.

Chris Weber is an occasional contributor to mentalfloss.com. You can visit his online home here.

Even the biggest stars had to start somewhere. It just so happens that many of them started out in horror movies – some classic, some classically terrible. The quiz week festivities continue with Scary Beginnings: match the celeb with their early horror movie credit.

Take Stacy Conradt’s quiz!

Then come back and brag about your score.

Every weekday until Halloween, I’ll be offering up trivia treats about sweets you’re likely to encounter on October 31. Or, in today’s case, October 31, 1900.

1) Popcorn balls were one of the most popular treats in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (Photo courtesy of Tomorrow’s Friendly Food.)

2) Popular flavorings during that time period included orange and lemon juice, rose, peppermint, honey, vanilla, molasses and sugar.

3) 30 percent of popcorn in the U.S. is sold at circuses, movies, fairs and baseball games.

4) I was all set to tell you that the largest popcorn ball ever made lives in Sac City, Iowa, weighing in at 3,100 pounds. But it turns out that the record was topped in 2006 by our neighbors in Lake Forest, Illinois. Lake Forest is home to the Popcorn Factory, a company that makes about 1,000,000 pounds of popcorn every year. The ball took employees two days to make and came in at eight feet in diameter and almost 24.5 feet in circumference. It weighs 3,423 pounds. (Continue reading for a picture.)
(more…)

I was visiting family on the Eastern shore of Maryland last week when I saw this little war of words at a remote intersection. My aunt, a local, said “Funny, I’ve driven by here a thousand times and never noticed that!” I guess the poduce vendor hasn’t noticed it yet, either.

Big Al found this (phonetically?) misspelled sign with a punctuation error, to boot — it’s like the four leaf clover of signs!

(more…)

The Daily Show has recently opened its video archives with over 16,000 clips, all nicely tagged and searchable. The archive currently contains clips going back to 1999 (sorry, Craig Kilborn fans), but the most important part is the timeline search interface. Using a clever three-level timeline (year, month, and day), you can quickly browse through the archive to find clips by day. Go ahead, look up your birthday. Or look up Jon Stewart’s famous post-September 11 monologue (the show returned to the air on September 20, 2001). More clips are promised in the coming years, but for now 16,000 will just have to do.

This web site promises to waste hours — nay, days — of my life. But wait…is pure joy from fake news video clips ever a waste? I think not.

Here are some best bets:

All appearances by Resident Expert John Hodgman, 681 Stephen Colbert clips, This Week in God (includes many segments after Colbert left), and David Cross.

Halloween is nearly upon us… and there’s no better time to take a look at one of the most famous horror stories in literary history: Frankenstein!

In this two-part article, we’ll discover some truths (and dispel some myths) about Dr. Frankenstein and The Monster. Yesterday, in Part I, we reviewed the story’s influence in movies, TV, music, and pop culture. Today, in Part II, we’ll focus on Mary Shelley’s original novel.

THE BOOK:

Q: What event halfway around the world helped spawn Frankenstein?

A: The eruption of Mount Tambora in present-day Indonesia. The atmospheric dust the volcano spewed out blocked the Sun’s rays, resulting in unseasonably cold weather during the summer of 1816. Mary went to Switzerland along with poet (and husband-to-be) Percy Shelley that May, as houseguests of fellow poet Lord Byron. Unable to enjoy outdoor activities due to the conditions, the group thought it would be fun to challenge each other to write the scariest ghost story imaginable. While Percy and Byron abandoned the project early on, Mary was so struck by a nightmare she’d had that she kept writing. She finished the book the following year, and it was first published in 1818.

Q: How did a book about the creation of a living being manage to escape the wrath of the religious?

Lots more after the jump… (more…)

Alfred Sisley was an accomplished landscape artist, but he is not as well known today as some of his contemporaries, such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Today, on Alfred Sisley’s birthday, let’s discuss Renoir’s “Alfred Sisley and His Wife.”

1. Alfred Sisley and Pierre-Auguste Renoir met around 1862, when Renoir began studying in Paris under Charles Gleyre.

2. When he was a boy, Renoir worked in a porcelain factory, where he painted designs on fine china.
(more…)