Yesterday, we took a long, hard look at the bizarre origins of wedding traditions. For today’s follow-up, we traveled state to state in search of the most curious courtship regulations that are still on the books. As for the question of whether or not these laws of love should actually be enforced—well, we leave that up to you and your “better half” to decide.

• In South Carolina, if a man over 16 proposes marriage to an unwed woman without actually intending to marry her, he’s guilty of a misdemeanor under the Offenses Against Morality and Decency. Don’t get too jazzed, though, ladies. You can’t bring the sleaze ball up on charges unless you can get someone to corroborate your story that he proposed as a means of seduction. Not to mention, the whole thing is null and void if the accused man can prove that at the time of the alleged seduction the woman in question was behaving “lewd and unchaste.” (That’s legalese we all can understand.)

• In North Carolina, it’s against the law to “pretend” to be married when registering for a hotel room. So next time the unknowing clerk hands you and your bedtime buddy the room keys and says, “Enjoy your stay, Mr. and Mrs. Guest,” you may want to swallow the awkwardness and correct him, or risk suffering the consequence of a Class 2 misdemeanor. On the other hand, if the couple checking into the honeymoon suite is legitimately hitched but can’t “close the deal” due to one or both parties being sexually impotent, the marriage can be declared null and void. One has to wonder, though: should the advent of Levitra and Viagra make this law null and void?
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Since Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) is one of the most popular American artists, it’s no wonder she’s also one of the most requested artists on “Feel Art Again,” with votes from readers Gillian, nutmeag, Nerak, and AMT. While most of you have seen at least one of her paintings before, there’s much you probably don’t know about this iconic painter.

1. Georgia O’Keeffe could trace her American roots all the way back to the Mayflower, which one of her ancestors, Edward Fuller, traveled on to reach the New World. He was one of the signers of the Mayflower Compact.

2. Her high school years were a bit crazy, with stints at Sacred Heart Academy (where she was a boarder), Madison High School, and Chatham Episcopal Institute (where she was again a boarder), and a move from Wisconsin to Virginia, O’Keeffe still managed to serve as art editor of her senior year yearbook, the Mortar Board, at Chatham Episcopal.

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If you haven’t yet turned off your thinking organ for the summer, try today’s Brain Game. We’ve offered a few number-series puzzles before, but this one may require a little lateral thinking (and, for some of you, a conversation with someone more over-the-hill).

What’s the final number in this sequence?

6.5, 8, 10, 12, 16, …

Click here for the answer.

We’re back with another 5-day trivia hunt!

To remind you of the rules: Every day this week, I’ll be presenting a specific challenge. Your job: come up with the answers and hold onto them! Why? Because on Friday, you’ll need them to solve a short puzzle. The first person to email in the correct answers and successfully show how you arrived at them (thus the title: How Did You Know?) wins a choice of any t-shirt and book from our store.

We’re also adding some special prizes this time around for those who come really close, but don’t get all the answers in time. And last month, we awarded some shirts and books to a couple contestants who impressed us with charts, diagrams, and other complex methods of recording and organizing the clues/answers. So we’ll be on the lookout for the creative among you, as well. This is all to say: it pays to play whether you nab the grand prize or not.

As with previous How Did You Know? posts, comments have been turned off, but I definitely encourage you to work in teams. April’s winner was the team of Bill Pearson and Adam Constable, who I know benefitted greatly from e-mailing each other throughout the week. So write your friends, send around each daily challenge, conspire, work together, whatever it takes to make sure you’re armed with the right answers going into Friday’s puzzle.

If you missed Day 1′s challenge, it can be found right over here.

Today we’re playing Name That Tune. Each of the following pages has a tune in need of a name. So go to it and remember to check the last page for a clue to tomorrow’s puzzle.

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Live on forever in space history by sending your name to the moon on the LRO spacecraft. But hurry, the deadline is Friday!
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Trevor Paglen’s photographs let us see what we’re not supposed to see.
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The most interesting museum in Mexico isn’t even open to the public.
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You might be surprised by the list of 2008′s “most reputable” companies.
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For those worrying about salmonella-tainted tomatoes or other food disasters, CalorieLab has cooked up a quick guide to the big 8 food-borne illnesses.
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Delve into the creative processes of filmmaker David Lynch and folk-rock icon Donovan with The Atlantic.
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One writer went to some drastic lengths to get to know his neighbors better.
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What can you sketch with your Etch-a-Sketch? Check out these masterpieces for inspiration.

If the throngs of crazed customers clutching registry printouts at Crate & Barrel are any indication, wedding season is once again upon us. Before you head off to the next joyous union on your jam-packed calendar, let’s take a moment to reflect on the rich history of marriage celebrations and revel in the realization that weddings are, at their core, incredibly bizarre.

The White Wedding Dress
Technically, today’s wedding gowns aren’t white. They are “Candlelight,” “Warm Ivory,” “Ecru” or “Frost.” But there was a time when a bride’s wedding attire was simply the best thing in her closet (talk about “off the rack”), and could be any color, even black. To convince her groom that she came from a wealthy family, brides would also pile on layers of fur, silk and velvet, as apparently grooms didn’t care if his wife-to-be reeked of sweaty B.O. as long as she was loaded. It was dear ol’ Queen Victoria (whose reign lasted from 1837-1901) who made white fashionable. She wore a pale gown trimmed in orange blossoms for her 1840 wedding to her first cousin, Prince Albert. Hordes of royal-crazed plebeians immediately began to copy her, which is an astonishing feat considering that People Magazine wasn’t around to publish the Super Exclusive Wedding Photos, or instruct readers on how to Steal Vicki’s Hot Wedding Style.

Giving Away the Bride
Remember that “Women’s Studies” class you considered taking in college? Allow us to summarize what you would have learned: All of our society’s gender issues stem from the fact that fathers once used their daughters as currency to a) pay off a debt to a wealthier land owner, b) symbolize a sacrificial, monetary peace offering to an opposing tribe or c) buy their way into a higher social strata. So next time you tear up watching a beaming father walk his little girl down the aisle, remember that it’s just a tiny, barbaric little hold over from the days when daughters were nothing but dollar signs to daddy dearest. And that veil she’s wearing? Yeah, that was so the groom wouldn’t know if he was stuck with an uggo until it was time to kiss the bride and too late to back out on the transaction. (There is also some superstitious B.S. about warding off evil spirits, but we think you’ll agree that hiding a busted grill from the husband-to-be is a more practical purpose.)

The Wedding Party
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I must be hungry, because this seemed like a great idea for a Quick 10 today. Have you ever been eating or drinking something and wondered where the name came from? Some items are pretty well known – a Shirley Temple was named after the actress, obviously, and an Arnold Palmer was named after the golfer. But how about that T.V. dinner staple, the Salisbury steak? We’ll fill you in.

10 Foods Named After People

1. The Oh Henry! candy bar has at least three stories behind the name. I’ll let you pick your favorite. The first is that it was named after a boy who frequented the Williamson Candy Company quite often to flirt with the girls who worked there. Therefore, “Oh Henry!” would be kind of an exasperated, coy exclamation. Story #2 is that Henry was a young man who was often called to do odd jobs around the Williamson Company, which would make “Oh Henry!” a call for help. Finally, consider that the bar was invented by one Tom Henry. Makes more sense to me that the bar was probably named after him, although I like the flirting story the best.

2. Salisbury steak was invented by Dr. James H. Salisbury. He thought that fruits and veggies were bad for humans and caused heart disease, tumors, mental illness, tuberculosis and all kinds of horrible ailments. He invented the Salisbury steak (which is really just hamburger steak) to convince people to change their diet to mostly meat.

3. Crepes Suzette has quite the tale behind it. In 1896, Edward VII, Prince of Wales, was eating at the Café de Paris in Monte Carlo. He ordered a special dessert and was pleased when the waiter brought out a flaming dish. When the dessert was dedicated to him, the Prince declined and asked if the dish could be named after his dining companion, Suzette. Some sources dispute this story, though, so take it with an ounce of Grand Marnier.

4. Beef Wellington was named after Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. Wellington boots (“Wellies”) were also named after him. The story is either that it was his favorite dish, or that chefs could dump whatever crap they wanted to in a bowl and cover it with pastry and he would eat it. I’m more inclined to believe the latter – other accounts of the Duke say that he had no interest in creature comforts whatsoever and would repeatedly eat “cold meat” and bread for breakfast.

5. Eggs Benedict is another one with multiple stories (I guess maybe they all are). Story #1 – In 1894, a stockbroker by the last name of Benedict visited the Waldorf hotel in New York with a hangover one morning. He asked for toast, bacon and poached eggs with Hollandaise sauce on the side, believing it to be the perfect remedy to his drink-induced illness. The Waldorf decided to keep it on the menu, but changed a few ingredients a bit. Story #2 – The head chef at Delmonico’s created the dish for socialite Mrs. LeGrand Benedict in 1893. I like the hangover story best.
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There’s a special place in my heart for weird Garfield parodies, but today’s subject really raises the bar for weirdness. The Garkov comic strip activates my Nerdy Spidey Sense, as it uses a Markov chain process to create the absurdist dialog. For those of us who don’t know/care what a Markov chain really is, let’s just say it’s a mathematical process that takes an existing body of text (say, all the dialog from Garfield comic strips) and uses it to create new text that almost makes sense.

Created by evil genius Josh Millard, Garkov takes existing Garfield comic strips, removes the dialog, and uses the Markov chain system to insert new dialog. The result is utterly bizarre. Here are a few randomly generated examples:

See also: the Garkov hall of fame and previous _floss coverage of Garfield parodies. Also of interest for nerds or Garfield completists is a site containing all the Garfield dialog. Yes, all of it.

(Via Waxy.org.)

Greek Mythology is the way an ancient people attempted to understand the world. With a comparatively limited knowledge of natural science and theoretical physics, the Greeks would use stories to explain why things happened. The stories and myths they produced have had a lasting effect and profoundly influenced almost all branches of intellectual thought.

How much do you know about the archaic system of beliefs that helped transform the world creatively and intellectually?

Take the Quiz: Is It Greek To You?

I love ghost stories — and judging from the way they dominate certain aspects of our popular culture, it seems safe to assume that a lot of other people do, too. That doesn’t mean I expect to find ghosts lurking in dark corners or popping out of closets, but when “evidence” of ghosts crops up, be it in the form of photographs, videos, recordings or what-have-you, I’m a sucker; I have to check it out. YouTube has become a place where such video “evidence” of ghosts tends to aggregate, and the videos run the gamut — from obvious fakes designed to produce shock scares, to news reports about local ghost “sightings,” to legitimately “unexplained” footage that people upload, hoping someone out there in internetland has an answer. Here are six such videos — whether any of them are real, well, that’s for you to decide.

Girl in the mirror

This one’s been floating around the internet for a while — more than long enough for the debunkers to get their hands on it. We’re pretty sure that a little motion-tracking and some simple matting created the “mirror” effect in this video (the camera stops shaking right before the scare, a dead giveaway), but somehow knowing it’s probably fake doesn’t take all its creepiness away. (more…)