First, a hearty congrats to all of you who got all the answers correct this month.
Now on with the big news: We have a new champion! Chan Stevens edged out several others, including former champion Katie Wnuk taking this week’s How Did You Know?
Congrats and best of luck defending your title next month during the next How Did You Know? Remember: if you can hold onto it for two more months, you’ll win our grand prize!

I’ll post Chan’s answers and logic after the jump, but first a little about our winner:

I graduated from Duke during the Johnny Dawkins era and went through a number of jobs before winding up in my current role as a consultant for a manufacturing software firm. I’m an amateur rocket scientist and was the 2007 national champion of model rocketry. I’ve been an avid Flosser for many years, and have even hooked my dad and son on MF, thus spanning three generations. I’m a boring nerdy guy with a wife, teenage son, two cars, two dogs, two cats and a rabbit–the perfect profile for HDYK whiz. Having initially tapped my rocket scientist buddies for help, I found them hopelessly inept at identifying music clips and American literature protagonists, so I tapped into my emergency backup special-interest group–independent music fans. Being a devoted WOXY listener for over 20 years, I found the message board community there had been working this month’s challenge and this helped me fill in the pieces of the puzzle I couldn’t nail on my own. The picture, FWIW, is from about 3 weeks ago when I flew a scale model of a Russian Soyuz TM-11 rocket in a national competition, with a record-setting 17 motor cluster. The model took first place.
–Chan Stevens

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Tomorrow is the 22nd anniversary of the death of British sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986). At the request of reader Katie, we’ll take a look at the life of the man “generally acknowledged as the most important British sculptor of the 20th century,” whom TIME magazine described as the man who “put modern sculpture on the map.”

1. Both World War I and World War II greatly impacted Henry Moore’s life. Moore had just graduated Castleford Secondary (later Grammar) School at the onset of WWI. At the request of his headmaster, he designed and carved a Roll of Honour to include the names of all his former classmates who were entering the war. Moore himself served for two years with the Civil Service Rifles in the 15th London Regiment, during which he was gassed at the Battle of Cambrai. Nevertheless, “the war passed in a romantic haze of trying to be a hero.” In 1940, during a WWII bombing raid, Moore’s studio in London was hit, forcing him to move out of the city. He was appointed as an official war artist and, because materials were scarce, mostly drew instead of sculpting. His drawings focused on the Londoners sheltering from the bombs in the Underground stations.

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John Draper is the hacker’s hero for a reason. Not only did the electronics genius use a plastic toy from a cereal box to crack open the entire phone system, he also used his skills to befriend Steve Wozniak and wile his way out of prison “chores.” The full story’s below.   (more…)

Looking to get involved in the political process? How about fool some friends into thinking you’re a grassroots phenomenon?
• Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://www.thelopezfamilyonline.com/play.php?first=FIRST&LASTNAME
• Next, replace FIRST&LASTNAME with your name – in my case, it would be Allison%20Keene (the %20 will add the space).
• Press enter or whatever you need to load the site, click on the video, and voila! Watch the magic!
(Thanks Jan!)

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Tired of waiting in long lines at the fair ground or Six Flags? You could always build your own rollercoaster … although I wouldn’t recommend it. (Thanks to Martha for that gem)

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If you’re looking to make an impression with clients or potential beaux, check out some of these clever business cards, courtesy of Larry’s blog.

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Suffering from Olympic withdrawal? Check out this Olympic photoshop contest that manages to bring Beijing and backflips to some well known art.

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If ever there was a proper usage of “zomg,” it would be to describe this table.

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Apparently this completely unfathomably cool fountain is from Canal City in Fukuoka, Japan. Word is there are similar fountains other places … anyone seen one in person? This one still baffles me.

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I live near Grover Cleveland’s birthplace. I’ve never been, but the people who handle our area’s highway signage are very proud of our proximity to presidential history, even if Cleveland left this house (and New Jersey) before he turned five. One of these days, I’ll drop by and let you know what there is to learn about our 22nd (and 24th) president.

In the meantime, we have a copy of James Loewen’s Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong to give away, so let’s do this: tell us about the historical landmarks in your general vicinity. The most obscure historic site wins the book. We’ll also give away a mental_floss t-shirt to another submission we find particularly enjoyable.

We’ll announce the winners early next week. I’m looking forward to adding a few more sites to my ‘Must Visit (But Probably Won’t)’ list.

[Image courtesy of Jim Albano's Real Estate Blog.]

As we head into Labor Day Weekend, we thought it would be fitting to revisit some notable strikes in American history—from the railroad industry to the Post Office, Disney to the NFL.

1. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

After the Panic of 1873, a country-wide depression, things in America kind of went downhill for a couple of years. By 1877, more than a quarter of all workers were laid off and those who had jobs suffered severe wage cuts. Railroads were no different. Strikes began in Pennsylvania, soon followed by Virginia, where federal troops were deployed to get transportation going again. Fed up with the state of the country’s economics, workers across the nation protested the way strikers were being treated. From Maryland to St. Louis, militia was called in to try to control the crowds. Unfortunately this only made the situation worse – more than 100 people were killed. Overall, about 100,000 workers went on strike.

2. The Haymarket Riots of 1886

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Peter Donnelly is a statistician with a sense of humor. He starts his talk with a classic statistician joke: “How do you tell an introverted statistician from an extroverted statistician? The extrovert is the one who looks at the other person’s shoes.” But he’s not all fun and games. In a 2005 TED Talk, Donnelly explains a little about with it’s like to be a professional statistician, then launches into a fascinating explanation of how statistics are misunderstood by typical audiences. He gives examples for the audience to examine (a few multiple-choice questions), to prove his point — and I’ll admit, he got me. I didn’t get the examples right, though I was pretty confident in my answers.

This reminds me of when I was on a jury room in a personal injury case. While my experience wasn’t related to statistics, it was an issue of science which seemed like we should have been able to prove the right answer one way or another — but we failed. The jury had an hour-long argument about physics, trying to determine whether a driver’s upper body in a car would be pushed forward or backward when the car was hit from behind. (There was a key question regarding whether a specific injury could have been caused by the impact, or was a pre-existing condition.) We even built a model, but that failed to convince anybody of what the real-world behavior would be. Everyone on the jury insisted that his or her own mental model was correct (which tended to align with their gut feeling about the guilt or innocence of the defendant), and neither demonstrating the physics of the situation, nor thinking through it with a shared mental model made any difference. It was an interesting day, to say the least. (See also: whiplash.)

Anyway, Donnelly’s talk is a great example of how attorneys (or really anyone) can exploit general misunderstanding of statistics in order to make an invalid point — and most of us won’t notice that anything is wrong. There’s even a term for one specific statistical misuse, the prosecutor’s fallacy, and Donnelly explains how it was exploited in the Sally Clark case. Definitely worth a look!

This weekend is kind of a strange anniversary – it was August 31, many years ago (OK, it was 1888 if we’re being precise) that Jack the Ripper took his first known victim. Since then copycat killers have sprouted up all over the world, each with their own similar nicknames. I thought we would look at a few of them today… and a few that aren’t killers at all, but have used the “Jack the *ipper” name to amusing effects. I’ll intersperse the two so you don’t get too bogged down.

1. Jack the Stripper was the man behind the London “nude murders” of 1964 and 1965. Like Jack the Ripper, the Stripper targeted prostitutes. He killed somewhere between six and eight victims by one of three methods (asphyxiation, strangulation or drowning) and stripped all of their corpses down to nothing but stockings. He was never caught, but the killings just seemed to stop on their own anyway… just like Jack the Ripper’s.

2. Jack the Dipper, on the other hand, is “Killer ice cream at a price that won’t leave you bleeding.” You can find it in the town of Sylva, North Carolina. You can get a t-shirt, but they don’t carry out the theme nearly as well as I would have hoped.

3. The Düsseldorf Ripper, AKA the Vampire of Düsseldorf. In 1929, Peter Kürten terrorized Germany. He was indiscriminate in his killings – women, men and children were all fair game to him. He didn’t really have a particular method of killing, either – he used everything from hammers to scissors to knives. His downfall was in May of 1930, when one of his victims escaped and went to the police. He was eventually captured and sentenced to death via guillotine. Wikipedia says his head was dissected, mummified and sold to Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in the Wisconsin Dells, but I can’t find anything to verify that. Anyone know?

4. Jack the Nipper is an awesome video game… on the off chance that you still appreciate the 1986 graphics from the Commodore systems of yore. (more…)

by Jeff Fleischer

You’ve heard all about Palestine and Tibet, Quebec and Chechnya. But those aren’t the only places that want to be sovereign. Here are 9 more would-be countries looking forward to paying U.N. dues.

1. Saving up for Independence: Greenland

Like a recent college graduate, Greenland wants to be on its own but just can’t afford it yet. Denmark took control of the ice-capped landmass in 1721 and has been gently nudging it out the door for decades. In 1953, the Danes upgraded Greenland from a colony to an overseas county and gave it representation in parliament. And in 1979, they backed off even further, handling little more than Greenland’s foreign policy and defense. Yet, Denmark still pays about half of Greenland’s domestic budget, at a cost of about $650 million annually. Polls in Denmark show that the majority of the population supports the idea of letting Greenland’s 57,000 inhabitants vote for independence. In other words, Greenland can be free if it wants.

Strangely, global warming may give Greenland the financial boost it needs to leave Denmark. As Arctic ice melts, the island’s natural resources will become more accessible. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that Greenland’s northeast coast alone could produce more than 30 billion barrels of oil, and a few major oil companies have already bought permits to explore the land. The mining of gold, zinc, and other minerals is on the rise, too. Last year, aluminum giant Alcoa announced its intention to build the world’s second-biggest smelter there. Plus, Greenland is investigating how to use the melting ice to expand its hydroelectric power industry. If it all adds up, Greenland may be moving away from the motherland sooner than it thought.

2. Cold Feet: Alaska

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