On Tuesday, American photographer Steve McCurry celebrated his 59th birthday. At the request of reader Nerak, today’s “Feel Art Again” takes a look at the famed National Geographic photographer behind the magazine’s “most recognized photograph, “Afghan Girl.”

1. Steve McCurry produced some of the first images of the Soviet war in Afghanistan by disguising himself as a native and sneaking over the Afghanistan border. McCurry was usually passed off as a native by his traveling companions, who would claim he was “deaf and dumb.” Leaving the country, McCurry was worried his film would be discovered and perhaps confiscated, so he hid it on his person, sewing it into his clothes and turban.

2. For more than 15 years after photographing the globally recognized “Afghan Girl,” McCurry had no idea who she was. Finally, in 2002, McCurry and a National Geographic team set out to locate the June 1985 cover girl. Despite several initial false leads, McCurry instantly recognized Sharbat Gula when they were re-introduced: her piercing eyes and the scar on her nose were dead giveaways. To McCurry, Gula’s portrait “summed up…the trauma and plight, and the whole situation of suddenly having to flee your home and end up in refugee camp, hundreds of miles away.”

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Get your magazines (March/April ‘09 issue) handy and come back next weekend for our $50 challenge. The first person to e-mail with all the correct answers wins a $50 gift card to the mental_floss store!

We are still waiting to hear back from our January winner, “Ben Linus.” Ben, are you out there?

Flossy faithful Merinda sent in a plethora of great links this week, starting with this shocker: Did Google Earth find Atlantis? If anyone or anything could, I would believe it to be Google.
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Who was the first person to turn that frown upside down? Read the history of the smiley, but be wary of some Watchmen spoilers, if you haven’t read the graphic novel already (and if you haven’t … shame on you! Read it now!)
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Absolutely frightening video of a dust storm in Australia. How can these people be so nonchalant?
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From Rebecca: If you thought “Pride, Prejudice and Zombies” was a stretch, what about Pride and Predator?
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Ever sat self righteously on your couch and thought “Hey, I could easily get a perfect score on that Wonderlic test.” Well, go on – try it!
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Flossy friend Robert Basler has written some hilarious crocodile-related career advice for your consideration. Robert, thanks for the Creative Writing / Film major shout out. It makes me feel really good about my future as a croc-taper.
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For anyone currently unacquainted with Nick Thune and his “Instant Messenger Song” (that would be me before Friday), it brings you back to the days of plugging straight into the phone jack, 28K modem and cruising on AOL’s free minutes you got through the mail. Seriously hilarious.
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I scream, you scream, we all scream for BIRDS STEALING ICE CREAM CONES!!
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From Kolja, replacing the world’s landmarks with cheap souvenirs. Hey, it was only a matter of time.

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The latest issue of mental_floss just hit newsstands. Rosemary Ahern’s cover story chronicles ‘The 25 Most Influential Books of the Past 25 Years.’ This week, we’ll be revealing five of those influential books here on the blog. And if this puts you in a subscribing mood, here are the details.

The Alchemist

by Paulo Coelho (1988)

The Book That Found Treasure on the Internet

In the 1970s, Paulo Coelho was a famous lyricist in Brazil. But after the government found some of his words offensive, he ended up jailed and tortured on three separate occasions. Coelho fled to Europe, where he joined a small Catholic sect and rediscovered himself spiritually. In 1986, he made a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, which inspired him to write The Alchemist, a tale of another man on a spiritual journey. In the story, a young Spanish shepherd named Santiago dreams of treasure buried near pyramids, then sets off to find it. He soon encounters an alchemist who gives him two stones with the power to decipher omens. On his travels, Santiago gets robbed, falls in love, participates in tribal warfare, and learns that the treasure he’s been seeking has been within him the entire time. Although critics often dismiss the book as New Age tripe, fans call it life changing.

The most intriguing thing about The Alchemist may not be the author’s background or the book’s plotline, but how Coelho invented a new way to sell books.

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SPAM (The Food Item)

First, let’s get the ingredients out of the way. SPAM is chopped pork shoulder meat with ham, salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrite. Unless, that is, it’s SPAM Lite, in which case there’s also some chicken thrown in there. Or SPAM Oven Roasted Turkey, which includes (we assume) turkey and is suitable for Muslims.

SPAM was invented in the late-Depression era, in 1937, which may explain at least some of why it seemed like a good idea: people were desperate. According to Nikita Khrushchev’s book, Khrushchev Remembers, SPAM was a godsend for another hungry group — Russian soldiers in World War II. For a further illustration of how bad things were, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – who we really, really can’t imagine eating SPAM — reportedly once referred to it as a “wartime delicacy.”

And what does “SPAM” – sorry, we have to capitalize it that way, Hormel says so – actually stand for? Despite convincing evidence, it doesn’t stand for “something posing as meat.” The company’s official explanation is that it’s short for “spiced ham,” but that wasn’t always its party line. Hormel has also stated in the past that the name stands for “shoulder of pork and ham,” although we can sort of understand why it wouldn’t necessarily want to drive home the whole “shoulder” thing today. The name was suggested by Kenneth Daigneau, an actor who received the $100 prize in a contest Hormel had sponsored. Conveniently, he just happened to be the brother of a Hormel vice president. We think there’s just a little too much mystery in this mystery meat. Then again, SPAM has sold over 6 billion cans, and what have we done lately?

SPAM (The Email Genre)

If you’re sick of blaming dethroned Nigerian kings, triple-X porn sites and mail-order purveyors of Viagra for all the junk in your e-mail box, why not take issue with the real rascals behind the word.

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I tried to stay away from the really obvious here – like Kate Hudson is Goldie Hawn’s daughter and that sort of thing. I think a couple slipped by me anyway… what’s obvious to everyone else is not always obvious to me (I bet a lot of you already knew #3 and #7).

1. Abe Lincoln and Tom Hanks. Before Abe’s mom married his dad, Thomas, she was Nancy Hanks. Tom has said in multiple interviews that he’s distantly related to her, although I’ve never heard him mention specifics.
2. Sophia Loren was once sister-in-law to Mussolini’s son. Romano Mussolini married Sophia’s sister, Anna Maria Villani Scicolone, in 1962.
3. Richard Nixon’s daughter married Dwight D. Eisenhower’s grandson. This one is pretty well-known. Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower met at the 1956 Republican National Convention. They married after her father was elected but before he took office.
4. Humphrey Bogart and Princess Diana were seventh cousins, twice removed. (more…)

This just in from the Daily Mail: Keanu Reeves, David Beckham, and Sean Connery are stumping for Viagra-style drugs in China – apparently without their knowledge.

According to the Mail, the stars have appeared in badly dubbed commercials promoting the product, called USA Selikon. In the ads, David Beckham reportedly says, “It’s also the secret weapon with which I can satisfy Victoria”; Sir Sean Connery claims he recommends the drug to his “aged friends” and that it has spiced up his sex life with his wife “Barbara” (Connery has been married to Micheline Roquebrune for 32 years); and, perhaps the most confusing and amusing, Keanu Reeves claims, “The feelings after my kidneys got washed by USA Selikon capsules are surprising. And my girlfriends were also surprised.” What does that even mean?

Here’s the video. Can anyone translate to confirm? (more…)

Saturday morning cartoons would have us believe that anyone in a dress and Viking helmet can shatter wine glasses, monocles and even the opera house chandelier with one powerful high note. Is this one of those skills that only cartoon characters possess, or can we mortals do it too?

The physics seem pretty straightforward. Every object has a resonant frequency – the frequency at which it naturally vibrates. Finding the resonant frequency of a wine glass, which is especially resonant because it’s tubular and hollow, is easy. Running a wet finger around the rim and making it “sing” or simply tapping the glass will cause it to vibrate at its resonant frequency (which varies from glass to glass) and push out waves of air pressure. Our ears and brain interpret these waves as sound, with the pitch of the sound determined by the frequency of the waves.

If you’ve got a good ear or the appropriate computer program, you can find out what that note is and match the pitch of your voice to the to the glass’s resonant frequency. Singing that tone will get the air around the glass, and then the glass itself, vibrating. And if you can sing loud enough and long enough, the glass will basically vibrate itself to death.

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1. We’ve been busy promoting the new issue of mental_floss, in which we name The 25 Most Influential Books of the Past 25 Years. If the topic were The 25 Most Influential Movies (1984-Present), what would you nominate?

2. With this next question, I sound a lot like Captain Clarence Oveur in Airplane!. But I’ll ask anyway. Have you ever been to a Presidential Library? Was it worth the trip? If you had to pick one, which library would you honor with your presence? (more…)