DARRYL WEBB/Reuters/Landov
Last night the Los Angeles Kings defeated the Phoenix Coyotes to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals. The Kings were last in the Finals in 1993, when they lost to the Montreal Canadiens. In the 18 years between the Kings’ Finals appearances, 11 different franchises have won the Cup. Can you name them all in two minutes?
Take the Quiz: Name the Stanley Cup Winners Since 1994
]]>
© Bettmann/CORBIS
In the 1930s, how would a middle-class Baltimore divorcee become romantically involved with the man who would be King of England? It always comes down to who you know. And Wallis Simpson knew how to climb the social ladder very effectively.
She started at a young age. While at school, she befriended a member of the Du Pont family. Her stepfather was the son of a prominent Democratic party boss. And during her first marriage to Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr., an alcoholic Navy pilot of no distinction, she had affairs with both an Argentinian diplomat and Mussolini’s future son-in-law.
Wallis was in the middle of divorcing Spencer when she met Ernest Aldrich Simpson. Ernest was a big step up from her first husband, his father was a co-founder of a successful shipping business, and his brother-in-law had been an MP. While Ernest was born to an American mother and British father, after he graduated college he had renounced his American citizenship. When they met in 1927 Ernest was immediately taken with Wallis, and soon set about divorcing his first wife. The two married a year later and settled in an exclusive area of London.
Thanks to Ernest’s wealth and connections, the Simpsons traveled in well-heeled circles. Wallis soon became fast friends with Consuelo Thaw and through her met her sister Thelma, Lady Furness. Lady Furness had recently become the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales, and invited Mr. and Mrs. Simpson to serve as chaperones one weekend in 1931 when the Prince was coming to stay at her country estate, Burrough Court.
It was not love at first sight for either of them. Edward continued his affair with Lady Furness, although he and Wallis met at various house parties since they traveled in similar circles. It was when his mistress was out of the country in 1934, almost three years to the day after Edward and Wallis met, that they consummated their relationship. He was soon devoted to Wallis and on December 10, 1936, Edward abdicated the throne for her, even though she was still married to her second husband at the time.
]]>More from mental_floss…
What Happened to Marie Antoinette’s Children?
*
Why Don’t Woodpeckers Get Brain Damage?
*
Why Does the Shower Curtain Always Try to Get Me?
*
How Does Scratch and Sniff Work?
I know I’m only about a decade late, but I recently, finally, watched the entire run of The Sopranos. Tony and his crew get their hands into plenty of different moneymaking schemes, but throughout the series one character or another (Tony, Richie Aprile, Ralph Cifaretto) is involved in solid waste management. What makes trash collection so attractive to mobsters?
The areas where criminal organizations tend to do steady business – drugs, stolen goods, gambling and protection rackets, for example – conform to the basic necessities of the wiseguy economy. They’re all easy to get into (you need significantly less startup capital to hijack a truck than to start the next Google) and exploit, and are highly profitable. The business of garbage collection satisfies those same needs, but has the added bonus of actually being legal. Mobsters can pull down serious profits from a legitimate, in-demand business, while also using it to launder dirty money from their other enterprises.
The mob really got into trash in the mid-20th century, when many cities stopped collecting commercial waste and left businesses to find private haulers. Mobsters from New York to Chicago saw an opportunity and either started or took over (with money, intimidation or violence) hauling firms. Within a city, crews would divvy up routes, rig contract bids, and harass and extort non-mob haulers and customers in order to quash competition and keep their prices high.
Soon, gangsters, mostly from Italian- and Irish-American crime families, had monopolies on trash collection all over the Northeast and upper Midwest. The so-called “garbage mobsters” who ran these operations often falsified paperwork and tampered with waste scales, sometimes to skim profits from the business, and sometimes to hide dirty money in it. Crew bosses and members often got no-work, no-show “consulting” positions at the firms, which gave them a legit job to put on their tax return and explain their income.
Mobsters began to lose their grip on garbage in the last 20 years, as the industry became more corporatized and companies like Browning-Ferris Industries and Waste Management got big enough to step into mob-controlled territory and give them enough competition to drive them out of business. In New York, Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the city government finished the job that market forces started, conducting an undercover investigation, led by NYPD detective Rick Cowan, of the mob garbage cartel, and creating the Trade Waste Commission to regulate trash haulers.
In some places, though, the mob continues to hang on to its trash routes. Late last year, the New Jersey Commission of Investigation released a report saying that, despite law enforcement’s knowledge of the situation and years of effort to block their involvement, mobsters are still prominent in the trash business because state and local government fail to put up the resources, money and manpower needed to close loopholes, enforce laws and force them out.
That same report says things aren’t much better across the Delaware, and points out that alleged Philadelphia mob boss Joe Ligambi was on the payroll of a Philadelphia trash hauler from 2003 to 2010. He received $1,000 a week and health benefits for most of that time without, it seems, actually doing any work.
]]>More from mental_floss…
Why Don’t Woodpeckers Get Brain Damage?
*
Which Came First: Orange the Color or Orange the Fruit?
*
Could Humans Hibernate?
*
Do Other Animals Laugh When Tickled?
Smelling image via Shutterstock
I’m perfectly suited to answer the Big Question that reader Katie posed the other day, because I have anosmia, which means I can’t smell. At all. Every diaper my two-year-old has ever filled has been totally odorless to me. I also missed out on her new baby smell, which I hear is pretty fantastic. I can’t tell if I come back to work still stinky from a lunchtime run, which often concerns me, but other people’s B.O. doesn’t bother me either. I’m never tempted by the smell of Auntie Anne’s Pretzels wafting through the mall, and when someone burns popcorn in the microwave at work, I really don’t care. I’m also convinced I’m going to die due to a gas leak sometime when I’m alone in the house.
The first thing people always ask when they find out about my lack of smell is, “Wait, but can you taste?” As you no doubt already know, taste and smell are very closely related. Food odors engage the olfactory nerves in noses while taste buds react on your tongue, and together the two combine to make your eating experience enjoyable (or not). So, it’s reasonable to say that anosmiacs only get half the experience.
I personally have a preference for things that rank high on the spectrum of salty, sweet, sour and bitter. I’m not totally confident that I taste umami at all. Sauerkraut right out of the can is delicious. I’ve never met a sweet that was “too rich” for me. Bring on the spicy foods. But I find it impossible to distinguish between specific flavors. Jolly Ranchers all taste the same to me, unless I get a sour one like green apple or lemon. I could never taste a homecooked meal and compliment the chef on her unique blend of spices. Sage, basil, oregano – it’s all the same (though cilantro tastes kind of soapy to me).
Researchers think that 1 in 5,000-10,000 people worldwide are afflicted with some form of anosmia. There are lots of ways to lose your sniffer. As some people get older, they find that their sense of smell is less acute simply due to aging. Other causes include head trauma, smoking, nasal polyps and many diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. As far as I know, none of those apply to me: I have Congenital Anosmia, AKA, baby, I was born this way.
Here’s an anosmic trying to differentiate between tastes while blindfolded. The results make me think that every anosmic experiences taste differently, because I’m quite sure I would know the difference between orange juice and cranberry juice.
]]>More from mental_floss…
What Makes Fancy Ketchup So Fancy?
*
Which Came First: Orange the Color or Orange the Fruit?
*
Could Humans Hibernate?
*
What Exactly is Quicksand?
Can you recall what these short-lived TV shows were all about?
Take the Quiz: Bad 1995 TV Shows
]]>
Eye image via Shutterstock
Eye floaters — or muscae volitantes, Latin for “hovering flies” — are those tiny, oddly shaped objects that sometimes appear in your vision, most often when you’re looking at the sky on a sunny day. They look like spots, or a squishy little amoeba, and drift aimlessly around in your field of vision. Try to get a fix on one, though, and it seems to disappear.
Floaters aren’t just optical illusions. You’re really seeing them, and they’re actually in your eye, not just on it or in front of it. The weird little squiggles are pieces of the vitreous humor, the fluid that fills the eye, breaking off and then floating about in your eyeball.
A little gross, I know, but completely normal. The vitreous humor fills the gap between your retina and lens and helps maintain the round shape of your eye. It’s made up of water bound up in a little hyaluronic acid and collagen. When you’re young, it’s thick and gel-like, but as you age, the hyaluronic acid network breaks down and releases the trapped water molecules. As this happens, the core of the vitreous humor becomes more watery and little bits of undissolved gel break off and slowly drift around. When light passes through eye, the shadows of these pieces are thrown up on your retina and you perceive them as floaters.
Since floaters, well, float, their paths generally follow the motion of the eye. This makes looking right at them difficult, and when you shift your gaze towards them, they often move and stay at the edges. They don’t always float, though, and many of them will sink towards the bottom of the eyeball. To get a good look at them, just lie down looking up at a clear sky. Some of the floaters will settle near the fovea, a small area that sits at the back center of your eye and is responsible for your sharp central vision. The lack of movement and the even, textureless background makes it easy to scope them out and watch the blobs bob around a little.
For the most part, floaters are nothing to worry about — just a sign that you’re not a kid anymore. The sudden appearance of a lot of floaters combined with the onset of other eye weirdness — like flashes of light or blurriness or loss of peripheral vision — could indicate a problem, though. Sometimes, floaters are a symptom of the vitreous humor pulling away from the retina, a retinal tear, or the abnormal growth of blood vessels in the eye. If your floaters cross the line from curiosity to nuisance, it’s time to give the eye doctor a call.
]]>More from mental_floss…
Can You Really Go Blind Staring at a Solar Eclipse?
*
What Are Eye Boogers, Anyway?
*
Don’t “Chai” and “Tea” Both Mean the Same Thing?
*
How Did the Duck Hunt Gun Work?
Note: things don’t really get cool until just before the 2-minute mark. Give it time.
If you want a (shaky) view of what this looks like in realtime, check out some guy burning lithium and don’t try it at home — the fumes and touching the lithium are dangerous.
See also: 30,000 Pounds of Sodium + Lake = Massive Explosion.
]]>
Grover Cleveland was both the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. He was first elected in 1884, coming off a successful stint as Governor of New York. Then in 1888, thanks to a shady election and controversy over tariffs, Cleveland lost reelection to Benjamin Harrison.
By all accounts, Cleveland really thought he was done with government after that. But his wife may have thought otherwise, as she supposedly said to a servant upon leaving the White House, “Now, Jerry, I want you to take good care of all the furniture and ornaments in the house, for I want to find everything just as it is now, when we come back again… four years from today.”
The couple moved back to New York City. They lived in a hotel while searching for the perfect house and the ex-president considered various lucrative job offers in the private sector, eventually accepting a position with a prestigious law firm that is still around today. The Clevelands were in huge demand socially, although Grover seemed less thrilled with their situation than his wife, writing to a friend that Henry Watterson’s comment that after leaving office the President should be taken out back and shot was “worthy of attention.”
During those four years his wife also gave birth to their first child, Ruth, who contrary to legend was not the namesake of the Baby Ruth candy bar. Regardless, her birth attracted more attention to the former president.
Cleveland had refrained from making any public comments on his successor’s policies for three years. But when the tariff issue became hot again one year before the 1892 election, Cleveland was invited to speak about it, and about the free coinage of silver, at a men’s club. While he declined the invitation, he did send a letter outlining his views that managed to take a complex issue and make it understandable to the average voter. And with that, he was back in the running for the Presidency.
]]>More from mental_floss…
A $100,000 Bill? The Story Behind Large-Denomination Currency
*
Did Andrew Jackson Really Have a Big Block of Cheese?
*
What Is Point Blank Range?
*
Why Are Flags Flown at Half-Staff in Times of Mourning?
Image credit: NASA
Let’s start with the bad news: Remember that hole in the ozone layer that scientists discovered over the Antarctic in 1985? The one we worried would give us all skin cancer and cataracts with its unshielded bursts of UV rays? It’s still there.
It gets worse. Scientists announced that a new hole opened up in early 2011—this one over the Arctic. So it’s still a rough time for the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere that helps block out some of the sun’s UV rays.
But here’s the good news: we’ve got a handle on the problem. When the first hole came to light, world leaders moved quickly. Through the Montreal Protocol of 1987, several nations nixed the production of ozone-killing chlorofluorocarbons. Saving the ozone was literally the first thing the whole world ever agreed on: A treaty banning CFCs was the first agreement ever to be ratified by every country in the United Nations.
As the level of atmospheric CFCs began to drop, the ozone layer started repairing itself. While the going is slow—a lot of the CFCs we released in the 1970s and 80s are still floating around doing damage—scientists hope the ozone layer will be back to normal by the end of this century.
Oddly enough, the depleted ozone layer did have one positive side effect: It helped curb global warming. The thinned ozone of the Antarctic led to brighter clouds that reflected some of the sun’s radiation away from Earth. Cutting out this effect may give global warming a slight boost, but scientists are quick to note that we’re far better off with a healthy ozone layer.
This article originally appeared in the Jan-Feb 2012 issue of mental_floss magazine.
]]>More from mental_floss…
What Happens If You Drive Off With the Gas Pump Nozzle Still in the Car?
*
How Did the Duck Hunt Gun Work?
*
Why Is Pink Lemonade Pink?
*
Why Is it Called a “Radio Flyer”?
Lightning image, which is kind of related to thunder, via Shutterstock
While we use the term figuratively today, its original usage — by English playwright John Dennis in the early 1700s — was literal.
Live theater productions have plenty of sound effect tricks up their sleeves, some of them centuries old. If the sound of thunder is needed for a stormy scene, for example, off-stage crew members might roll metal balls down troughs, grind lead shot in bowls or shake thin sheets of metal.
For the performance of his play Appius and Virginia at a London theater, Dennis came up with a new thunder effect, a refined version of the “mustard bowl” that used metal balls in a bowl instead of lead. The play was not well received, but the thunder was, and after Appius and Virginia was cancelled, the theater manager continued to use Dennis’ thunder-making method for a production of Macbeth.
One night, Dennis was in the audience and recognized the distinct sound of his thunder effect. According to legend, he leapt from his seat and shouted, “That’s my thunder, by God! The villains will not play my play but they steal my thunder.”
]]>