This week’s installment of our “5 Things You Didn’t Know About…” series focuses on one of the finest comic actors of all time. Whether in comedies like The Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby or Hitchcock thrillers like North by Northwest, Cary Grant could make even throwaway bits of dialogue screamingly funny with his superb sense of timing and brilliant facial expressions. Here are a few things you might not have known about him.

1. He Was Almost Cary Lockwood

The man we know as Cary Grant was actually born Alec Archibald Leach in 1904 in Bristol, England. When Archie Leach finally made it to Hollywood in 1931, studio execs at Paramount didn’t think that “Archie Leach” sounded sturdy enough for a leading man. As Grant later told it, someone at the studio said, “’Archie’ just doesn’t sound right in America,” to which he grudgingly admitted, “It doesn’t sound particularly right in Britain, either.”

When he was faced with the task of literally making a name for himself, Leach enlisted the help of his friends Fay Wray and John Monk Saunders, who suggested “Cary Lockwood.” When Leach took the “Cary Lockwood” moniker back to Paramount, the studio honchos liked the “Cary” part but felt that “Lockwood” was too long and too similar to other actors’ names, particularly silent film star Harold Lockwood. Grant would later tell The New Yorker that at this point, someone in the meeting just started reading down a list of potential last names and eventually stopped at “Grant.” Archie Leach liked the sound of it and nodded, and Cary Grant was born. In 1941, the actor legally changed his name to Cary Grant.

2. Archie Leach Had Some Adventures of His Own, Though

(more…)

You know Ben Franklin was a Pennsylvania man, and Thomas Jefferson was on Team Virginia. But what about the less famous Founding Fathers? Today’s quiz asks you to choose which state 12 signers of the Declaration of Independence were representing.

Take the Quiz: Founding Fathers

Play for your chance to WIN a $100 shopping spree in our store!

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

First let’s meet our current champion, and big $100 winner, Daniel Wilson. You can read all about him and see the answers to last month’s final puzzle here.

As comments have been turned off for the length of the 5-day hunt, be sure to hit us up via e-mail with questions if you find something in the instructions unclear.

As always, it pays to play whether you’re the first in with all the correct answers or not. In addition to the $100 shopping spree first-prize, we’re also giving away a $50 shopping spree in our store to one random winner who has all the right answers but isn’t the first to e-mail them in. Random winners sometimes submit all the correct answers/logic a full 48 hours after the closing bell, so don’t worry if you’re late or can’t submit your final answers at 8 pm ET next Monday.

Have fun with it, and, as always, don’t hesitate to work in teams and e-mail all your friends for help. Many, if not most of our past HDYK winners have been teams, not individuals.

If you’re new to the 5-day trivia hunt, be sure to see the rules and regulations page here. Also, we’ve now got a Facebook page which we’re going to use to drop cryptic clues now and then. Don’t worry, even if you’re not a Fan of our Facebook page, you can still view it through the link below, and, of course, you’ll still be able to solve all the puzzles, as normal, even if you don’t want to visit Facebook. But the Fan page will allow you to friend other contestants, form alliances, network and just hang out with other trivia nuts. So go check it out over here.

If you missed Day 1, you can see that right here, while Day 2 is is over here, and Day 3, right here. Now on to our fourth challenge!

We’ve got a two-part challenge for you today. This one, we think, is a bit harder than yesterday’s. Ready to play? Click on through to the challenge.

On the night of September 13, 1814, Francis Scott Key, an American lawyer and amateur poet, accompanied American Prisoner Exchange Agent Colonel John Stuart Skinner to negotiate a prisoner release with several officers of the British Navy. During the negotiations, Key and Skinner learned of the British intention to attack the city of Baltimore, as well as strength and positions of British forces. They were held captive for the duration of the battle and witnessed the bombardment of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry. Inspired by the American victory and the sight of the American flag flying high in the morning, Key wrote a poem titled “The Defence of Fort McHenry.”

Upon his return to Baltimore, Key gave the poem to his brother-in-law, who noted that the words fit melody to the popular drinking song, “The Anacreontic Song.” Key’s brother-in-law took the poem to a printer, who made broadside copies of it. A few days later, the Baltimore Patriot and The American printed the poem with the note “Tune: Anacreon in Heaven.” Later, the Carr Music Store in Baltimore published the words and music together as “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
(more…)

Well, the 4th of July weekend is almost here. Time for fireworks, parades, and all those great outdoor cookouts. But for a few hearty souls, it’s also time to loosen the old stomach muscles, in preparation for the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. Let’s warm up for the occasion with a video buffet of extreme eating competitions.

Pumpkin Pie

Independence Day doesn’t have a monopoly on eating contests. Prepare to never want another piece of pumpkin pie. (more…)

Back at the end of May, I promised to cover 13 artists from 13 different countries in the 13 “Feel Art Again” posts for the month of June. Due to personal issues, I’ve gotten a little behind schedule, but I’ll be working this week to fulfill my promise.

Today’s post lands us in Kenya, at the request of reader Christina W., for the artwork of Walter Njugana Mbugua.

1. Walter Mbugua did not begin painting professionally until he was about 30 years old. Mbugua had become a teacher and court clerk straight out of high school. In his spare time, he wrote plays and poetry, but apparently was unsuccessful in his attempts to publish them.

2. Although he was born Walter Njugana Mbugua, the artist is best known by his nom de plume, Sane Wadu. When he left his “secure career” as a teacher and clerk to pursue painting, he was ridiculed by his friends and neighbors, who called him “insane.” Mbugua’s response was to declare his sanity with his very name; he has gone by Sane Wadu ever since.

(more…)

As mentioned in Jason’s recent post, mental_floss makes an appearance in the film My Sister’s Keeper. The movie is based on a novel of the same name by Jodi Picoult. The story line is somewhat reminiscent of a controversial case that hit the headlines almost 20 years ago, which may or may not have inspired Ms. Picoult.

Anissa Ayala was a typical athletic teenager in Walnut, California, that spring of 1988. She’d previously discovered some mysterious lumps around her ankles, but kept mum because of her fear of doctors in general and needles in particular. However, shortly after her 16th birthday that year, she experienced such excruciating stomach pain that her parents took her to the ER over her protests. The teen was subjected to a battery of tests, which included many needles, but little did she know that those punctures would end up being the least of her worries; the specialists came back with a diagnosis of chronic myelogenous leukemia. Anissa’s outlook was grim; radiation and chemotherapy could put the disease in temporary remission, but the treatments would also destroy her bone marrow, and her body would be unable to replenish her red blood cells. Without a bone marrow transplant, her life expectancy was estimated to be at five years at the most.

(more…)

For the past two weeks or so, all we’ve been hearing about is “the Fourth.” For those of you outside American borders, “the Fourth” is more properly known as “Independence Day.” And since Kara and I couldn’t seem to get away from discussion about “the Fourth,” we felt that a quiz was certainly in order. As a heads up, none of these questions directly relate to the holiday – it’s just a celebration of all things “Fourth.”

Take the Quiz: The Fourth

I think this is one of the greatest pieces of presidential trivia out there (and I love presidential trivia): John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826. And James Monroe followed in their footsteps exactly five years later. There’s only one president, however, who was born on the Fourth: Calvin Coolidge. Although they may not have been presidents, here are 10 other people who celebrate their birthdays along with the U.S.

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne, born 1804. You no doubt remember Hawthorne from your ninth-grade English class: he wrote The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, among other things. He also wrote a biography of Franklin Pierce, whom he counted among his good friends.
2. Stephen Foster, born 1826 (the exact same date Adams and Jefferson died). Foster is sometimes called the “Father of American Music,” because he wrote the tunes that have been frequently stuck in our heads ever since: Oh Susanna, Camptown Races, Beautiful Dreamer, My Old Kentucky Home and Swanee River, to name a few.

3. Louis B. Mayer, born 1882(ish – records are fuzzy). The story goes that Mayer chose his own birthday when he came to America with his parents. He also chose his name, his birthplace and his birth year – he was born Ezemiel “Lazar” Mayer (or Meir) in a small town in Belarus, but by the time he became involved with the movie business, he was Louis B. Mayer, born July 4, 1885, from Minsk.

4. Rube Goldberg, born 1883. (more…)