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Mental Floss
Borders between states and nations have often been met by contention. For some reason, humans have remained territorial from the beginning, placing markers on what is “mine” and what is “yours.” Sometimes, the human race gets a little creative when drawin
Bryan Dugan|
In honor of the 75th anniversary of the book’s publication, Geisel’s widow has opened her late husband’s hat collection to the public in a traveling exhibit called “Hats Off to Dr. Seuss!”
Roma Panganiban|
On March 2, 1933, a beast proudly dubbed “the Eighth Wonder of the World” made his grand debut at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall and its sister theater across the street.
Mark Mancini|
On April 12, 1956, Samuel J. Seymour died in his daughter’s home in Arlington, Virginia. This isn’t really noteworthy on its own. People die every day. Mr. Seymour was 96 years old on the day he died, though, which means he was born in 1860, the year befo
Matt Soniak|
Lapland’s storied IceHotel, the world’s largest and longest-running luxury hotel made entirely of frozen water, is a little more involved than those bootleg igloos you constructed as a kid!
Jessanne Collins|
Despite the notion of horses as pets and companions, horsemeat is widely and willingly consumed in countries ranging from Mexico to China to Italy. So how, exactly, did eating horsemeat become taboo for the rest of us?
Kevin Kampwirth|
Erik Sass|
Cows poop between 10 and 15 times a day. Plus, they pee around 10 times a day. All that waste adds up pretty quickly, and standing in their own filth can make the cows sick. Here's how some scientists are trying to potty train bovines.
Matt Soniak|
The first CIA men had to be really smart or a slightly crazy. Frank Wisner, the father of American covert operations, was both.
David W Brown|
Here are the origins of some familiar insults that will make calling out all the rubes, bums, cretins, and punks in your life a more fulfilling experience.
Therese Oneill|
Mister Rogers and Benjamin Wagner really were neighbors. Here are 46 things Wagner learned about this great man and his essential, pioneering work.
BY|
There are millions of people, even in the mostly monolingual US, who speak more than one language at home. Competence in three languages is not unusual. But what about 10, 20, 30, 100 languages? What's the upper limit on the number of languages a person c
Arika Okrent|
During the British Raj, or dominion over India (1757-1947), English gained a number of words from Hindi and other Indian languages. Linguists refer to this as “borrowing,” but we’re not likely to return any of this linguistic wealth.
Judith Herman|
When singer-songwriter Lori McKenna’s son was in second grade, he did a book report on Ruby Bridges, the African-American elementary school student who famously crossed the desegregation lines in 1960. To help her son, McKenna came up with a song about Ru
Bill DeMain|
These days, you don’t have to be in the Navy to look like you belong on the open sea. Anyone who lives in, has visited, or even seen pictures of other people who live in a colder climate can attest to the ubiquity of the double-breasted, structured-should
Roma Panganiban|
Some movie-makers make the extra effort to find a spooky location to go with a nightmarish tale. Although not all of these places are haunted, they look like they could be!
Jenni Miller|
This might not be the time for the birds and the bees talk, but sometimes, when a man and a woman love each other, they have sex—but they don’t always do it to make a baby. In fact, sometimes, they are very much not in the market for a baby. So befor
Linda Rodriguez McRobbie|
Despite urban legends claiming that waking a sleepwalker will send them into shock or give them a heart attack, it’s pretty much harmless. While you can wake them up, you probably shouldn’t, and that’s for both your benefit.
Matt Soniak|
are six Oscar winners who wouldn’t fall under most definitions of a professional actor at the time they won an Academy Award.
Orrin Konheim|
The day before the Academy Awards are given out, there’s another awards ceremony to hand out a not-so prestigious statue: the Golden Raspberry, given out to the worst stuff Hollywood has thrown our way in the previous year.
Stacy Conradt|
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