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Mental Floss
The festival started sometime in the late 1700s (it's unclear exactly when) for citizens to gather to learn the outcome of state and national elections. Now it's just an opportunity to hold a festival in the city of Georgetown, complete with a carriage pa
Jason Plautz|
Installment #20: Of all the new weapons systems coming on line in the years leading up to the Great War, the newest – and most open-ended – was the airplane. The airplane’s potential military applications seemed endless, but it still faced legions of skep
Erik Sass|
On our last macabre getaway, we planned an almost-cross-country trip to see various items tied to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. This time around, we’re hitting the road to gawk at cadavers, outdated instruments and the rest of America’s finest medical
Matt Soniak|
We've discussed the story of the Unknown Rebel (what little we know of it, anyway), but we may have never known of his heroic deed if the photographers who managed to document it hadn’t been fast on their
Stacy Conradt|
ADAM HUNGER/Reuters/Landov New Jersey Devils goalie Martin Brodeur, who has helped lead his team to the Stanley Cup Finals, is part of an exclusive club. Brodeur is one of 10 goalies who has scored a goal in an NHL game and one of two goalies who has sco
Scott Allen|
Installment #19: With Russia, France, Germany, and Britain locked in an arms race and trouble brewing along its southern border in the Balkans, Austria-Hungary was soon swept up in the European armaments craze. But in Austria-Hungary, nothing was ever sim
Erik Sass|
Some Dum Dums have wrappers with question marks where the flavor is normally printed. This was a marketing idea that made the production process run more smoothly and made eating Dum Dums more fun.
Sandy and Kara|
Reader Jonathan wrote in to ask, “Why do we call other countries by names that they do not use themselves? Where did these names come from and why do we use them?"
Matt Soniak|
Find out how the Jersey Devil went from a regional folk tale from the 18th century to an NHL mascot today.
Ethan Trex|
Truman isn’t just gleeful in that famous photo because he won the election, but because it was egg on the face of a paper he hated, the Chicago Tribune. The paper had a conservative bent, disapproved of most of his policies, and had once even called him a
Kathy Benjamin|
The sugars in beans are far too big to slip though the intestinal wall on their own, and our guts’ enzymatic tool kit doesn’t have the right stuff to break the big things apart into more manageable pieces.
Matt Soniak|
Well, they're not dyed for St. Patrick’s Day. These are just from potatoes in which chlorophyll had started to form. This can happen when potatoes, which grow underground, are exposed to too much light in the field or factory, in storage, on the store she
Matt Soniak|
On a December night in 1919, a 23-year-old soldier named William N. Bishop managed to slip out of the stockade at Virginia’s Camp A.A. Humphreys and escape into the surrounding woods. Unable to locate Bishop, the army requested the assistance of the U.S.
Matt Soniak|
LOUIS LANZANO/Landov The short answer: no.The long answer: Once upon a time, being presented with the key to the city served a real function. In ancient times, when it was common for European towns to be ringed by walls, visiting dignitaries were presente
Stacy Conradt|
While the lifespan of any individual atom is random and unpredictable, the probability of decay is constant. You can’t predict when an unstable atom will break down, but if you have a group of them, you can predict how long it will take.
Matt Soniak|
Sledding image via Shutterstock“Put a jacket on if you’re going out there, or you’ll catch a cold.”It’s a common refrain of grandmothers all over the world. Are they right, though? Do low temperatures have anything to do with catching the common cold? Mos
Matt Soniak|
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,
Matt Soniak|
Smelling image via ShutterstockI’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.
Stacy Conradt|
Image credit: NASALet'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
Ethan Trex|
The hose that attaches the nozzle to the gas pump is designed to break into two pieces when a certain amount of force is applied to it. Next time you’re at the gas station, check the hose for a metal coupling.
Matt Soniak|
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