Skip to main content
Mental Floss
Spectator sports have a singular capacity to bring together disparate groups of people towards the common goal of cheering for a favorite team. However, this noble aim is occasionally forgotten by forty-thousand people collectively thinking, "Hey, I bet
Ethan Trex|
Major League Baseball's winter meetings just ended. As general managers return to their homes, the annual flurry of free agent signings and contract extensions is in full swing. These deals aren't just about the money, though; they're also about bonus cl
Ethan Trex|
Whoops.
Erik Sass|
During this auspicious holiday weekend, I would like to say a few words about the deeply significant and heartfelt tradition of Thanksgiving Turkey
Marissa Lee|
Let's get this straight. They're not pigs. They're rodents. And they're not from Guinea, either, so the name is just downright misleading. Cavies (cavia porcellus), also known as guinea pigs, are tame, become accustomed to handling, and rarely bite, m
Marissa Lee|
I used to love flying when I was a kid and even told people I wanted to be a pilot when I grew up. But something happened during college that seriously damaged my love of the skies: a friend's father took me up in his single-engine four-seat Cessna and wi
David K. Israel|
We've all heard about the dangers of global warming and climate change. It's going to make the oceans rise, drown our cities, kill plants, cause hurricanes and ruin the Earth for our grandkids. But that's all secondary to the real effects of global warmin
Jason Plautz|
Dodgeball takes a lot of knocks in gym class for being dangerous, but it's got nowhere near the death rate of these sports. Here's a look at six sports you wouldn't want your kids playing in gym class. 1. Pakistani Kite
Jason Plautz|
Last week, mental_floss asked for input on three possible covers for the upcoming magazine issue. The one featuring president Theodore Roosevelt was the favorite among commenters. I don't know which cover was selected, but it made me think of the many way
Miss Cellania|
I confess I was one of the first web-geeks in the early 1990s. I vividly recall those incipient AOL days, waiting while that blue bar ticked off the graphics' progress as they loaded on my Mac SE30 - waiting, waiting, always waiting. By 1994 I think they
David K. Israel|
I recently stumbled across an essay from 1946, by George Orwell. It describes his motives, and the motives he suspects are universal, in writing books. What's most interesting about the essay is his frank admission to the role of the writer's ego in the
Chris Higgins|
Sometimes there's nothing more apt or consoling than a monstrous cliché. So, uh, life is like a roller
BY|
How nerdy can Rock-Paper-Scissors ("RPS" to professionals) get? Pretty nerdy.
Chris Higgins|
Today's edition of the Weekend Word Wrap is on mondegreens. Long before I ever knew what a mondegreen was, I used to think the lyrics of David Bowie's "Suffragette City" went like this: Hey man, oh leave me alone, you know Hey man, oh Henry, get off the
David K. Israel|
We know it's Friday, and you're gearing up for a fun weekend. What better way to get you ready than having some fun, right here, right now: some mental_fun. Lynne Truss has a great punctuation game over at her Eats, Shoots & Leaves site, which rates ever
David K. Israel|
With all the beer and sports around here (just 10 more hours left to enter our contest!), it's getting a little testosterone-y. So I thought I'd draw your attention to this wonderful piece in the Guardian about Emilie du Châtelet, intellectual femme fata
BY|
On Saturday I saw my favorite film of the year so far (excepting my beloved POTC), which was a full-length documentary about asparagus. Stop laughing. Really, Asparagus! (a Stalk-umentary), which just won the "best of" award at the Rural Route Film Fest
BY|
What better way to end your workweek than with a dose of complete and utter slackitude? That is, if you're even still at the office. Yeah, we saw you trying to sneak out early, but we know you were just trying to emulate these guys: Famous Figures Who Ne
BY|
If you haven't eaten lunch by now, you might want to do that right now, because you're certainly not going to want much to eat or drink after reading these thorougly unappetizing and cautionary tales from Forbidden Knowledge. Hey, don't say we didn't warn
BY|
It's well established on this blog that I'm fascinated by bank robberies. (Not that I'd ever steal anything except copyrighted images and the occasional MP3 myself, no sir.) Thus, for your second installment of Forbidden Friday, I present to you: Great B
BY|
PreviousNext